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TÁPLÁLKOZÁSI TÉVHITEKRŐL - Beszélgetés Szabó Adrienn dietetikussal /// Friderikusz Podcast 124.
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- Nutrition has become the new religion, where every believer
has their own scripture, even if it is a TikTok video.
Healthy lifestyles and diets
have never been talked about as much as they are today,
yet it is increasingly difficult to navigate the plethora
of information, perhaps as a result of the large number
of overweight people.
Every day, new diets and trends
appear on social media, blogs and videos, which are often
not only contradictory, but also not necessarily scientifically sound.
- Three foods to avoid to make your diet a success.
- At the same time, the professionals themselves
give contradictory advice to their patients.
Drink plenty of water, but not too much!
Eat fibre, but not too late!
Coffee is bad for you, except when it's good for you.
However, it must also be accepted that
as research progresses over the years and decades,
the rock-solid basic truths of the past are transformed,
and what we thought was obligatory yesterday
must now be treated with caution.
In this confusing situation, credible professional guidance
is particularly important.
That's why we invited Adrienn Szabó,
a dietician, to help us distinguish between misconception and knowledge,
fashion and scientific evidence.
- So many questions and so much fear
and worry!
Very often the problem is not
what we eat, but how much we don't eat.
Everyone eats, so they think they know how to eat.
- What is your short answer for the last five to seven years?
Why is lifestyle intensive so fashionable?
- Someone's explanation is that Covid makes us take better care
of our health.
And everyone eats, so everyone feels the effects,
so everyone thinks they know
how to eat.
It's a lot of conflation, I can't quite figure it out myself,
and I thought it would wear off sooner,
but it doesn't.
And nowadays, nutritionists and dietician aspirants
are pouring out of every tap.
- We will have a lot to talk about,
but first let me introduce you to our viewers
and listeners with a short biography.
Adrienn Szabó was born in Kecskemét
in 1990, her mother was a nurse and later an accountant,
her father retired.
She has a younger sister, nine years younger, who is a coach
and a movement therapist.
Adrienn Szabó attended the first six grades
at the Piarist Primary School in Kecskemét, then graduated from
the Patrona Hungariae High School.
She holds a degree in dietetics
from Semmelweis University and a degree in human kinesiology
from the University of Physical Education.
Her first job was in a healthcare market research company,
then for a very short time, just one month,
she worked in the psychiatric ward of St. John's Hospital,
and now she is a dietician at Semmelweis University.
She has also gained experience in private practice,
but is currently on a break from private practice.
As a dietitian, she now works with the Good Bread Bakery network,
as well as with health food producers Grapoila and Lidl Hungary.
She speaks French, English and Latin,
and five years ago she published a very elegant,
illustrated, informative and recipe-based book
entitled Hungarian Superfood, in which she describes the health benefits
of Hungarian superfoods and how to use them.
Her fiancé is a chef who now runs a Mexican kitchen.
Adrienn Szabó's hobby is of course cooking.
Well, what else could it be, right?
We're about to start the in-depth conversation,
first with our sponsor, check in, and then we'll come back
and start with Adrien Szabó.
- In today's podcast,
I talk about eating and drinking in a simplified way
with dietician Adrienn Szabó.
This next session will be divided into two parts,
in the first part we will touch on more general topics,
with some personal characteristics about diet and lifestyle, and then
after the middle commercial block, in the second session I will raise
very specific topics and questions, so that our viewers and listeners
can get very concrete answers from the inquisitive expert himself.
Perhaps we should start
with the cultural definition of what constitutes good nutrition.
As a professional, how do you see this in different
social groups?
- Well, the macro-environment
in which we live, whether it's the climate zone,
the social environment, the economic conditions,
how my family eats, how my colleagues eat,
what I can afford, my financial capacity.
For someone, the way they were exposed to food
and how they will relate to it in their adult life,
from conception onwards, is determined by
how they encountered food, by how they encountered food, I think,
much more than by what social class
they are, or when there's an interview,
so someone comes to the dietician for a consultation,
we don't just ask them, we look at what their labs are like,
it's very important to listen to these stories
of where they come from, because you have to formulate changes
in relation to that, because that has a very big influence.
It's also quite different for someone who comes from a family
where everything revolves around eating, or for someone who,
for example, has the added burden of having to manage eating
because they don't care how it tastes, how it tastes, how it feeds them well,
because it was just a compulsory round
of having to eat.
- And is women's eating culture different from men's?
- It's very different, basically women are more receptive
to health, women live longer, we know that in Hungary,
we have statistics on this, and then as far as I know there is
no significant difference in the number of years
spent in good health according to recent statistics,
but male and female eating is terribly typical.
It used to be a tradition for the man to pick first,
it used to be a tradition for him to pick when he sat down
at the table, women eat less, perhaps less nowadays,
but women cook more often, it's more normal
for women to buy a salad, men still often eat a meal with meat
in it.
These are obviously often said, if there's no meat in the diet,
it doesn't make me feel good.
- Is this specific to Hungary?
- Absolutely it is. - At the beginning of the discussion,
I would also like to point out that the official professional canons
of nutrition science, including dietetics,
have not always been the same.
Can you give us some typical examples of dietary principles
that you have had to rethink or reject over time?
For example, which you can't remember because you're so young, for example,
'Milk: life, strength, health', that was all through the '70s, '80s,
and then milk, all of a sudden, we've been hearing
for the last 5-7-8 years that cow's milk is bad
for your health.
In this, let's say, I, who approach everything
with such benevolence, saw the progress
of science confirmed, no?
- No. It is a misconception
that cow's milk is harmful and causes inflammation and so on.
So there was an advertising slogan
that overdid it and only talked about milk,
and it wasn't properly explained in this one slogan
how milk is life-force-health, and today it's because of overly scary
mis-explanations that milk is now demonised.
- Since you mention it, I ask how to navigate the many diets,
fasts, diets, diet suggestions that are really coming
at us by the thousands from everywhere.
Do you have any good methodological advice
on this?
- One is to be very critical.
So when someone is foaming
at the mouth about how the food industry is to blame
for the fact that we are sick and they want to make us sick
with milk, someone who looks at things through the lens of science
doesn't put it like that, they are much more careful,
much more cautious, because the truth is always more complex.So
let's be critical.
When someone says that the truth has been reversed,
that it turns out that margarine or butter kills,
whichever is claimed, it cannot be true either,
because science evolves gradually, not suddenly reversed.
Or, because something suddenly becomes
a big thing, say someone reads something
about sucralose, they immediately think
that all sweeteners are unhealthy, but there was a one-page article
in a business magazine about what's going on
with this type of sweetener, and they panic.
Just because we hear something
for the first time, we shouldn't turn our eating habits
upside down, and when it comes to choosing a specialist,
a good filter for me is that in dietetics there is a principle
that food comes first.
So to provide all the nutrients for our body primarily through food,
raw materials, and let's say a specialist
who recommends a thousand different dietary supplements,
vitamins, minerals, this powder,
that powder, I think there is something
not well-founded in his knowledge.
But I will say, critical thinking and moderately worded advice
is unfortunately not going to be as trendy
as someone telling you not to eat carbohydrates, because it's
like someone has found the Holy Grail.
- Do you follow these latest diet trends
and tendencies as a matter of course to keep up to date?
- Obviously, I'm looking
at what's coming in, so I know what to be prepared for,
what the client is going to ask about, or the patient, or the patient,
but they find me.
- And has there ever been a dietary approach
from the crowd that you have found remarkable
and even incorporated into your work?
- When I started to work
on sustainable eating, and at the same time there was
an international recommendation on how to eat healthily and sustainably
around 2019-20, veganism became a much bigger focus
for me, I was very much involved in it,
and I was very happy that it came into my picture.
- And as a dietician who has been practicing for ten years,
or a little over ten years, there was knowledge and knowledge
that you had to discard over the years because new knowledge strongly refuted
the previous knowledge?
- For example, I had this idea
that you can't bake with honey, and then I realised that you can.
The fact is that when you learn in theory
and then meet the person you are supposed to help
on the bedside, the picture becomes so simplified and so clear
when you have to give advice on a specific situation in life
that the practice almost overrides what you have learned
at university.
- What are the symptoms
and life situations that should make you think
that you need the advice of a dietician?
- If you're worried all day
about what you're eating, what you should be eating,
whether I'm eating right, you should see a dietician.
It's worth going for a lab test
every year, and if it has more than one star,
then by all means.
Obviously, if there's a huge problem,
the lab will automatically tell the person
that they need to repeat some parameter,
but I would suggest asking a lot of questions in the first instance,
and obviously there's going to be these things,
if there's any symptoms, I don't know, someone's got a scratchy throat,
reflux, bloating, not going to the toilet every day.
I used to say that once in a lifetime everyone should see a dietician, or,
say, a pre-nuptial preparation, or a prenatal visit to the midwife
for mothers, somehow everyone should see
a dietician once in a lifetime.
- Is it easier or harder for the dietician to deal with people
who come to the professionals with prior knowledge, so to speak,
but often with misinformation?
- I admit that one of the reasons
I stopped my private practice was that I couldn't get on with the advice
because everyone was coming with the problem
of whether it was okay to drink tap water,
whether sweeteners were really bad, whether it was butter or margarine,
whether it was wholemeal bread
or white, whether it was okay to eat after six,
whether it was three or five times, and everyone was confused
by the same misinformation that was coming from everywhere,
And I felt that I could not give quality advice in this way,
and that we needed to find some kind of platform so that people's
shared knowledge could be duplicated, because we would not be any healthier
if we were constantly going down the rabbit hole with questions,
and society was not at zero, so that we could build good advice
on top of it, but had to scrape out the bad ideas
from somewhere at the bottom.
- Because everybody is actually approaching it
with a preconception, and you have to demolish
the preconception first, so that you can build something
from scratch, I understand.
- That's true, and there's a lot of information available,
and I say misinformation, that people have no idea
what mycotoxin is, for example, but they don't dare eat whole grains
because of mycotoxin.
- Because what is it? Speaking of which.
- There are various diseases that can colonise grains, for example,
and during a fungal infection, the toxins of the fungus colonise
the grain, and you can't wash it off, you can't see it with the naked eye,
and once it's in the food, it doesn't immediately cause a problem,
like a bad egg, I don't know, gives you a fever and salmonella,
or a food poisoning, say, vomiting and diarrhoea,
but it can have potentially harmful health effects
over many decades.
And then it's become part of the public consciousness,
or let's say now there's a terrible public consciousness
about insulin spikes and blood sugar fluctuations, which is
why everyone is putting sensors
on themselves, because it's the key to health,
and it's a big fashion.
And that people are always concentrating
on something very niche, something narrow,
what's going to be the key to health, and that it's simply like
everyone has to do a mini dietetic workshop,
and that the workshop started with an hour, then an hour and a half,
then I had to schedule people every two hours,
and so I could just about start the next session in a warm change,
because there are so many questions, and so many fears and worries.
- Do you think that one of the ways to filter misinformation about food
could be proper education?
What would you teach in school, so that children, on the one hand,
have a global understanding of the complex issue
of healthy lifestyles and nutrition, so that they grow up with, say,
a more conscious diet and fewer misconceptions?
- I don't know if there's a system for this in the country,
apart from the fact that they've introduced
daily gym lessons and that teachers are expected to teach
health education.
I think that if there was a system,
I wouldn't have been randomly chased down by a friend
to go and give a health lesson
to his class.
I went and took my favorite delicious apple,
cut it up for the kids, passed the apples around,
and asked them to raise their hands as an introduction to healthy eating.
Who's to say that healthy food tastes bad,
and so everyone put their hands up to boo, they're no good.
And I say, why this apple, now what you're chewing, is it bad?
No, it's very tasty.
So, that somehow we should make healthy eating an experience,
because now it's coming from everywhere that
if mothers want to diet and lose weight, they don't eat dinner
and they're skimping, and so somehow the public perception is
that health is so terribly complex, painful, unfortunate thing,
and it should be done at school, because obviously the child goes
home afterwards, then he or she will have an impact
on the parents, then the parents will have an extra pressure on them,
obviously they can be annoyed that they have an extra thing to do,
but somehow it should be done from the very,
very bottom up.
- I mean, wouldn't it be more useful if,
for example, instead of the traditional knowledge
of biology, relevant plant and animal knowledge
about nutrition and lifestyle
were taught?
This is what I meant in my previous question.
- In summer camps, there were two or three hours
of dietetic sessions for children every day, and they really,
really enjoyed it, and even there, the young children
already had the idea that you shouldn't eat fruit
because of the fructose.
I thought I was going to cry. That was a terrible thing to hear.
I used to say that it would be great to learn in the biology class not
how many teeth you have, but what to chew with them.
In fact, even today, grown-up people
don't dare to say "faeces" and "bowels" and so on,
we don't talk about it, and people have no idea
what's going on between our mouths and our bottoms.
So it would be great to learn the basics of healthy eating.
- Or, for example, what I was thinking about
if some of the general physics and chemistry knowledge, for example,
was illustrated through practical examples
of cooking or food handling and processing,
if only to give children a better understanding
of what happens between the mouth and the bottom, right?
- I'll do you one better.
I just went to Gyermely's
pasta factory, and the way they were showing me
how the mills grind, what the grain looks like,
what the lab looks like, how they control things,
how many farmers they get grain from, and the head miller,
the way he was telling me all this,
it was just...
And so he opened the mill and showed me what state the grain
was in at this milling stage.
So maybe it should be taken out of the bench, and it would be fun
to think about it at length.
And this is exactly why we have no knowledge,
but a scary Netflix movie comes on, we panic completely,
and then you can put any kind of misinformation
and scaremongering on top of not knowing.
- And then, to open a new field, today's medicine is mostly focused
on the average, on the averages, and we know that it doesn't matter,
I guess in dietetics, how much someone weighs,
how old they are, what their medical history is,
what their ancestors' lifestyle was, and of course how they live.
Where are we today,
what has been achieved in your profession, in dietetics,
in terms of individualised care, personal therapy, and how much
can these individual differences be taken into account nowadays?
- Recommendations that
everyone should follow can only be formulated
in general terms, and unfortunately this is obviously a difficulty
for all students now, that whatever advice I give,
they listen to it through their own experience,
so it may be very useful for some people and totally useless
for others.
Individual differences can be taken into account
in individual counselling, and this can be done
in individual counselling, and then they are taken into account
to the maximum. That's exactly the point.
- But is there a technical or financial reason
why there is not yet widespread individualised
dietary and lifestyle counselling in public care?
Because it's in individual or private care, I understand,
but that takes a lot of money.
- As far as I know, and obviously
I don't know anything about this, but every GP should have a dietician,
a physiotherapist and a psychologist, so that when someone is diagnosed
with hypertension, it's not a case of prescribing
a blood pressure medication straight away,
but sending them to the next room to see a dietician who can help them
and see whether they can make lifestyle changes
to suit their individual needs.
I think it's money, because I see the fresh graduates
in dietetics and their agility and the passion
that they bring to their practice, they want to work.
I think there's plenty of people,
but nowadays we're looking at early screening
to diagnose a disease as early as possible.
Now, in order not to overload the coffers,
we should focus on prevention.
- So prevention. - Definitely for prevention,
because if you have a dietician, although it might suddenly be a bigger
expense, but in the long term, if more people go to a dietician,
it would be a thousand times cheaper to have someone's dietician care
funded by the state for six months, a year, than to go
for a gastric sleeve operation, which has a huge surgical cost,
the risk...
Obviously, these are
routine operations, so I've worked in such surgeries,
so they're fantastic, but then again, every surgery has risks
and complications, so it's possible that if the patient
doesn't get the support, he'll gain weight again, and then
he'll burden the health system with the same complications.So
investing in dieticians would be a huge long-term saving.
- But I think the biggest problem here is the transition.
So, until they get on to prevention,
prevention-oriented medicine, and until they have to cope
with the amount of patients that we have at the moment,
the time factor between the two is...,
So how do they bridge twenty years, so that they can prevent
and avert the problem.
- But if they had started ten years ago, they would have
only had ten years left, because the later you start,
the bigger the problem becomes.
- Recently I've been very interested in artificial intelligence, and that's
why I'm bringing up the question of whether you think it's possible,
for example, that one day artificial intelligence
could take a medical history, a person's living conditions,
their general state of health, and based on that,
artificial intelligence could create a lifestyle,
nutrition or even a healing programme exclusively tailored to you,
and then control the effectiveness of the process and make decisions
about any fine-tuning that might be necessary.
Or is that still utopia in your eyes today?
- I use artificial intelligence myself.
He makes an awful lot of mistakes,
and I can never be professionally satisfied
with his answers, but there are so many diagnostic methods now.
From the analysis of the faecal microbiome
to the genetic mapping, and based on that,
you can formulate what diseases you might be predisposed to.
So such a summary could be done by AI
and then make a plan based on that, because to really take the anamnesis
and understand the whole history, it's a long time.
And I'm absolutely open to these technical innovations,
even if I'm sceptical.
- Let me ask you about some of the controversies
about your profession.
For example, from a professional point of view,
what do you think about the official rejection
of genetically modified foods?
How professionally justified is this?
- Just because something is artificially designed
does not mean that its effect on us afterwards is harmful.
Or, just because something is genetically modified
and engineered, it doesn't mean that it will be incorporated
into our genome and we will become genetically modified or mutants,
so I'm absolutely not against it, and I know of the positive effects
of genetically modified crops that were produced somewhere,
where the need for chemicals was much less,
and the exposure to pests was much less, so I'm pro-GMO,
because in some ways it has huge potential.
In the European Union, when they authorise the production
of genetically modified crops, that's for a variety of maize,
sugar beet, rapeseed for example, the testing of these to make sure
that they're safe, it's been so thoroughly defined,
so many disciplines have been combed together,
that it's not something that's just out of the air
and there must be some kind of conspiracy behind it,
that they are going to use it to thin
the population, because that's what people
are scared of, so there's no such thing,
I dare say professionally, but obviously I would welcome it
if everyone could grow the chemical-free crops
they need in their own back gardens in a peaceful way.
- Because that's the real thing, that's why it's reinforced?
- Well, the blue zones, for example, because they put people on a pedestal,
because they are very healthy, because they come into contact
with food and it's not something that's
a stranger, and they can play with it
and spend the food they produce together, of course,
that would be fantastically healthy, and it would solve a lot
of our problems ecologically.
- And while certain things,
such as genetic modification, are banned, at least officially,
by the state, billions are spent on promoting
traditional wine culture, or by exempting brandy distilling
from taxes, effectively supporting a national programme.
By the way, what is the concept
of your professional indulgence in relation to alcohol consumption?
- When it comes to drinking alcohol, I will certainly never say brandy.
The fact is that our liver can break down alcohol.
So you consume it, it's absorbed,
it doesn't matter if you're on an empty stomach or
if you have something in your stomach, the alcohol will be absorbed anyway,
it'll get into the liver, and then the alcohol dehydrogenase
enzyme will start to break down the ethanol
that's in the alcohol, but it can't do that endlessly,
it can break down about 10 ml, 15 ml alcohols in an hour,
it's just quick math.
1 dl of beer contains about four per cent alcohol,
then 1dl has 3.2 grams, then 2dl will have 6.4grams,
and so if you drink about 2 dl of beer or 1dl
of wine in an hour, it may not have a long-term health effect immediately.
As soon as someone drinks a little more than that,
the liver-damaging, DNA-damaging effects of alcohol
are immediately triggered.
I'm a great believer that a conscious society is allowed to say
that you can have 1 deciliter of wine and not automatically ban everything,
but basically the clear professional recommendation
is that there is no recommended alcohol consumption.
But I hope that people can be allowed.
- Now, in comparison, the state is exempting the distillation
of brandy, which does not direct attention
towards fruit and vegetables, but reinforces old habits.
Doesn't it make you sick to hear something like that?
- Indeed.
I'm from Kecskemét, the very good Kecskemét pálinka
is the only one of the short drinks that I really like, and I know
that the body works wonderfully, but the destructive effect
that pálinka does, as it unwinds the internal defenses
of our food ducts from the oral cavity down,
is damaging.
But how to support this??
- Do you see a correlation
between the development of eating habits in Hungary and
the prevailing public health policy, public catering practices
or subsidy policies?
So to what extent is the state, whether in terms of public catering,
pricing or health education, to blame for the poor eating habits
of the population or the vast majority
of the population?
Because I think we can agree on that.
- Yes, but for example, I see pictures
of such beautiful canteens from my internships abroad,
and when they send me to go and see what kind of health-conscious
food they have, and so I go and double check
in the email that I've come to the right address?
Well, the food is terrible,
everything is dripping in oil, there is such a homeopathic amount
of vegetables in the food, and what is billed as reform
is also terrible.
And then the next step is
that they think that when I talk about it being healthy,
it's going to be some dry, colourless,
bad, healthy food, but that it can be done
so well that it's delicious
and healthy.
And on an individual level,
when someone asks me if it's more expensive to eat well
or if it's very complicated, I always say no,
and then we obviously use concrete examples
to explain why it's not complicated.
But it could also be done
on a large scale, but it would take money, will,
hard work and, I don't know, loyalty, so that the person who prepares it
or who manages the process feels
that it's his child or his mother or father
sitting at the table, but I think that somehow we would have to develop
in money, humanly, knowledge and will at the same time,
and that's very complex.
But there are changes, so I know from internal information
that there was an agreement with the bakers' association
to gradually reduce the salt content
of bread, because if they suddenly remove
the drastic amount of salt from bread, the bakery product becomes inedible,
but the gradual reduction, or such pressure, for example,
also exists in relation to meat products,
There is a consumer demand to have as few additives in them as possible,
so there is a change, but we always lean
towards something like high-protein products are in fashion now, and then
everyone thinks that a lot of protein will make us healthy, and somehow
we don't have the systemic development and health consciousness
to become more health-conscious.
- Now that we've talked about alcohol,
let me ask you about the other main enemies
that are said to be health-damaging: sugar,
nicotine and caffeine.
How do you think about these?
- There is a problem
with added sugars, which the WHO defines
as ten energy percentages, or rather five,
which is about a tablespoon of sugar.
So if someone can eat better in a way
that... bakes cocoa puffs and puts the cocoa in it,
mixes it with sugar, there is nothing wrong
with that in itself, or someone who eats natural sources
of sugar, fruit, that is not included, here the added sugar
has to be limited, but it doesn't matter
whether it is brown sugar or granulated sugar,
there is nothing wrong with it, with an active lifestyle
the minimum amount is perfectly fine.
The nicotine comes into contact
with us during smoking, where it is not primarily the nicotine
that is terribly harmful, but the carcinogenic carcinogens
that enter our bodies through tobacco smoke.
Of course, nicotine has harmful effects too,
it affects the blood vessels.
But caffeine is an interesting topic, because when we say that coffee
has positive effects, and I'm very glad that the Lakatos lab
has not made me sing ode to it, not only because I myself like coffee
very much, but also because it is really healthy,
and caffeine itself has positive effects.
So, in the prevention of neurodegenerative diseases such
as Alzheimer's Parkinson's disease, for example, not only are such
bioactive substances, polyphenolic substances,
positive agents in coffee, but also caffeine itself,
so you don't necessarily have to drink decaffeinated.
The fact is that too much caffeine, which is say 4-5-6 cups of coffee,
or in the case of pregnancy more than one or two cups of coffee
can have a negative effect, and what is said to inhibit calcium
or iron absorption, say caffeine has a negative effect
on bone metabolism, is about excessive amounts
of caffeine, in healthy amounts two or three cups of coffee
is perfectly fine.
- In a previous podcast, gastroenterologist Richárd Schwab
was here, and to the surprise of many,
he said that 95% of our health problems
and ailments are rooted in our lifestyle and diet.
If this is true, the genetic make-up we carry at birth
plays a role in our health by up to 5%.
Do you think our lifestyle
or our genetics have more influence on our health?
- The lifestyle and social environment that surrounds us
determines our health as much as it does our health.
So the social environment, our family, our workplace, the skyline we are in,
the political system, our financial situation,
all these things determine how healthy we are,
but it's quite understandable, the WHO definition
is the same: complete physical, mental and social well-being.
And obviously, as a dietitian,
I talk about how important our health is,
and how important food is, but I like to put it in context
that food is not everything.
- So genetics loads the gun,
but lifestyle pulls the trigger? Can you say that?
- Yes, absolutely. There is also a field of science
that deals with this, which is practically epigenetics,
which is also investigating this, that within our genetic endowment,
what gets a loudspeaker, or what is muted
and does not manifest itself, does not appear as a disease,
has a huge role in lifestyle.
- But if our genetic make -up
really has little to do with our health,
then how can we explain, to use a cliché example,
the extraordinary longevity of former British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was a lifelong heavy drinker
and cigar smoker, and many of our fellow human beings.
Even at the age of ninety, I think,
Churchill amused his circle with the personal confession
that he would do his bit for exercise by being, as he said,
a pallbearer to the grave for all his friends
who had played sport all their lives.
- It's obviously good
to emphasise here the role of consciousness and lifestyle,
and the individual differences will be created by genetics,
and Churchill lived his political life
so passionately, and he didn't suppress his anger,
but he said everything out loud, so who knows how biochemically
it affected his body.
- But in the meantime, he was frothing at the food,
and even more at the whisky.
- Yes, and genetic differences
and the fact that it's not just our lifestyle
that determines how we are and how long we live and
how healthy we are.
- Today's basic principles
of nutrition and dietetics are sometimes difficult to accept
because they often tell us to avoid things that we traditionally like.
For example, sweets, although sweets are mostly said to be very harmful,
but masses of people like, for example, fast food,
so-called junk food, not to mention the various alcoholic drinks,
which we have already talked about.
So why do we like junk food if we know it's bad for us anyway?
- Now I'm thinking about the walnut cake,
because my grandmother always has walnut cake in the freezer,
so now, when I was at her house, I got half a bar,
no dietician forbids walnut cake.
There are those who foolishly say
that we should be careful with walnut cake at Christmas,
but at last the Hungarian people are eating poppy seeds
and walnuts properly.
We don't ban them, we simply say that sweets
have a high energy density, so let's not eat a bar of them,
but let's have a slice, but we don't ban sweets.
Or we say that if a child is presented with a chocolate cake, let's add some
of that homemade cherry jam, or let's add prunes,
so that they don't just adapt to the sweet taste, but there's
something to excite the taste buds, and a more complex taste
gives a sense of satisfaction even in smaller quantities.I
don't know what you mean by junk food, but I think pizza and hamburgers
are very often stigmatised.
- Just these.
That's what I quoted, so I'm not saying it's rubbish,
I really like burgers and pizza sometimes.
- But a pizza in our house means that we order a pizza,
and while it's coming out, I cut up all kinds of vegetables,
or if there are no fresh vegetables, we take out olives and cucumbers,
and then we eat them either before or during, but,
for example, a home-made tomato and sauce
hot sandwich, we say that's healthy,
but pizza, which is basically bread with tomatoes
on it and a little bit of lean ham and,
I don't know, corn, extra grains and fibre,
there's nothing wrong with that.
The problem is when someone doesn't eat any vegetables
or fruit at all because of these foods and their meals become monotonous.
You can fit those in very easily,
or let's say a hamburger example, if two people go out for a hamburger,
I think it's easy for two of them to split a fry,
or let's say you go to a café, and if you go with that kind
of person, and they're so expensive in the good places
that you can just eat half of it, share it with the other person,
and then it's the most normal thing in the world
to have a sweet.
- What I really meant with my previous question was
why doesn't our body protest against unhealthy food
if it is dangerous for us?
- But they are not dangerous.
- But even if you eat
as much as I did, when I was in my chocolate phase,
I practically chewed a bar of chocolate, so I didn't suck it up.
And I've got a colleague who'll settle for half a cube, I did,
he ate that much, and he said his sweet tooth
was satisfied.
But I chewed up a board while I was dictating a page.
- Good.
The fact that you didn't feel your body
was protesting, you wanted to hear if it was protesting anyway?
Because people often feel that half a bar of chocolate
is enough.
- And a blackboard. - But they want to eat
the whole thing.
- Well, it felt good for me.
I did not pay attention to what my inner voice was telling me.
- So why did you start to change and eat differently?
- Because I got fat from it.. - Well, the organisation
had already indicated there, much earlier, that it was not good,
but we often don't want to hear it.
We let ourselves eat when our body tells us that we've eaten well,
but we can't even hear it because the other person
is already telling us...
- But I don't even pay attention to what it indicates.
-Because we didn't learn that either. We have not learned at all, why?
Because eat more, don't leave that one bite!
Why are you picking and choosing? Didn't I cook good food?
But I did it as a reward. Well, next time I won't cook.
And because of these phrases,
we don't know, but subconsciously they affect us.
- Do you follow the dietary principles
you think are most appropriate for your lifestyle and diet,
do you follow any of the current trends, or is there
a method of your own development, even an eclectic one, like Szabó?
- I eat perfectly normal, very tasty,
but now if anyone hears that my breakfast was
that I mixed the grapoil pistachio oil into plain natural yoghurt,
but I measured it out, it was a tiny spoonful,
or I don't even have to measure it out with a tiny spoonful,
that's what made my yoghurt fatty in the morning, not that,
because I buy the Greek yoghurt
that's fatty and has extra cream in it,
and then I put the granola on top,
which I bake, and I mix all kinds of grains,
buckwheat, millet, barley, oats, all kinds of seeds, flaxseed,
pumpkin seed, so the cheapest sunflower seed,
and it has a little bit of almonds in it, and peanuts.I
make this in big batches, I fry it up with a little canola oil,
for me it's full base, for me it's very light and very delicious
because it's crunchy, it's complex.
- But that means you eat consciously, right?
This is a professional requirement,
I suppose.
- Consciously, but I live with a chef,
which doesn't mean that he cooks according
to dietetic principles, but he cooks very tasty food,
and then I eat it with the same peace
of mind, although we are constantly shaping
each other so that he puts a little less bacon
in the dish, or that he can put that one piece
of tomato in, and she thinks that it shouldn't be in the recipe,
and I think it still should, but I leave it to her,
because I know that I ate fruit for breakfast anyway,
and I had melon for ten, and at lunch the peas were in the soup
a lot, and then the dinner can be
as it should be, so that the meal around the table
is not stressful in order to comply with dietary principles.
- Did it play a role in your choice of a partner who adhered
to the nutritional principles that you share and practice?
- Not at all.
- I was just wondering if you could love someone who, say,
loves fatty stews, spicy sausages,
and would never miss a well-stocked hamburger menu
with a large Coke every chance
they got, so could human attraction override
or not override your scientifically sound principles?
- But now I love a man like that.
So he loves fatty stews,
and I love them too, so I love tripe stew, I love burgers,
I love them too, it's just that we want to live
long and healthy lives, so we don't always eat them consciously.
- Did you live and eat with a similar awareness
to today, and did you receive these principles
as a kind of, shall we say, family tradition,
did you learn them there, or did you at most
improve them over time, or did you start
from a very distant place?
- The dieting was so very involved in our family,
so it was specifically for appearance and slimming levels.
And then we were very, very poor, so that every morning there was bread
with butter and jam, from the jam that we cooked,
and bread with butter and sausage, and dinner was always.
So I didn't think about it for a very long time,
and then when I moved to college at the age of 13 or 14,
and there was the opportunity and cooked food twice a day,
and then the quantity and variety, I was very happy about that,
and during university I became aware of it,
although I was already fascinated by the idea of healing with garlic
and not with medicine, so I had this receptiveness,
but this kind of viable, long-lasting, delicious and healthy food,
it came together with dietetics.
- You love to cook and,
as I have read, you are a very good cook.
He even published a popular cookbook, which I referred to at the beginning.
How different are Szabó's
kitchen operations from the traditional Hungarian method?
So what is it that you have exiled,
what is it that you have taken in, what is it that you have innovated
from your own wellspring?
- It was a very important filter in the book that what we recommend
is to have colour everywhere
in the food, to have a variety of vegetables,
I was very careful that there's not one recipe in there
that has only one kind of vegetable or fruit,
for example there's a chicken liver in it, not only
does it have tomatoes and peppers, I think it has courgettes in it,
and aubergines and lots of onions, and it's very important in the recipe
that when I say oil, it's not all oil,
but we suggest about one or two teaspoons
of added fat per cooking, but it's really calculated
that there shouldn't be more than two tablespoons of added oil
per meal for four people.
The EAT-Lancet, the Lancet is one
of those internationally accepted medical,
one of the most prestigious medical journals, and the Eat project
has developed a diet that is sustainable and healthy
and delicious, so they have recipes on their site,
and they do allow meat consumption, but they allow a little bit.
And here the little means that for one person,
if you make a casserole in which you have to dice chicken breasts,
it's not 200 or 250 grams per person,
it's 80-100 grams.
And then the recipes here are defined in such a way that when
- going back to the chicken liver
in ratatouille and the liver is calculated to meet
the recommendations, and I say that there can be meat
in the sustainable and healthy because it is professionally permissible,
and I really wanted to adapt the book to the Hungarian food culture.
I won't publish a vegan cookbook
because half of Hungarians won't even look at it.
- So are you characterised by a ruthless awareness, or I ask you,
when you're shopping for ingredients
for your kitchen, do you have your particular organic,
all-free sources, or does your flexibility allow you to,
and this is a general point, to build your diet
from the foods and ingredients that you can buy in supermarkets?
- I'm just saying this as a point
of interest, because in Hungary we grow sorghum,
it's a very ancient grain, and because of the sorghum broom,
someone else might understand what I'm talking about.
It's gluten-free, a very good source of protein,
minerals and fibre.
For example, I used to make milk bread
with sorghum semolina, not just semolina,
so I have some interesting things at home,
or we only have Hungarian rice at home, for example.
- Why only Hungarian rice?
Because Polish rice is not as good as Hungarian rice?
Or is there a difference in taste?
- The Hungarian because it comes from closer to home,
I know it's very good quality, very tasty, and I can buy it,
it's in a paper wrapper, that's satisfactory for me.
- And you still believe these stories?
Well, here we are, the strawberry season has just ended.
Hungarian strawberries were written everywhere,
and then a journalist went and went through the chain
and found that at the very end there was a Hungarian strawberry
written on a big board, Argentinian or I don't know what kind
of strawberry.
Well, there are a lot of scams in these.
- That's why I say it's not a matter of faith here.
I've seen that rice field,
I know who grows it, I know that the sorghum
is in Hungarian hands, that the sorghum is produced here,
that it is processed here.
- Why is what grows here better than what grows two countries away?
- By the way, isn't it fashionable to support the homeland?
Well, it seems that I like to support
these small domestic producers, I know that they are of good quality,
I am happy to buy them, but it is very easy
to buy good quality products
in the shop, because you can buy domestic products
in the shop, there are regulations on how many chemical residues
there may be in the products, and even if there are
any harmful substances that may be present
as residues in the product, it is still much better
to buy any vegetables, any fruit,
any cereals, any pulses than not to buy them
because they are not organic.
The way I shop is that when I go to my favourite market,
I buy the small farmer's yoghurt and the milk,
which tastes delicious.
- Are you not afraid of being infected by it?
So that it does not go through chemical processes
that might not allow it to pass the test of total purity.
- Homemade milk? - For example.
- Smallholder milk is pasteurised in the same way
as shop milk is pasteurised, so I'm not afraid of that at all.
- And what does the concept of crime mean in your diet.
In other words, is there a type of food that,
despite all you've learned and all you know, you can't resist?
But you know it is harmful.
- When I eat three cubes of chocolate,
and then I eat four of them, from the chocolate we brought back
from our Italian holiday, I eat them with such peace of mind,
because nothing happens to the four cubes of chocolate I ate,
but it wasn't the little cubes, it was a big cube.
I prefer milk chocolate, it can have a high cocoa content,
not only dark chocolate will have a high cocoa content.
So what?
I ate the fruit, yoghurt and fibre thing for breakfast,
ate fruit in the morning, ate something with lots of vegetables
for lunch and had the aubergine cream with lots
of tahini for dinner.
- Okay, so he immediately compensated for the four chocolates in his
all-day diet.
- But I did not compensate.
That's the point, that it's not cheating and squeezing,
but into this balance, because I know how the body works.
It's not like - oh my god, I ate a scoop of ice cream, sugar!
- the organization presses the error button and stops!
Nothing happens.
In the winter, I really like to combine dried fruit
with dark chocolate, because I love the melt-in-your-mouth chocolate
and the chewy, gummy prunes or dried cherries,
and then it's a very highlight-able, very nutritionally correct snack
or snack.
But when I was just sitting there,
mulling over an article, or I don't know what,
and I couldn't control it, I realized that yes, I ate more,
but I understood that it was because of stress,
and I didn't conclude that, oh my God, I've committed a crime,
I have to go for a run, but that I should do less work
because I'm too stressed, and then I'll eat more chocolate,
and there's nothing wrong with four cubes of chocolate.
- Okay, we're going to take a break here,
but we'll continue with Adrien Szabó in about half a minute.
- In this podcast I talk about eating
and drinking in a simplified way with dietician Adrienn Szabó.
In this second part, we will look at very specific issues,
but of course not all of them.
How does the body feel hungry after long-term
calorie deprivation and how much can the body be deceived?
- If you starve the body by fasting for a long period of time,
then obviously the body adapts to a certain point,
and then starvation always brings with it
a nutrient deficiency, which then has negative consequences
in the long run.
Especially if, for example, fasting, starvation,
this also means depriving oneself of specific nutrients,
so that the diet becomes very selective,
very many things are excluded for some fictitious reason,
then this can also be risky in the long term.
- Fortunately, people can't tolerate
drastic diets in the long term, they feel that something is wrong,
but there is also a version of this where someone overemphasises
certain nutrients, and then I suddenly think
of the ketogenic diet, where they overemphasise animal fats,
and there the body signals pretty quickly if
you overdo something.
- I wanted to go back
to the fad diets, what dangers do you see in,
for example, organic orthorexic diets, when someone wants to eat healthily,
because there are more and more examples of that?
- Well, obviously the mental impact
on the body of the stress that they're experiencing
can be scanned, but a lot of times they exclude a lot
of food from their diet and then they develop
a complete nutritional deficiency.
So when they're afraid
to eat raw foods, if they don't eat meat
because they can't buy organic, or they don't eat eggs
because they're afraid they're high in cholesterol,
and they only eat a one-sided protein bar because it has
a certain nutrient composition,
then it becomes a very deficient meal and deficiency
diseases can develop.
A lot of people don't detect it immediately because,
say, the people who are on it are committed
and they feel the positive effects for, say,
a year and a half, not because it's a good diet,
but because, say, the body has adapted very well to it,
especially when it's young.
And when someone believes in it,
it also has great power and keeps him mentally involved,
but when we talk specifically about orthorexia, that is,
the excessive adherence to healthy foods,
then the person does not always end up
with a dietician, but sometimes with a psychologist,
so that here a fixation can develop that does not even
need to be clarified by dietetic principles.
- Speaking of which, for example, can someone who doesn't need it
but still eats gluten-free harm themselves?
- By itself, leaving out gluten, because it's a protein complex,
it doesn't in itself make you protein deficient
or make you sick, because there are very good gluten-free grains,
for example, or it doesn't necessarily make your diet fibre deficient,
because it's a very good source of fibre,
like dry pulses, and vegetables, fruits, oilseeds,
but when you start eating gluten-free, it's often a problem if you're eating
one-sidedly only rice flour and corn flour bread and pasta,
then you can have a very, very one-sided diet.
But very often it's not gluten that makes us sick,
it's not the fact that we eat something
containing gluten, it's the fact that we eat a mono-plane diet.
Here's a quick example.
Some people have said that since they stopped eating gluten-containing
cereals they have been much better.
And I asked him why, while he was eating gluten,
what was his diet like?
So I threw in the scone, the Fornetti, the pizza here, the thing there.
Oh, I say, and since when do you not eat gluten?
Since then, I have been making my own sandwiches
at home.
I say, so you're eating more consciously,
not just eating a lot.
So, it's not gluten per se that makes us eat badly,
it's a dietary system that often has a place for gluten,
and when you leave it and you start eating more consciously,
God forbid, you get better because you start eating
a more varied diet, so very often the problem is not
what you eat, but how much you don't eat.
So we're eating a one-planar meal, even though the big shop freezer
has pumpkin, spinach, sorrel, broccoli, cauliflower,
Brussels sprouts ready to go,
you really should just throw them in the water
and put them in the oven, but we don't see the simple,
quick examples, we see the overcomplicated stuff.
- For example, to what extent do you think
the popularity of intermittent fasting
is justified, and where do you see its limits?
What does the most reliable research show?
Does it really improve metabolism
and help with weight control and reducing inflammation?
- Yes. The short answer is yes,
but here in Hungary, knowing people's eating habits,
to add to this very poor, monotonous diet by eating even less
of it, even less of it, if you eat less of the wrong food,
that's great, and if that means that you don't eat
non-stop from 6 in the morning until 2 in the morning, then fine,
but the practical benefit would still not be that,
but if you started eating a more varied diet.
I would certainly not recommend intermittent fasting as a first step.
In itself, a calorie deficit,
so eating a little less, would also bring positive effects,
and I would point out that it is preferable
to fast intermittently, if one does not skip breakfast
but rather brings dinner forward.
Or, if you have breakfast at 7-8-9am and dinner at 6-7-8pm,
you can easily go 12-14 hours without eating,
and the positive effects of that can be there,
and the reduction of inflammation or autophagy,
the renewal processes of the body,
can happen even if you don't fast periodically.
This is very important.
- I know we've talked about meat consumption and meat-free,
vegetarian diets, but in detail, do you think meat-free
diets are really healthier,
or is it just a relatively long-lasting fad?
- It will come as a shock, but everyone should eat a vegan diet,
which means a diet based on a variety of grains,
legumes as vegetable protein, vegetables, fruits, oilseeds,
and we should supplement this, but regularly, on a daily basis,
even with raw materials of animal origin.
So, once with an egg, once with natural yoghurt,
once with some kind of meat, and then you can have a little bit
of fatty meat, that's the important thing,
so I recommend this mixed diet, and professional organisations
in all countries of the international world
recommend this.
And I'm very happy to recommend this,
to eat a mixture of meat and animal products,
it's easier to eat well than vegan,
but a mixed diet doesn't mean eating a lot of meat
every day.
It's fine to have meat-free days,
it's fine to have vegan days, but just because someone eats
a mixed diet, they have to follow the same principles as a vegan
and add meat.
But not 300 grams of meat, but 80-100-120.
- What is that, a half palm-sized?
- Well, that's about a palmful
of meat.
This will obviously be an enjoyable meal
if the side dish is not just mashed potatoes,
but also a casserole with, say,
pumpkin, and you can add chickpeas to half
of it, and then the rice should not just be rice pudding,
but also other vegetables.
If the plate is coloured,
it won't be strange that there's only one slice of meat
on it.
- Fact or fiction that we are not getting
enough protein?
- A complete misconception. So technically it's impossible
for someone not to get enough protein.
A slice of bread - I take out my palm.
It will also have ten grams of protein in it, vegetable protein,
but it will have protein in it, and we haven't put anything on it yet.
- And then what I've also been hearing and reading lately, a lot of people
are saying that cooking is processing in itself, and that raw food is closer
to a natural diet.
But could hot, cooked foods really be dispensed
with in a healthy diet, or are you saying
that this is another misconception?
- If our food is not cooked,
we do not consume certain raw materials at all.
For example, pulses,
if you don't cook them, you won't eat them at all.
Peas, beans, lentils, chickpeas,
soya beans, for example, can only be digested
if they are cooked, and only if they are cooked
can they be used for their nutrients.
And cooking is also very important, because I would eat it raw... kale,
now that's my stick, apparently I could eat 20-30 grams
of it raw, and with hypothyroidism I shouldn't eat much more of it raw.
On the other hand, I can eat up to 300 g of cabbage
when cooked, it's much easier to digest
and will slide much better, it's much more pleasant.
So cooking makes sense
in so many ways, and it simply makes for a more varied,
exciting meal, and you don't have to throw away
cultural traditions, so that a stuffed cabbage,
if you have a lot of cabbage, you could eat it every two weeks,
you could go for something that doesn't always have to be made
from fatty meat, and then you can play tricks
with it to include other grains.
- Then there's the issue of eggs,
for decades a dreaded source of cholesterol,
but now considered by many to be a superfood.
At this time, how do you see the place of eggs
in today's diet and what do you recommend in terms
of daily consumption?
- Eggs are a very good source of bioavailable protein and nutrients,
so they should not be eaten raw,
so at least the protein part should be cooked
or fried to get all the nutrients
from it.
You're allowed to have eggs,
but we've always said to have one or two a day.And that includes if it's
something like a sponge cake or eight egg pasta,
you have to count those, but you can count one a day.
- We've already talked a lot
about milk, but plant-based milks such as almond,
oat, soy or rice milk, which are also very popular
and even becoming more popular, have very different
nutritional content, added sugar content and degree
of processing.
From a nutritional point of view, to what extent can they be considered
a real alternative to cow's milk and in what cases
might their consumption be problematic?
- I'm much more on the side here that if one likes it
and tolerates it well, then one can safely have milk,
even from an ecological point of view.
- Cow's milk. - It can be cow's milk, yes,
it is milk.
The other one is called a vegetable drink
according to Hungarian regulations,
but they say that from a physiological point of view,
let's say a soy milk, almond milk,
if it's not full of sugar and additives,
it can be healthier.
But because health is not going to be determined
by one group of raw materials or their substitution, so one-to-one,
milk is better than plant-based drinks,
you can't say that, and the important thing is
that when it's full of carrageenan, xanthan gum, emulsifiers like that,
I wouldn't recommend anyone to regularly consume
those plant-based drinks, and in shops,
often the own-brand products can be really good quality.
- But the milk was so different!
You are very young, you don't know.
But when I was a kid, milk tasted delicious.
Now actually, I like to say plastic drink,
white plastic drink.
- Regardless, they're still milk, they just taste different, and we know
that it's been industrially processed because they're industrially adjusting
the fat content, so psychologically, because it's in a carton
and there's so many different brands, we don't want to believe
that it's still milk, but I like store milk,
and I'm a mess in that way, but I like it a lot.
It's very important that acidified dairy products,
and I'm talking about yoghurt
and kefir, have been clinically proven to have
anti-inflammatory effects, so the idea that dairy products cause inflammation
is a complete misconception.
- Jumping ahead, do you think detoxification cures
make sense, or is it more of a marketing fad?
- It doesn't make any sense.
Detoxification is done by our organs.
The liver, as I said about alcohol,
and then the toxins are either exhaled,
and then the complete detoxification can take place through the lungs,
that is, the substances that the liver neutralises,
or for example, through the faeces, such unwanted toxins
can be eliminated, but in the same way, the kidneys
also detoxify through the urine, for example, and I would quickly say
that the liver does not store toxins, so when someone does not dare to eat
liver because it would contain toxins, that is not the case.
Kidneys are more so, although we eat kidneys less often,
so I would recommend moderation there.
So your body does these processes, there is no need for a detox.
- The way we want to support it is not by fasting, but by eating a colourful,
healthy diet every day, as I have said many times now,
that will support the body's own functions.
- I'm cycling through the questions here,
but just to get as much as possible
out there.
For example, if someone wants to lose weight,
can they eat fruit and white bread?
- Yes, and yes. You should eat fruit
about two or three times a day.
- I know, half a kilo a day.
This is the dr. Schwab school.
- He says half a kilo of raw vegetables.
- And I say that every meal
should have 2-300 grams of fruit and vegetables,
and it doesn't matter if it's cooked
or baked.
They say raw because they're trying to give
some kind of good advice, because people eat very little raw,
but they also eat very little cooked,
baked, so that shouldn't put anyone off,
that it's hard to get through half a kilo
of raw vegetables.
Anyway, I don't see
how it's difficult, a medium tomato is 200 grams,
but I'm telling you, that includes fruit,
a medium apple is 2-300 grams, or let's say someone starts eating
melons or peaches, you can easily get more.
So you can eat fruit,
it's very good for you, it's exactly that sweet craving,
and the adaptation to sweetness can be satisfied by eating fruit,
for example, and you can eat white bread,
because white bread is not fattening, and wholemeal bread is slimming,
the problem is when you eat a lot of bread
and put a lot of fatty stuff on it, butter, margarine, salami, cheese,
so it's not the bread itself.
- And this growing number
of alternative breads that have appeared on the market?
Wholemeal seeded, rye, gluten-free, sourdough, or even fitness breads,
I've seen them.
Are these really healthier choices than white bread,
or are they just nice-sounding marketing labels again?
So what criteria, if any, should you use to choose between them?
- If you eat wholemeal bread, which is really whole grain bread,
and it doesn't matter if it's rye or wheat or spelt or oatmeal,
you're getting more micronutrients,
more nutrients, more antioxidants into your body,
more unsaturated fatty acids, so that's why wholemeal bread
is a healthier choice, and if you're mindful that it's rye,
seed and potato, you're simply contributing
to a more varied diet by just buying bread.
But there's no such thing
as which is better, the point is to eat
as many different kinds as possible.Not
gluten-free as a healthy alternative,
and fitness breads don't make any sense at all,
because they're sometimes packed with a lot of oil seeds,
which makes them less carbohydrate but overall much more calories
than a simple loaf of bread.
- And tell me why it is
that some people can eat anything without getting fat,
is it genetics, gut flora or something else?
- Genetics are different, metabolism is different,
and our gut flora also determines our metabolism,
and it's very interesting when they say someone can eat anything,
and they see, say, one meal a week,
and they see that they're really wolfing it down,
but they don't see what they do afterwards,
or what their physical activity is.
Not just when you go to the gym,
but how mobile you are throughout the day.
So the fact that I arrived here on my bike,
for example, even though I didn't go to the gym,
I still had the physical activity today,
and when you look at it in this simple way,
that it's always easier for someone else,
they can eat anything, and how hard it is for me,
there's a little bit of distortion in that.
- For example, to what extent do you consider metabolic types
to be truly existent categories, and on the basis
of which different dietary guidelines may be optimal for different people?
- These very often have no scientific basis.
Absolutely nothing.
So whether I'm a protein type
or I'm a fat type, so I have to eat fatty things,
there's no such thing.
And certainly not by blood type.
Individual differences are more about nuances like these,
rather than extreme trends.
- This very often involves believing
in what you feel is good for you, or believing that you have been told
by some weird mumbo-jumbo what you should eat
and you feel much better for it.
Okay, I believe, I say, there is nothing more powerful
than faith.
From a scientific point of view, such drastic differences
are not common.
- And what does a dietician do with the body positivity movement
if obesity is a real health risk?
The body positivity movement
emphasises self-acceptance, while dietetics treats obesity
as a serious risk factor, and the tension between the two raises
both ethical and practical dilemmas,
doesn't it?
- It's not about emphasising that a 150 kilo body is beautiful
and that's fine, it's about drawing attention
to the fact that today's diet industry,
today's fashion culture, presents an abnormal,
perfect body as healthy, which is not healthy.
And in contrast, it must be determined
that a body that has 1-2-3 kilos extra according to today's
fashion demands can still be perfectly healthy.
And just because someone doesn't have time to go 0-24 to get a facial,
go to the sauna, and let it wrinkle here and there,
it can be just as beautiful, healthy, and any body deserves dignity.
Body positivity is not
a toxic positivity, it's nice either way,
real positivity is the whole picture.
So when I say that I respect my body
the way it is, the fact that I have a positive view of it,
it carries the weight of saying that I have to change it
because it's just not comfortable and it's not healthy.
That's what real positivity
is all about, and if it's a real respect,
then that includes starting to care about being healthy, but it's
a much more complex phenomenon than saying that it's really nice
and it's fine to be obese.
That's not the case.
- How long does it take to make a real lifestyle change in eating?
So how long does it usually take
for someone to really change their eating habits
permanently, and where do most people fail along the way?
What is your experience?
- If there is an inner motivation, a realisation, an acceptance,
a stressful situation has been changed,
then an avalanche of improvement
can start.
If someone does not internalise what
an external control has suggested as a change,
it will be such a temporary change.
It's very complex,
it's much more psychology than dietetics, why it fails in whom,
but there are habits that can change after two or three weeks,
some that take a month, some gut bacteria, for example,
whose composition may take a year to change, but it depends
on the supportive environment or circumstances
that I have to achieve the change, and it depends on the amount of change
I want to make.
Because if I just set myself the goal of not drinking a litre
of juice from now on, but follow the dietician's advice
that I can drink a decilitre of juice diluted with water in a proportion
of one to one, and find that it's delicious,
then I'll be fine from the next day on.
So it also depends on the degree
of gradualness we introduce into the change.
- And how much sense does it make to recommend five meals
a day today, when people's lifestyles have changed completely?
- It's not a matter of eating five meals or three meals,
you can eat well with any of them, five meals is an option.
- When someone is up from six
in the morning until midnight, they simply have to allow themselves
to be at the rhythm that is optimal for them for five meals.
My work situation has changed and I no longer need five meals a day.
The number of times someone eats
can definitely be left to them to decide what is comfortable
for them, with complete professional discretion.
- Then there's the related problem of whether eating on a circadian rhythm
- eating more in the morning and less as the evening approaches - is still
scientifically supported today?
- For example, hormone levels fluctuate from day to day,
and for example, the insulin sensitivity of cells
is a little bit better in the morning because of not eating at night,
so that may be good advice to eat more in the morning or more carbohydrates,
but when someone's morning is to eat their breakfast
and otherwise sit still until noon, it's not good advice
to eat a lot in the morning.
For him, lunch might be useful, if he eats a lot at two o'clock,
because then he'll be off to do his shopping
and he'll have to get to the gym, so eating a lot in the morning
is the old advice, eat breakfast, and eat like a beggar,
I don't agree with that at all, because it's necessary
for the regeneration processes at night and to get the melatonin
and the tryptophan needed to fall asleep, A normal,
varied dinner is good for that,
and of course you shouldn't eat a huge meal
half an hour before going to bed,
but I think that even without ideologising
circadian rhythms, people understand that you shouldn't eat
too much at that time, because then you go to bed,
the food is stuck in the stomach, it doesn't get passed on
in the same way, and at night your body focuses on regeneration,
and shouldn't be bothering with digestion.
- And how much of today's urban lifestyle, the morning rush,
the late-night dinners, is nutritionally inappropriate,
and how can we adapt without destroying our bodies?
Because it has changed a lot in the last 10-15, maybe 20 years.
- Obviously I would be very happy if there were no such bakeries
at every subway entrance, although I think they have started
to ban them now, I just don't travel by subway,
but if every corner had a fruit and vegetable shop,
and then vegetables and fruits in little boxes,
so that they could be snacked
on the way, but otherwise to tell people
that you can put canned beans on the salad you buy, and then
you can crumble some flavoured tofu
on top and you've got a really good meal,
or a can of canned tomatoes, pickles that are ready
to go with any meal you order, if it's a big portion,
you can eat half of it with a portion of beetroot that you've bought quickly
from the shop, and then the next day you can bring vegetables from home
and you've still got the cooked food,
so you can do it, you just have to be more permissive
about healthy eating.
- Professionally, does the experience
of taste play a role in healthy eating?
You've already said that healthy food can be enjoyable,
but when does eating become a ritual in a person's life,
and where does it become a therapeutic or harmful behaviour?
So, when does eating
cross the boundary of a mere biological need,
and when does it become an emotional,
say symbolic or anxiety-reducing activity,
which can be either therapeutic or addictive?
- My principle is that only food that is tasty
can be healthy, because if it tastes bad,
if you don't like it, don't eat it, that's very important.
And yes, there are times when food is comforting.
Sometimes this can play a role,
the problem is when the only emotional coping method
is food, for example.
It has to be delicious, and it has to be nutritious.
It also has a function,
like fuel in the car, but it still has to be delicious,
it's not like I'm eating and my soul is sitting next to me,
and it's okay if I don't like it, because it's not in me.
Of course, they are always together.
- Is the slogan "two to three litres of water a day"
professionally tenable, or is it just another simplistic piece
of advice?
- It's very important that all physiological processes take
place in a watery medium, and if you think about it,
blood volume, so in quantitative terms,
our blood circulation is maintained by taking in fluid,
and it's practically through the blood circulation
that all nutrients are transported, or oxygen for example.
Therefore, fluid intake is vital.
The water content of our brain
is very high.
We used to know that 60-70%,
65% of our body is water, the younger we are the higher
the percentage, our cells have 80-85-90 varying percentages
of water, so if we don't take in fluids
we become dehydrated.
Our body size determines how our metabolism works
and we need to drink fluids accordingly,
so we can multiply how much water we need by the kilogram
of body weight.
- What does this multiplication
look like?
- Well, it's about 0.3 dl per kilogram
of body weight, so if someone weighs seventy kilograms,
that's 2.1 liters.
- But let's say it's summer, and you're not sitting in a room
with a temperature of 20 degrees all day, but you're outside, you can
easily add another half a litre to that, and multiply it by, say,
0.4 dl , so you can play with the multiplier
or with this.
Because sometimes we don't realise that even if we are in water
or in a closed room where we don't sweat,
we are constantly losing fluid through our skin,
and of course we also lose water through urine and faeces,
so we need to replace them.
And three litres is such a good guess,
but let's say 0.35-0.4dl, now in the summer
0.4dl per kilogram of body weight.
- And how do different fluid intakes,
such as tea, coffee, mineral water, soup,
actually affect the body's water balance?
- When you don't take in fluid by drinking water,
but it's in the fruit, vegetables or in a main course
for example, it's absorbed less quickly,
it's more likely to stay in the alimentary canal
and it can become more hydrated, so to speak, and then it can help,
for example, with defecation or the passage
of waste through the alimentary canal.
And how other liquids affect,
if you drink a concentrated, sugary drink, it can't hydrate,
whether it's a concentrated juice in large quantities or a sugary drink,
it can still draw water out of the body
and even cause diarrhea, but it's not good for hydration.
And what people are afraid
of with coffee is that it has a dehydrating effect,
it does affect the diuretic hormone, but that's when you drink
very large amounts of coffee.The breakdown of caffeine
is a slightly different process
for everyone, so it's worth drinking a glass
of water, but that's about it, you can count a diluted coffee
as a liquid.
- I have a final question.
If you could erase one thing from people's dietary misconceptions.
What is it?
- It's about not demonising food,
not being afraid of gluten and having zero tolerance
for it, not being scared of sweets, but having total confidence.
I taught my little children
the same thing, that you should not eat a bar
of chocolate in a cork, but bring it out
and do it together as a family, because eating chocolate is not a sin.
- After all, life is not just about health
and health fears and caution, but about living and having fun
at the same time.
- It was this drive that created what is now
a start-up project, with a dietitian friend of mine,
we'll call it the Dietitian Project, which is all about getting
the scientific evidence across in a way
that is understandable and also good
for the appetite.
- Thank you very much for being here.
- Thank you too.
- This time I talked to Adrienn Szabó, a dietician, about eating and drinking
and its many dimensions.
If you appreciate, as you usually do in the comments,
that we have done a good job
this time, you can thank us in several ways,
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- Finally, I would like to point out that we are also constantly adding
to our archives during these summer weeks and months.
Most recently, for example,
we have added twenty reports and programmes to our archives
that date back to my television days.
When, for example,
a former conversation on a public issue comes up,
we try to select them in such a way that they can be paralleled
in some way, i.e. compared with our present,
despite the fact that those former reports
and programmes were made 15-20 or even 25 years ago.
But of course, in addition to the public interviews,
you can also find 360, already 360 entertaining episodes,
or a nice human story or scientific discussion
in our archive on youtube.com in the sixth horizontal row
of the Friderikusz Podcast page.
Next time, at least for now,
we plan to premiere our next brand new talk on Thursday 4 September
at 8pm here on the 4th of September.
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