A World at War with Itself
The podcast will be for a year, where Julie Finch-Scally, writer and broadcaster can interview people about life and the current situation of the world. She will discuss how so many things have changed over the past 80 years since her birth, and what the world needs to change to improve and save the planet from ourselves.
A World at War with Itself
Food we eat
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This is the final episode in the category of Health. I believe Food is the most important and that is why I left it until last. Janelle an accredited dietician gives some very good advise.
Hello again, Julie Finch Scalli with a World of War with Itself. Today we are covering the last episode under the category of health, and we are talking about food and diet. I have in the studio with me Janelle Cruato, an accredited practicing dietitian. Thanks for coming in today, Janelle. Thank you, Julie, for having me join your podcast. I think it would be best if we started by you telling me what the role is of a dietitian.
SPEAKER_01It's a really common question, and I think we also hear the nutritionist out there as well. But that there is a slight difference between the two terminologies. So the simple answer is all dieticians are nutritionists, but not all nutritionists are dietitians. The difference being that dietitians have specific training in how we apply nutrition science to health and disease, something that we call medical nutrition therapies, is a way of helping to manage conditions, particularly chronic conditions like diabetes, food allergies as well. So we help people navigate their eating, form good relationships with food, but dietitians also have that unique additional training to help with various medical conditions.
SPEAKER_00I've been discussing the category of health for the past few weeks, but have left the food and diet episode until the last. Mainly because I have always felt that what we eat has more of an impact on us than most people think. Is this correct?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. The way we eat, it's going to help how we show up to each and every day so we can give and get the most out of it. From a physical standpoint, we're going to need good nutrition to provide us with all the nutrients so our body can thrive and have good health. But beyond that, eating also just for that enjoyment component, it's so important for us in all those ways as well.
SPEAKER_00Do dietitians only help people with problems such as being over or underweight, or can anyone get a benefit from your advice?
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. And look, a lot of my work is helping individuals who have some kind of health condition that we need to address. But I'll tell you what, my days could start out with helping somebody navigate their irritable bowel syndrome, and then the next person will walk in and say, I have no idea what to eat anymore. I'm so confused by everything. Just tell me what good healthy eating looks like. And honestly, that's just one of the things I love most about my job is helping to untangle all that noise because somehow along the way we've taken something as natural as eating and made it very complicated.
SPEAKER_00Most people generally work on having three meals a day breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Which, in your opinion, should we focus on more than the others?
SPEAKER_01That's a really good question. And three meals a day is how many people have eaten their whole lifetimes. There isn't going to be an exact answer. Some people wake up quite hungry for breakfast and they do well with a good hearty breakfast. Other people aren't going to feel hungry until they've stumbled around for a bit, had a coffee, and eaten a little bit later on. What I would focus more on is, of course, spreading meals out evenly, but looking at more what we're eating, not necessarily focusing on one meal in particular. It might be you naturally feel like eating a bigger dinner or a larger lunch. And I think be driven by your appetite. I'm certainly a dinner girl, but I also know some people like to have a larger lunch and then a slightly smaller dinner to help them feel satisfied. So it really is getting in touch with what you feel works for you, making it a nourishing meal with good whole real food, but being driven by you and your natural appetite.
SPEAKER_00Is it alright to have snacks in between? And I'm thinking here say morning and afternoon tea as well as supper.
SPEAKER_01Again, absolutely. But it also depends. If we've eaten three solid, hearty main meals and we've got them really balanced with good proteins, lots of colourful plant foods, and slow release carbohydrates, you may not necessarily feel the need to snack. But what I get people thinking about is is it true hunger I'm experiencing in between meals? That tummy hunger we talk about, or is it more we feel like eating because it's delicious? And that's a perfectly valid reason to eat as well. But what I always talk to people about is making sure you have snacks around if you do feel hungry, so you can go eat a snack. But there may be days where you're just not as hungry for a snack. So being organized, prepared, but being driven by your appetite on that given day. I'll tell you what, today I polished off morning tea and lunch all before 11 o'clock. I was just having a hungry day. And then there are other days where I'll get to one o'clock and I think, oh gosh, I should probably eat some lunch. So I'd say there isn't necessarily one right way to eat. There are many. I also like to talk about if we are having three meals a day, come out and think of the week as a whole, 21 meals a week. And snacks, you add that in, and there's going to be several more eating occasions. So big picture is looking at what we're eating, timing it around our appetite, being flexible with when and how we eat each day.
SPEAKER_00I go without lunch sometimes and I don't feel hungry, but I get told off when I get home. Should we eat more or less food at certain ages, like if you're older or if you're a child? And is what we eat at those ages important?
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. And I think if you think of particularly if we begin with children, we're growing, they're going to need all their nutrients to have optimal growth, getting food from all of the food group, and then when you hit your teenage years, their appetites are going to increase and they're going to be eating a lot more than, say, adults might be later on in life. Or in our later years, we probably don't eat as much as we once did. That's not to say we need less. Often we just need to be more careful about making sure we're getting the right nutrition in. Particularly as we age, you know, we need to be mindful about are we getting enough protein? Are we getting enough calcium for bone strength? Am I getting enough vitamin B12 and all these other nutrients we need? So across the lifespan, our nutrient requirements will change. But at the end of the day, we want to focus on whole real food for all age groups. Again, that will change as we age. In what way does not eating those right foods affect us? Well, if you think about, we're literally built out of the nutrients we consume. If we're having suboptimal nutrition in any way, we're just not going to feel our best. For example, if someone was having an inadequate take of iron, they're probably going to feel fatigued, they're probably going to become run down and have a cold a little more often. So it is really important to get all those nutrients in.
SPEAKER_00I've seen many people pile food on their plates, especially on cruises or at buffets. What they take is more than I could possibly eat, but they consume the lot. Is there such a thing as people not knowing when to stop?
SPEAKER_01Oh, food can also be such an emotional thing as well. And those people are on a cruise, they're probably ready to let their hair down and just relax a little bit, so I can understand why they might eat in such a way there. I think if we think that food is tasty, it's enjoyable, we will also want to eat just because it's tasty. Certainly, looking at the types of foods we eat, some foods will be more satiating and filling than others. So if someone's eating a meal and it's got plenty of protein and fibre and it takes time to chew, they've got to use a fork and knife and we just don't wolf it down, they're probably going to have a better chance of reaching that point of, okay, I'm satisfied now, I'm feeling satisfied and full. Whereas if we're eating food that's just really easy to devour, it's very easy to quickly eat and realize that point of comfort has long gone. So I think one thing that's really important to do is going back to when you're talking about three meals a day, eating evenly spaced meals can help to keep our appetite in check. If we begin a meal and we're absolutely famished, your brain, my brain, it can't really tell the difference between we're running late to a meal or we haven't got round to eating, or is there famine? And now I just want to find food and shovel it in. So I think eating those evenly spaced meals, making it balanced, going for filling foods, as I was talking about, proteins and fibres. But as I said before, we also eat because it's just enjoyable. And I think to a degree that's completely normal and natural. There's no way someone eats birthday cake as a way to satiate hunger. It's there as a means to enjoy the celebration and the moment. But I think evenly spaced meals is a good way to start preventing that overeating.
SPEAKER_00Do we eat what our bodies need? They talk about pregnant women want wanting lumps of coal or something strange.
SPEAKER_01That's a little different there and hormonally driven. But I think to a degree, there's even something called the protein leverage hypothesis, where we're going to seek out eating food until we get enough protein per se. So I think we may be driven to desire certain foods, probably not as much as the media would have you believe. I'm thinking if if I've had a bit of a funky day of eating and I haven't had enough sort of slow-release carbs throughout the day, I might start to crave something as a bit of a pick-me-up, as a way to pick up my energy. So I think there will be pools, but uh overall, I wouldn't say that we're gonna necessarily seek out exactly what we need. These days we are surrounded by so much food. But the work I do each and every day, I can safely say that a lot of people are driven to highly processed foods, ultra-processed foods that aren't offering them much nutrition. And these are foods that are just so beyond their natural state and not going to offer nutrition, but still highly palatable and desirable. I think they're sort of pulling on our evolutionary levers of seeking out, you know, fat and sugar and salt to get through those times.
SPEAKER_00Since the Second World War, I have watched the size of people increase. Is this to do with the abundance and availability of food or the types of food we are now eating?
SPEAKER_01I do think so. It's the modern world with all of our ultra-processed foods. I was touching on this before. What I find interesting is that when we look around the world at various healthy populations and particularly those that have stuck to more traditional diets, we don't see obesity and heart disease at the rates we do in more Western countries these days. When we look at these more uh traditional populations, the focus is really on whole foods and they have that minimal intake of ultra-processed foods, but that's essentially the food has moved so far away from a food that it began back in those days. An apple was still an apple and a grain was still a grain. But today, our foods, when you look at the ingredients list, we may not necessarily even know what half of the items are on there.
SPEAKER_00No, I've looked at that and thought, well, what's all that? It doesn't mean anything to me. What they're doing, is it a Latin version of the word, or are they changing the words themselves on those ingredients and things to make people look at it and think it was something else?
SPEAKER_01I think just with the advent of more processed foods, we rely on more additives and preservatives to carry these foods along. But ultimately our food culture around us has completely changed and it's very attractive to be drawn to processed foods. They're tasty, they're highly palatable. But what we all ought to do is try get back to, I've said the word Whole Foods too many times, but getting back to Whole Foods because they're going to nourish us in a way that's a good thing. What a cool whole food. Whole food. Well, as I was saying before, in contrast to ultra-processed foods, it's a food as it was in its more natural state. So it's recognizable. The other thing with Whole Foods is they will be more satiating, so we're not going to be compelled to overeat. And that's the problem with highly palatable food. It's very easy to eat a lot of it. We don't get a lot of nutrition for it, and they're very energy dense. Contrast that with whole foods. And an example I love to use talking about Whole Foods and their energy density is to do with nuts. So nuts are quite a high calorie food, but because it's a whole food and it's still packaged in all the fibre, a lot of that fat we don't actually absorb. Where you contrast that with processed food and all the fibers ripped out, and it's very easy to absorb a lot of the calories within it.
SPEAKER_00When I was a child there were seasons when we had certain vegetables. Now you can get those vegetables any time of the year. Is this good for us or does it not make any difference?
SPEAKER_01I love the romantic idea of eating in line with the seasons, but I also think we are so privileged to be able to have access to so much food today. And let me tell you, frozen vegetables are fine. So they might be completely out of season, but they're still going to deliver all the nutrients. So when you can eat within seasons and food is local, that's always going to be ideal. But I wouldn't fret about eating other whole real natural foods if it's in a frozen form or canned, perhaps.
SPEAKER_00I do have a funny question to ask, but why is it that the tomatoes don't taste like they used to when I was a child? Don't even smell the same.
SPEAKER_01My understanding is we just harvest them when they're still somewhat green and then we try artificially ripen them. You're just lacking the taste, the time on the vine.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for that. Does what your family eat as you're growing up have an impact on what you eat when you become an adult?
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. I see this all the time, particularly growing up in a family, and if we're all eating the same food and we're getting that exposure from such a young age, that's really going to expose us to a wide range of foods, and and that's going to set us up for good eating throughout our life. It's very important to get that wide range of exposure. It almost takes a bit of time to get used to eating different foods. Kids may not necessarily like vegetables the first time they try them, but it's through repeated exposure and taste and trying them in different ways. We'll come around to hopefully accepting them, or at least certainly a broader range of food if mum and dad have been offering that throughout our lifetime.
SPEAKER_00There's a statement that says, What you eat is what you are. Would you agree with that?
SPEAKER_01Well Yeah, and we sort of touched on this a bit when we're talking about nutrition and why it's so important for us. From a nutrient perspective, absolutely, as we touched on that before, about getting all of our vitamins and minerals and nutrition to feel our best. But I think also the way we can tell us so much about ourselves and our relationship with food. And always remembering that food for humans, it's not just about nutrition, it's about the whole eating experience. It's about culture and connection. I love nothing more than someone who can happily enjoy something indulgent, like some chocolate cake without guild for the rest of the time. They're focused on eating good nourishing food.
SPEAKER_00I'm going to ask you about vitamins. We see lots of people taking vitamins. Are they helpful or are they not?
SPEAKER_01Great question. Look, if someone has a clinical deficiency, there's a gap in the diet, they're vegetarian and they're not getting enough vitamin B12 or something like that, then certainly a supplement's going to be important in that situation. I advise against willy-nilly just taking supplements just because of the marketing that might draw us in. And they do a good job at that. But I think for the most part, unless if you have a deficiency or a gap in the diet, we should focus on, again, real food, because we just can't bottle what Mother Nature does so well.
SPEAKER_00Many restaurants I've noticed out of the past few years have changed how they serve food. It is more associated with fast foods than good, wholesome meals. Have we as a society changed our eating habits?
SPEAKER_01I think the problem is that we've just uh flooded our diet with these it sorts of foods and flavor enhancers that perhaps more natural whole food isn't necessarily as appealing as it once was. But something I'm very interested and passionate about is always helping people make good food taste well.
SPEAKER_00And my final question if you had a suggestion for people to help them keep healthy with the food they eat, what would you say?
SPEAKER_01The thing with eating well is that uh the the idea that there's going to be any one particular type of good way of eating or food that's going to transform our health, what we need to keep in mind is that different foods contain different nutrients and deliver different benefits. So it is about as much as possible eating a broad and varied diet. I think sometimes social media can make us believe that healthy eating needs to contain fancy ingredients and look beautiful, but real nutrition happens in real kitchens. So it's a thumbs up for frozen veg for me, and tinned legumes are fantastic, and eggs on toast can absolutely be a quick dinner, as can a supermarket roast chicken and some salad. Just remember that your health is built in the thousands of small choices you make across a lifetime. So think less about the next few weeks and it's more about the next few years or decades. Think about eating real food, eat foods that you enjoy, move your body in a way that you genuinely enjoy moving, choose sleep over another hour of scrolling, and make time for the people and moments that fill your cup because good health is not just about adding news to life, but adding life into each of those years.
SPEAKER_00Thank you very much, Chanelle, for coming in and giving us all a better understanding of what the food we eat does to us. I have been speaking with Janelle Croato, an accredited practicing dietitian. I'd like to think that you have found new hope in what we have learned today. And that's the end of today's episode of A World at War with Itself. I will return next Wednesday with a new category. I do hope you will join me then.