Health Longevity Secrets

Why Calories Don't Count with Dr Giles Yeo

• Robert Lufkin MD • Episode 203

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Dr. Giles Yeo, Cambridge University Professor, author of "Why Calories Don't Count," and Chief Science Advisor at Rio demolishes weight management myths with scientific precision and personal warmth. This mind-shifting conversation reveals why blaming people for obesity fundamentally misunderstands human biology. Full disclosure: I am also an advisor for Rio but I only work with companies I believe in and would use for myself and my family.

Bold scientific insights abound as Dr. Yeo reveals why simple calorie counting fails. Rather than fixating on calories, he advocates understanding how different foods affect our bodies uniquely, making a compelling case for cooking at home with quality ingredients as his personal health strategy.

The discussion ventures into today's most transformative weight management tools, with Dr. Yeo describing GLP-1 medications as the most effective treatment options he's encountered in 30 years of obesity research. These medications signal fullness to the brain, but surprisingly affect other reward-seeking behaviors too - from alcohol consumption to addictive tendencies. 

The conversation explores fascinating frontiers in brain science, including Dr. Yeo's groundbreaking work mapping human hypothalamus feeding circuits, and examines how AI-assisted health applications might revolutionize personalized nutrition. Throughout, his compassionate message resonates: obesity isn't a character flaw - it's the result of biological and environmental factors that require understanding, not judgment. Discover why this disco-dancing geneticist believes personalized approaches, not quick fixes, are the future of health optimization.

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Speaker 1:

Dr Giles Yeo, phd, is a renowned geneticist, author of the best-selling book why Calories Don't Count. He's a BBC broadcaster and professor at Cambridge University, known for his work on obesity, appetite and the science of eating and the science of eating. He's also a chief scientist, chief scientific advisor to Rio Right now. Then that's okay, you good.

Speaker 2:

We're good. Do you need a local record for this?

Speaker 1:

No, no, we're going to record on this, so all right, Giles, welcome man, great to see you.

Speaker 2:

It's lovely to see you. Thanks for having me on your platform.

Speaker 1:

This is going to be so much fun. I'm so excited about talking about obesity and genetics and all the amazing work you're doing and your book and other stuff. But before we do that, since this is the first time you've been here, could you just take a few minutes or a few moments and tell us a little bit about your journey, how you came to be interested in this area?

Speaker 2:

It was by chance, I did genetics as an undergrad at Cal Berkeley, which is where I did my undergrad. Then I moved to Cambridge to do my PhD. But my PhD was in the genetics of Japanese pufferfish which is fine, which is fine. This was in the 90s. But that was never going to pay my mortgage. And so when I finished my PhD and I stayed in Cambridge, I went knocking on doors for jobs, and the second door I knocked on happened to be the lab of Professor Sir Stephen Ratley, and he had just, from a few months, just discovered the first two genes that, when mutated, resulted in severe early onset obesity. And he had just began recruiting kids with severe obesity and he needed a geneticist. And so I was a geneticist. That was free, he needed a geneticist, he hired me and that was it. I got in. I found a couple of really severe mutations causing obesity, and this was in 1998. And I have worked in obesity ever since. That's great.

Speaker 2:

Well, talking about the question about genetics, how big a role does genetics play in obesity? Getting right into it here, you actually use twin studies. You know you have identical twins and non-identical twins, and so either 100% of genes or 50% of genes. And if you study a large enough set cohort of twins tens of thousands of twins then you can ask you know what role genes play versus the environment. All right, using twins, and if you do that, then actually the heritability of body weight, of which on one end of the spectrum happens to sit obesity, is between 40 to 70%. So if we take an average of that, it's probably 50-50. So, put simply clearly, the environment has got to be right or wrong, depending on how you want to look at it, to end up with obesity. But there are powerful genetic drivers for how you respond to that environment as well. So call it 50-50.

Speaker 1:

So I guess one way to think of it is that there are powerful genetic drivers, as you say, but we're dealt the cards of our genes and we can't necessarily change those. But we can change the environment, we can change the lifestyle, we can affect those things. And I love the title of your book I just finished it why Calories Don't Count? Your latest book that is, and I recommend it to everyone. But it begs the question then, if we're going to use our lifestyle to affect obesity and affect our weight, why don't calories count? Calories?

Speaker 2:

Whenever I say calories don't count, right? People think I'm anti-physics. This is what they think. All the gym bros, the people with the tight t-shirts and lifts in gyms they think I'm anti-physics. I'm not anti-physics. I know that 200 calories of potato chips is twice the amount of potato chips, is 100 calories of potato chips. I do understand that. But so is 200 grams of carrots twice the amount of carrots as 100 grams of carrots, and no one is trying to compare 100 grams of potato chips to 100 grams of carrots. So I think calories are onedimensional in what they tell you. They tell you how much food is there, and really only how much food when you're comparing the same type of food. But they're completely nutritionally blind. They don't know the amount of sugar, fat, fiber, protein, nothing, absolutely nothing else other than the calorie count. That's why they don't count, I see.

Speaker 1:

So what makes a difference then, if it's not the calories in the food?

Speaker 2:

what should we be watching, I guess I mean. So, just to be clear, all calories are equal once they're in you in a little poof of energy, right Like once your mitochondria have dealt with it. They're equal then. But we eat food. Well, we should eat food. We don't eat calories. And then we eat the food and our body then has to sort of work through the food to extract the calories. And different foods make your body work harder or less hard. That's the first thing. And different foods have different nutritional content and therefore the calorie counts really, really the type of food and what you're eating really really matters when the calories actually emerge from them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean this whole discussion is so important. In the United States, where you're from and where I am, most adults are either overweight or obese. I don't know. Is it that way in the UK now? Or what are the numbers there? It is the number, I think the know. Is it that way in the UK now, or what are you?

Speaker 2:

It is a number. It's. I think the numbers are 70-75% in the States. They're about 65% here, so we are only a little bit behind you. 65% of people in this country are either overweight or obese.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, now you're one of the world leading authorities on obesity and this whole problem. I mean, I just saw you with Sanjay Gupta on CNN and you're on the BBC and everywhere I turn. So what? So, following up on this about what we eat, what's your take on some of the some of the popular diets we hear so much about? We hear keto or plant-based or animal-based intermittent fasting. Is there one diet that's good for obesity? What are we doing with all these different diets?

Speaker 2:

First of think sort of. First of all, I think the biggest myth is probably that there is a one size fits all, but a lot of people seem to think you know what is the right solution. There isn't, and I think all of those diets actually do work for some people, and at least when they're still on the diet right. So, in other words, it gets them to lose weight. It certainly gets some people healthier while on any of those diets, but not everyone is going to like all the diets, and so I think a diet that works okay. There's some diets that are completely bat crazy okay, and so we probably want to stay away from those.

Speaker 2:

But all of those you mentioned, look, anyone is going to want to say, well, I want to be, I want to be keto, I want to do Mediterranean, a diet that works as a diet you can stick to. I want to be keto, I want to do Mediterranean, A diet that works as a diet you can stick to. And so you need to find the diet that actually you can stick to, you enjoy, you can feed your family, you can feed yourself and you don't find it a chore, Because if you don't find it a chore, you will stick to it. If you stick to it, then you'll be able to keep the weight off that you've lost and maintain your health as well.

Speaker 1:

I mean, one of the things I loved about your book was all your descriptions of the different types of food and just you know the kinds of foods that you enjoyed and everything. So what are your personal choices about your diet or, if not a diet, your choices of eating? What do you kind of avoid and what do you tend to favor?

Speaker 2:

of eating. What do you, what do you kind of avoid and what do you tend to favor? So I I can probably eat better in terms of health wise, but what? What I definitely do and this is this is what I do is I only take by takeout or eat out, broadly speaking, obviously, sometimes I do about once a week, and this tends to be friday night. So friday night's, the night I might go get a pizza or I might do whatever, or Chinese takeout, but otherwise I cook and I like to cook and I cook and I cook.

Speaker 2:

The vast majority of my cooking is from scratch and so, to my mind, the moment you are doing that, whatever it is, yes, some of my food is probably a little bit too high in fat, or maybe it's a little bit too much rice or this or that, but because I pretty much cook everything, I know everything that goes in. I know how much sugar, how much salt, how much fat I actually put in. So that is probably the way that I do. My wife would say well, I need to eat less meat probably true, and I need to eat more fiber probably true, but I think I do think it's a good start if you are cooking the vast majority of your food, because that means you have control. You see what's going into your food, and that's got to be better than the alternative.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's such a great advice. If we all cooked more, I think we would all be healthier. In the US today, there's so much discussion on a national political level about food choices and lifestyle. I never thought I would hear people talking about seed oils on the national political scale. Are there any? When you're cooking for yourself or when you're going to restaurants? Are there any? Any food groups or types of things that you that you avoid specifically for health reasons, that are otherwise consumed by a lot of people? That's an interesting question.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I don't tend to eat like I guess I don't tend to eat super processed food, but that's not because, look, I know I'm like yourself, I'm a privileged person, so in other words, I can afford to eat what I want to eat, I can afford to time to cook, and so I tend to try and I value my food. I do value my, I love my food and I value my food. I do value my, I love my food and I value my food, and so I like food that is Good quality ingredients is what I generally will try and eat. I won't avoid anything. I try not to avoid anything as long as it's not within as long as it's not like some super processed terrible something. But I don't. There's nothing I tend to avoid. I'll eat a little bit of something.

Speaker 2:

Like seed oils are okay then Within a specific, obviously, if I have a gallon of it or if I have it all the time then well, I don't know about that, but no so I think I'm a big believer in there are no real good foods and bad foods per se.

Speaker 2:

I think there are foods we can eat a ton of, and I think there are no real good foods and bad foods per se. I think there are foods we can eat a ton of and I think there are foods that we need to not eat so much of, and so I try to eat as much of the foods that we can eat a ton of.

Speaker 1:

Sort of the dose makes the poison.

Speaker 2:

It does. I think it is the dose that makes the poison yeah.

Speaker 1:

Well, now, a lot of times we hear people talking about calories and caloric restriction and longevity, kind of jumping around there. What do you think's going on there with that? Are some people more genetically predisposed to benefit from caloric restriction than others, or is it across the board? Or is there benefit at all? What do you think's going on?

Speaker 2:

That's a very interesting question. I think that we are probably so. I think there's two issues here. The data is the strongest in animal studies, obviously. They've done it in flies, they've done it in worms, they've done it in a number of models, because they're very easy to do and undoubtedly, if you calorie restrict animals, probably down to two thirds of what they would normally eat, you know so not, they definitely live longer and there's no reason to imagine why this would not be true in humans. As long as the calorie restriction is balanced, okay, rather than just restricting one specific food group, the major issue with that, and so okay, okay, why, why do I think this happens?

Speaker 2:

And I think this is an opinion at the moment. I think probably because it reflects what we probably evolved in, and we tended to evolve in a feast famine type environment. I think we did. Sometimes we had the antelope, sometimes we didn't have the antelope, and that was true over hundreds of thousands of years as homo whatever to now homo sapiens. And so I get the feeling the reason we do the best from it and the reason that gives us the longevity is because that is what we evolved through.

Speaker 2:

Now, this is an opinion. I have obviously no evidence for that. Now, the main problem in trying to paste that into the world we live in today it is very difficult to do that in the food environment we're actually in. And so if you try and do it in the food environment that you're in, then you are going to end up miserable. And I guess how much are you willing to pay to live with a long health span? How much are you willing to pay I know it's an interesting point about how much you want to try and enjoy your life versus to live an extra year at the end of it. It's a terrible I'm just very morbid discussion, but that is where I think. So undoubtedly, the calorie restriction, I think, will extend your life, but how miserable will it make you feel in this current food environment?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm reminded of a physician named Roy Walford who studied caloric restriction and he went to Biosphere 2, which was this experiment in the Arizona desert, where they were in these geodesic domes and they restricted food in the Arizona desert, where they were in these geodesic domes and they restricted food. But anyway, to your point, yeah, caloric restriction, it's nothing that most of us will accept in our lives. It just doesn't work. So let's dial it back then. Take it one step back. One thing a lot of people are starting to do which isn't really caloric restriction per se, but it's starting to do which isn't really caloric restriction per se, but it's intermittent fasting, where we open, we have periods where we don't eat and maybe the calories are the same over the week, but rather than consuming them continuously, we have blocks of time where we don't consume calories. What do you think is going on there and is there a benefit from that?

Speaker 2:

calories. What do you think is going on there and is there a benefit from that? I think that's an excellent question. I think, undoubtedly, it is a useful strategy to just simply restrict energy, restrict calories even though they don't count, just restrict the amount of energy going in. So for many people it is an effective weight loss tool, because people don't tend to, although you might say, well, if you do 5-2 or if you do time-restricted feeding, surely you overcompensate Over a long period of time. You don't tend to. You tend to lose a little bit of weight, the magical.

Speaker 2:

The question is does it have any additional metabolic benefits? Now, high-quality human studies are low on the ground. Okay, because they're very difficult to do. It's very difficult to do an RCT right on a diet because you're either fasting or you're not. You know it's not like a drug, but I think animal studies definitely show relatively subtle but measurable metabolic benefits to fasting. Relatively subtle but measurable metabolic benefits to fasting. And I get the feeling when, once we get to the point of high quality human studies, we'll probably see the same in humans as well. Why? Because a I do think it's an ancestral.

Speaker 2:

Um, I'm not a key, I'm not a paleo person, but I think it's an ancestral way that we ate, this feasting and famine. Now the mechanisms the mechanisms are probably akin to why people stick to keto. Okay, so during the period of fasting, you tend to burn through your glycogen stores first, or at least primarily. That's the easiest store to actually go through, particularly when you're not eating, and so you kind of force your body. You need to fast for a while, but you tend to force your body into burning fat, and that fat produces ketones, and ketones make you feel fuller, and so there's a whole metabolic flexibility issue there, and I think it is that A making sure you go through your glycogen every so often, so you're burning more fat, producing some ketones. Plus the fact that it's something ancestral, I think it's going to be a mix of those two that gives the potential benefits of fasting. This is my view.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and even the ketosis will lower the appetite in many people, right, so it helps them that way. Today, what gives you? Well, there was a recent article that came out in JAMA about. We've had an obesity epidemic in the United States since about 1980. It's gone up and up and up and at least now, for the first time, there's suggestive evidence that it may be flattening off. It's too hard to tell, but there's some numbers that say this may be changing about obesity rates in the US. What gives you hope? What do you think that's due to and what gives you hope in the battle against obesity today? That wasn't present previously. What are you?

Speaker 2:

excited about.

Speaker 2:

I don't think the interpretation of the plateau is hope necessarily, and I think that the reason there is a plateau is because, because of the powerful genetic drivers, not everyone is going to respond to this environment by ending up having obesity, and so I think what we're seeing is we're almost seeing um, can the food environment get any worse than it is now? That's the question to ask. Let's assume that it really can't, and anyway we're beginning to think a little bit more about it, so hopefully it won't. Perhaps we're sort of reaching a natural biological maximum of the people that will respond to this environment by ending up with obesity. Now we have to wait and see. But yes, you're right, there is a slight plateauing going on, and so that will be my interpretation. Perhaps we're seeing sort of the biological maximum in this particular environment, of the number of human beings that are going to end up being either overweight or have obesity. I think we need to drive that number down, but that is my interpretation of what I think is happening. So it's leaving.

Speaker 1:

Some people have suggested that some of the new GLP-1 agonists are playing a role in that. What's your take on this? These have become almost politicized, just like diets. Some people are very pro it, some people are very against it. What's your take on these drugs?

Speaker 2:

I think these drugs I've been in this business for 30 years and I you know, I don't want to, you know sort of have hyperbole. Do I have hyperbole here? But I do think that I've never seen such effective, broadly safe tools. Now I think they should be widely used by the people who need them crucially. But they are drugs and they are powerful and so therefore we have to treat them as drugs. So we want to try and get them to the right people.

Speaker 2:

Do I think that they should be used to treat obesity? Undoubtedly. Do I think everyone should be on them? No, I think that these drugs I mean for those of you who don't know what these drugs are they're a modified version of gut hormones. They act at the pancreas to enhance insulin secretion, so they're type 2 diabetes drugs, but they signal to the brain to make you feel fuller, so you eat less. So, in essence, what these drugs do is change. If you're taking semaglutide or ozempic, you're changing one hormone level. If you're taking terzapatide or monjaro, then you're changing two hormone levels, and so I guess the lesson to take here is, if you change one or two hormone levels, you're able to change your entire feeding behavior and eat less and suddenly lose weight. So I think for those people who need it, they need to be on the drug.

Speaker 1:

You think there's effects of these drugs beyond, well beyond feeding behavior. I mean, they've talked about the effects on the brain with dopamine and behavioral things like half the people cut back their alcohol, you know, or their, their addictive behavior, whether it's shopping, gambling, porn, take your pick. Whatever it is, and why, yeah, is that? Is that's going on, independent of eating, I assume right.

Speaker 2:

So I don't think any of us know the mechanism yet of why it happens, but I think that it's gone beyond anecdote now. So these things that you just mentioned about, you know the addictive elements. The fact that it's making some people quit smoking easier, drinking easier, is like the gastrointestinal effects that are a side effect. This is also a side effect, but it just the moment. Millions of people are on the drugs. Suddenly, you see it. Now, why might it be occurring? So, once again, this is opinion here rather than any kind of mechanism.

Speaker 2:

But I think that what happens is look to many of us, eating feels nice, it's rewarding. Okay, that's unsurprising. And so if you actually take a drug which makes you feel fuller, to some people it may actually take a cap off that pleasure. Okay. Now, this is why a lot of people comfort eat because it makes them feel more comfortable, Okay. But if you suddenly take a cap off that because now, because of this drug does it take? And the rewards portion of the brain is the same for all behaviors sex, drinking, drugs, bungee jumping it hits the same area. Mechanisms, I mean the roots to it, are different, but it hits the same area. So perhaps by taking a cap of one element of joy for some people, but just the feeling it takes away that for smoking as well, or drinking, but only for some people. I don't think this is going to be true for everybody.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I mean there's so many questions, I guess we're getting far a little afield. But I mean, even the people who have obesity and it's partially driven by genetics, partially driven by lifestyle choices, but maybe at some root cause it's driven by childhood trauma or something there, and then I take a drug that makes me lose weight and I stop eating, then will that manifest as some other behavior because I haven't addressed the root cause. In other words, maybe the root cause isn't the eating, that's just the behavior. You know, above something else?

Speaker 2:

No, but I think that not the problem. These are drugs and so they'll treat the obesity or whatever it is that is there, but they don't tackle the root cause of anything and I think, ultimately, that is going to be something we have to keep in mind. It won't tackle the root cause of any childhood trauma, it certainly won't improve our diet and it certainly is not going to improve the food environment. So I think we need to use the drugs to treat the obesity, but not lose sight of the fact that we still have to improve the food environment. We still do have to go after the root cause. It's just not the job of the drug. We need to have policy changes, better education. We need to be having conversations like this, you know, so that other people can hear it. So this is trying to tackle the root cause, discussing the issues and what have you? The drugs are only going to treat the symptom, which is the obesity.

Speaker 1:

And even if people, if I eat a certain amount of calories of junk food, I go on GLP-1 agonist and I eat half the number of calories, I will lose weight. But if I still eat the same junk food, I'll just be a skinny, unhealthy, metabolically unhealthy person rather than an obese, metabolically unhealthy person. So the person has to change their lifestyle and the food and strength training also.

Speaker 2:

Exactly Both of those. Both of those. I do think that these drugs need to be prescribed with a wraparound care. It needs to come with some kind of robust dietary intervention to make sure that you because if you suddenly stop thinking about food because that's what a lot of the people say, oh, the food noise is gone. Right, people talk about that Then you may not be thinking as hard right, do I have enough meat in my fridge or vegetables or anything like that? Oh, look, I'll just eat this candy bar. It'll make you feel full, but you're right, it's terrible for you. So I think better food, definitely better diet, and you do need to keep up your exercise, because these are not specific to GLP-1s. Any rapid weight loss will make you lose muscle and fat, and no one signed up to lose muscle, and so the only way to mitigate against that is to exercise strength training, preferably in order to mitigate against the muscle mass loss as you lose weight, appropriately in order to mitigate against the muscle mass loss as you lose weight.

Speaker 1:

And what about the long-term course of this? Do you think because people always ask, am I going to be on these for the rest of my life or if I can change my lifestyle, and this will help me change my lifestyle, because the same behavioral things affect some of our food choices, even on GLP-1s Is it reasonable to assume that people will be able to change their lifestyle and eventually taper off these things, or is it just a case-by-case basis?

Speaker 2:

I think it's case-by-case basis. I think there are going to be individuals who actually, who are used to or are like, or are able to change their habits and behaviors and because they're able to do that and they take the two years they're on the drug, for example, to sort of learn a new amount of food to cook, like I'm going to do, two chicken thighs rather than four chicken thighs or what have you, whatever it is you're cooking. But this is only going to work for some people. For other people, I think the likelihood is they'll be on the drug for a pretty long time. Now, all of the companies that are making these drugs I don't think any of them think that in the long term, the testing, lower dosing and a longer time between the doses to see what a maintenance type of time, a maintenance schedule, will look like.

Speaker 2:

I mean the new drugs from Amgen, just as an example. Already they're in phase three. They're not available yet, but they are once monthly and they're being trialed as once every two months as well. And so you can imagine that it takes you six to 12 injections to lose your 20% body weight, whatever, okay, but then as you reach, I'm making it up. But imagine this then you lose your weight and then you need to maintain it. Then you end up taking maybe one or two doses a year, sort of a maintenance dose. The same time you get your flu jab or your COVID vaccine top up, whatever it is, you know you suddenly get that or you take an oral version of it. You know, like Novo has Rebelsis, it's not as effective for weight loss but maybe it's fine for sort of a weight maintenance. So this is what all these drug companies are doing they're trying to understand what does the maintenance phase of this whole thing look like? And is it and it's not going to be the same for everyone?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to be respectful of time. I want to hit one other topic. Was your hypothalamus work, mapping the human hypothalamus? It was in, I think, Nature magazine, one of the Nature Magazines. Tell us about that work.

Speaker 2:

So I am interested in how the brain responds to circulating hormones, including these drugs.

Speaker 2:

That's what I study, and one of the places that hormones and the drugs hit is a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. It also hits the hindbrain and we're doing the same thing in the hindbrain as well, and we now know that the genetics of body weight is, by its very definition, the genetics of how our brain influences our feeding behavior. But because of it's difficult, impossible to get into the brain of a living human being, legally okay and ethically, all of the circuits that we know about have come from mice, and that's fine. But mice are small, furry, have a tail, whiskers and a herbivores. So I think we needed to understand what the human circuits look like, and so there have been now leaps in technological approaches and we also have access to brain donor samples. Once again, being morbid, we have to work with brain donor samples. We're now trying to map on a single cell and a 3D spatial method, all of the feeding circuits within the human brain to map out where these hormones signal to and where these drugs signal to. So that's what that work was.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's fascinating. It reminds me of I have a colleague here in Los Angeles, dr Shelley Jordan. He's a neurologist and he's showed me his project he's working on. He's taking humans and he's basically doing an MR of their hypothalamus and then he looks at the longevity center in the hypothalamus and he stereotactically irradiates it with focused ultrasound that doesn't open the blood-brain barrier, but it basically opens the brain up a little bit so that when he gives exosomes stem cell vesicles, they specifically go to the longevity center in the hypothalamus so he can target various areas in the hypothalamus and deliver targeted drugs to it. So we could talk more about this offline. But when you come to LA we'll go to that and I know we're. Yeah, but anyway, maybe we'll do a follow-up episode with you both or something. But in the last few minutes I wanted to talk about Rio. You're the chief scientific advisor there and I'm advising Rio too. I love this company, so tell me about Rio and why you got involved with it.

Speaker 2:

So Rio is a company that's trying to do personalized health, personalized diets in particular, and you might think, well, surely everyone is, and that's true, right? Personalized diets in particular, and you might think, well, surely everyone is, and that's true, right? There are a lot of companies, however, that that that make very, very that, that are doing glucose monitoring. I think there are a lot of people wandering around with with continuous blood glucose monitors, but in of itself, a blood glucose monitor doesn't tell you much about the health of the food you're eating. It gives you one piece of information, like calories, your blood glucose gives you one piece of information.

Speaker 2:

So so what Rio is doing is trying to collect a whole many pieces of information. Glucose is one of them. Then you wear this ring for heart rate and sleep and then you do blood biochemistry, and all of it is fed into an app, and then it uses AI to sort of personalize the type of food you may be eating on any given day. That's the aim, that's the hope, and it's a startup company, it's small which we're trying to. I mean, rob, you are also an advisor, and so we're trying to get them to do it right. We're trying to get them to measure the right thing and take the right pieces of information to try and help to empower us to actually improve our diets, improve our behavior, improve our lifestyle.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's pretty cool. I love the idea that, with having a large language model that has access to my genetic information, my lab tests, my CGM data and my aura ring that so I can ask it they go. Hey, I'm not feeling well today and he'll go well. Your glucose shot up and you only had 10 minutes of REM sleep last night and you only took 50 steps today. You normally take 10,000 steps, so I think it foretells what may be the future for all of us. You know, with AI-assisted health, and it's super inviting. Now, is this available everywhere? Or what's the footprint now for Rio? Who can access this?

Speaker 2:

So at the moment, I think it's going to be launched first in the UK, because it's a UK-based company. I don't think it's going to be launched, uh, first in the uk because it's a uk-based company, I don't think it's gonna. Then we hope that it will be launched, you know, in the united states, hopefully, and then, and then we're going to start to move around each of the individual territories.

Speaker 1:

So we say yeah, yeah, hey, I was. I was jumping around youtube the other day, uh, apropos of nothing and tiktok and uh twitch and social media, and I was. I I heard this amazing band called Casa de Funk and I heard they're based out of Cambridge University, where you are or they're in that area, and do you know anything about that band? I?

Speaker 2:

do know any.

Speaker 1:

I have, it's the band.

Speaker 2:

So I'm the. I'm the front man for a disco funk band, which seems an odd thing for a bold Asian guy in Cambridge to sing, but there we go. That's the way it is. Yeah, no, no. I've been there with them since 1998, and we do old school disco, funk, cassadale funk.

Speaker 1:

Nice, so look for you guys on YouTube. No record contract yet, right? No record contract.

Speaker 2:

I don't think ever. I think we're a bunch of, but I love that. See if we find us on youtube we're gonna try and get a.

Speaker 1:

We're gonna try and get a sample and put in the podcast today so you can listen to it on the way out. But fantastic, I'll do that. I'll send you something that was great. Any final comments? You want to leave people with Anything we didn't cover today or anything else we need to touch?

Speaker 2:

on? No, not really. I mean. I think I will end with my mantra, my motto, that you know that obesity is that people with obesity are not bad, they're not slothful, they're not morally bereft. You know they're fighting their biology and they're fighting the environment. And so I think we got to. My takeaway message is this I think what happens is obesity. Carrying too much fat that it begins to influence your health is a bad thing, but that doesn't mean that the people suffering from obesity are to be blamed, and so that's the message I want people to take away.

Speaker 1:

That's beautiful. I love it. The book is why Calories Don't Count. Giles, this has been wonderful and I look forward to doing this again soon. So thank you so much for the work you do and thanks for being on the program.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for having me, Robert.