> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Why “Healthy Eating” Is Confusing Everyone - URL: https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/why-healthy-eating-is-confusing-everyone/ - Published: 2026-04-22T16:15:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-24T10:06:28.000Z - Description: Nutritionist Jenny Tschiesche on why healthy eating has become so confusing, and how to build a simpler, more realistic relationship with food. - Author: Elliott King - Tags: Jenny Tschiesche, episode, Season 3, #ep-7 **Nutrition should be simple, yet healthy seems to mean something different every week.** Nutritionist and author [Jenny Tschiesche](https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/guests/jenny-tschiesche/) joins host and producer [Aleksandra King](https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/aleksandra-king/) on The BEYOND Podcast, stepping back from rigid rules and quick fixes to ask how food became so confusing, and how to find clarity again. ![Jenny Tschiesche in a striped shirt and host Aleksandra King in conversation on the BEYOND set, seated on yellow sofas either side of a round wooden table](https://storage.ghost.io/c/5e/74/5e74ba0c-c249-4586-8ce5-03deb56fdf93/content/images/2026/08/Jenny-Tschiesche-Aleksandra-King.png) ## Episode summary Jenny steps back from rigid rules and quick fixes to look at the bigger picture: how we think about food, how we have been conditioned to approach it, and why clarity has become so hard to find. The conversation takes in the impact of trends, labels and wellness noise, how confusion around food is created and sustained, why simple approaches are so often overlooked, and what it takes to build a more balanced and realistic relationship with eating. It gets practical too, moving from ultra-processed foods and how to read a label, through food additives and the pitfalls of convenience, rethinking breakfast, the sugar debate and choosing cooking oils, to maximising fibre, meal culture, smart kitchen equipment and the power of the pressure cooker. It closes with strategic meal planning, five essential pantry swaps, cultivating strong gut flora, and the nutrient synergies that make everyday eating work harder. > “Try and listen to your body more than you listen to social media.”– *Jenny Tschiesche* ![Jenny Tschiesche speaking at the microphone during her BEYOND interview, gesturing as she makes a point](https://storage.ghost.io/c/5e/74/5e74ba0c-c249-4586-8ce5-03deb56fdf93/content/images/2026/08/Jenny-Tschiesche-Beyond-with-Aleksandra-King.png) ## Key takeaways - Nutrition advice feels inconsistent and overwhelming because the definition of healthy shifts with every new trend. - Trends, labels and wellness noise do not just create confusion around food, they sustain it. - Simple approaches to eating are often overlooked in favour of rigid rules and quick fixes. - Much of how we approach food is conditioned, and stepping back to see the bigger picture is the first step towards clarity. - A more balanced and realistic relationship with food starts with clarity, not with another set of rules. > “The colour should come from the fruit or vegetable, not the packaging.”– *Jenny Tschiesche* ## Key chapters | Chapter | Timestamp | | -------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- | | Understanding ultra-processed foods, and label reading | [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jbF-ssA70M) | | The dangers of food additives, and convenience pitfalls | [07:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jbF-ssA70M&t=420s) | | Rethinking breakfast, and the hidden cost of food longevity | [15:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jbF-ssA70M&t=910s) | | Palatability, the sugar debate, and selecting cooking oils | [22:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jbF-ssA70M&t=1367s) | | Maximising fibre, and cultivating a healthy meal culture | [30:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jbF-ssA70M&t=1834s) | | The significance of lunch breaks, and streamlining dinner prep | [37:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jbF-ssA70M&t=2260s) | | Smart kitchen equipment, and the power of pressure cookers | [44:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jbF-ssA70M&t=2674s) | | Strategic meal planning, and transitioning away from fast food | [52:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jbF-ssA70M&t=3140s) | | Five essential pantry swaps, and cultivating strong gut flora | [1:00:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jbF-ssA70M&t=3610s) | | Nutrient synergies, and final takeaways for daily wellness | [1:07:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jbF-ssA70M&t=4055s) | ## The guest Jenny Tschiesche is a nutritionist, author and New York Times bestselling contributor. Her work is about simplifying nutrition for people navigating a world of conflicting advice. Her full background is on her guest profile. [Jenny Tschiesche's guest profile](https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/guests/jenny-tschiesche/) ## Where to listen - [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jbF-ssA70M) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beyond-with-aleksandra-king/id1786173140) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/0haFQYUTnEn0fpr0LQYlhH) - [YouTube Music](https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=MPSPPL3iQHE-qteJING9jXVVuVUdDa-9qqer7J) - [RSS feed](https://anchor.fm/s/10464b2ac/podcast/rss) ## Transcript #### Read the full episode transcript Cold open **The first 1m 29s is a trailer montage: short clips lifted from later in the episode, plus background music. The lines below recur in context further down.* 00:00:00 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** It's upsetting to know what's happened to the food industry. It's horrible. 00:00:04 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Businesses want to make money. 00:00:05 ****Aleksandra King:** All the theory behind nutrition– what do you do with it? 00:00:08 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah, I think it is overcomplicated, but then I wouldn't have a job if it was less complicated. 00:00:18 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** You need to become very savvy when it comes to label reading. Look at things that you don't recognise, and if you don't recognise, question it. 00:00:25 ****Aleksandra King:** What is the biggest red flag within the label? 00:00:28 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** The biggest red flag for me on any label is something that says– 00:00:32 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Whenever you go to buy anything, there is an impulse buy section, which is there to make you want to buy something. 00:00:39 ****Aleksandra King:** What have they done to our food? Breakfast– is it the most important meal of the day? 00:00:44 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** It depends on who you are. 00:00:45 ****Aleksandra King:** On the subject of sweets– 00:00:46 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Sugar is very inflammatory. If you took sugar off the table and we didn't eat another sugary thing in our lives, we would still find enough. The human body does not need sugar. And a heavier bread is more likely to have less ingredients in it. 00:01:00 ****Aleksandra King:** The softer they are, the more red-flaggish it is? 00:01:02 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. Not every ultra-processed food is a dangerous food. 00:01:05 ****Aleksandra King:** Is vegetable oil a processed food? 00:01:08 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yes. Try and listen to your body more than you listen to social media. 00:01:11 ****Aleksandra King:** What are we snacking on? 00:01:12 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** So ideally we would not have to snack. Most of us should be able to go between meals without eating. We shouldn't need to snack. When we listen to our bodies, our bodies will tell us exactly what we need. 00:01:23 ****Aleksandra King:** One takeaway for people– what would it be? 00:01:28 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Something that I haven't already said? Episode 00:01:32 ****Aleksandra King:** Jenny, hello. Welcome to Beyond the Boardroom. 00:01:36 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Thank you. 00:01:36 ****Aleksandra King:** So we're having a little informal chat, weren't we, about all the theory behind nutrition, and it's completely and utterly overwhelming. 00:01:45 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** It is at the moment, I think. Yeah. 00:01:47 ****Aleksandra King:** Yes. And what does it all mean? We've had great podcasts, but I've brought you on to just take all that theory– let's take it, and let's– now this is all about applying it, in easy, digestible chunks. 00:02:03 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** I love what you did there. \[laughter\] I'm going to eat my nutrition. 00:02:08 ****Aleksandra King:** Yes. Yeah. Because we want to just– what do you do with it? What do you do with all the information? As in, what do you eat? 00:02:15 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah, absolutely. I think it is overcomplicated, but then I wouldn't have a job if it was less complicated. So that is my job, to be that kind of– take you from all the theory to actually, what the heck do you put on your plate. This is the conundrum, and we're so time-poor. Our lives are so busy now. Whatever stage of life you're at, your life is busy, and it's over-busy, and we just do not leave enough time, when we compare the time we leave for cooking, preparation, etc. to perhaps how people would have done that. And even if you look at the design of our houses and our kitchens, they're not really set up for food preparation as we would have considered it back in the day. We talk about food prep now like– we do four chicken breasts and some rice and some veg ahead of a week of work, but that's not what we really meant by food prep back in the day. There would be processes involved that would take you from raw materials to a cooked meal. 00:03:06 ****Aleksandra King:** Raw materials? 00:03:07 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah, raw materials to a meal. 00:03:09 ****Aleksandra King:** Okay. I mean, I don't know what you mean by a change of design for our kitchens– so we've got the kitchens we've got. We're in the situation we're in, we're all busy. Okay. We've all heard this information coming to us about ultra-processed foods, and we know that it's a food that's been processed too much, and now it's bad for us. 00:03:32 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. That's a really good way of putting it. I like that. \[laughter\] Why didn't I think of that? 00:03:35 ****Aleksandra King:** And elaborate on that. So what is it? When we're looking on shelves, what is it? 00:03:40 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** It will be a food that has, step one, lots of ingredients– ingredients that you have perhaps not heard of before. So they will sound, I know people say this and it's very cliché, a little bit more like a chemistry experiment than the sort of things you'd find in your kitchen. But if you think about some of the things that perhaps you were aware of growing up, things like artificial colours or artificial flavouring– it's like that, but times X now. Because now we're looking at things that have got emulsifiers and stabilisers, there's a whole range of artificial sweeteners, and I think that would be a podcast in its own right, because it's so complicated. 00:04:20 ****Aleksandra King:** I was going to say, if I ask you, what is an emulsifier, what is a stabiliser– 00:04:24 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** That's another podcast. 00:04:25 ****Aleksandra King:** And we're moving away from that. So basically, what do you do? 00:04:28 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah, so you need to become very savvy when it comes to label reading. But we haven't got time necessarily to do that, so the easiest thing that you could do is, yeah, cook from scratch. But scratch really means different things to different people, so there are variations on that, and perhaps that's what we'll discuss. But I would say meat that looks like it's come from an animal, nuts, seeds, whole grains, vegetables– and you know where those vegetables have come from, the ground, a tree, whatever. I'm trying to think if there's anything I've forgotten. Oily fish as well. This is a whole foods diet. These are recognisable foods. We don't need to be considering things that are beyond that, but we do, because we're time-poor. I think this is where we need to ask questions about where our food is coming from. I don't think people ask enough questions. In certain contexts that we talk about, when you go to the supermarket, label reading– but then equally, some people will read every single label and then have takeaways three nights a week and not even think about how that's being prepared. So it's that consistency. 00:05:33 ****Aleksandra King:** Because you're saying a food with a lot of– a meal with a lot of ingredients. But then you go to a really nice restaurant. Let's say you want to go to a nice Italian restaurant, and you're having a beautiful seafood pasta, and there's lots and lots of lovely things in there. You have no idea what, but it's nice. Is that an ultra-processed food? 00:05:49 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** It's unlikely that it is, if it's been cooked in the kitchen. Most Italian restaurants, if we think about the culture of Italian restaurants and how Italian immigrants arrived– they brought their food culture with them, they set up restaurants as one of the sort of founding industries, and they've prepared food from scratch since the day dot. But then take that example, literally, and look at the number of adverts that give you the impression that the pizza or pasta sauce that you're going to buy from the supermarket was cooked by your Italian grandmother. Now we're moving into ultra-processed. 00:06:22 ****Aleksandra King:** So the Italian restaurant, great. The food that tells you it's authentic and Italian, not great. And I'm in marketing, and that upsets me a lot. 00:06:32 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** I used to be in marketing too, and I look at it through– my daughter's studying marketing at university, and I do look at things through a very different lens. I could only see the positive in marketing back in the day, and now I see how it can be used, but also very easily misused. And people can misunderstand a lot very easily, because we're so time-poor. 00:06:54 ****Aleksandra King:** Yeah. \[laughter\] Well, that's pulling the wool over one's eyes. It's not prepared by a grandma, it's prepared in a factory. And I suppose that's what you're saying– when it's in a factory, and there's these things being added to it that we don't know what these things are, and they won't grow in nature, and you won't pick them off a tree, there is something going on. So the biggest change– from that, all we can take, that we need to look at the label, look at the things we don't know, and that's a red flag, don't buy it. 00:07:25 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. Look at things that you don't recognise, and if you don't recognise, question it. I mean, I find it harder as I get older, because I have to take my glasses, my specs, with me when I go shopping. I'm standing in the supermarket holding it further and further away. 00:07:39 ****Aleksandra King:** The reality is, take a photo and then enlarge it. 00:07:41 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Well, there is that too. And this happens to us because we are so– well, I am particularly, doing what I do– so focused on trying to find better alternatives. And I'd love– I think I'd love to have the time to cook from scratch. I write cookery books, I do cook from scratch, but I'm always trying to find, if I'm truly honest, hand on heart, trying to find a quicker way. Because I understand that not everyone's going to be in the kitchen all day like I am some days. 00:08:07 ****Aleksandra King:** Parents cook from scratch, and when my dad comes to visit me, he makes me spend the whole day with him in the kitchen. And he's really frustrated, because he's like, we need to make the stock, and then we need to do this, and then we need to– I'm like, Dad– what a beautiful thing he does. I love it, I love it, but it's so time-consuming. 00:08:23 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah, but it is also an area, a time in your life, where you do have connection. When my mum worked full-time– I'm the youngest of seven children, the kitchen was a galley kitchen, and I kid you not, I probably got the most steps in by trying to speak to my mum of an evening while she prepared an evening meal. And all you had to do was– I don't think she'd even say– you'd just automatically move as she reached for the ladle or the spoon or the knife or whatever. And it was just that immersive experience. I don't even know that I knew that I was learning how to cook, but six out of the seven of us, I would say, are very good cooks. I apologise to the person who I've just missed out of that list. But that's how we grew up. We grew up around a mother that did cook, and she was working full-time. 00:09:04 ****Aleksandra King:** Yeah, but it's still so important to have a cooked meal every evening. Okay, so there's two things that are coming from this. The first one, if you can answer this, is what is the biggest red flag within the label– that's one. And then the second one is, a lot of us do cook the basics, like a chicken breast with some potato and some vegetables, but we really fall down on the other things– the cereals, the drinks that we might drink, snacks. So could you answer those two? How do we prevent that? What's that red flag, and how do we prevent the other one? 00:09:41 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah, sure. So probably the biggest one area of– or one set of ingredients within the ultra-processed kind of area– I'm going to rephrase that. The biggest red flag for me on any label is something that says emulsifier or stabiliser. Now the unfortunate thing is, it doesn't always call that out as an emulsifier or a stabiliser, so it's almost better to become aware of what they are. So they're gums, generally– so guar gums, xanthan gum, etc.– and emulsifiers. Now the most amount of research has been done on CMC, carboxymethylcellulose, and polysorbate 80, and those are ones that we should be aware of, and we should be looking on the labels of our food. But I think when it comes to foods that contain those, they are quite prevalent in our diet, and a lot of our kind of free-from foods, for example– so your free-from dairy milks, and your free-from loaves, your gluten-free loaves, your gluten-free pizza bases– a lot of those will contain them. But even a lot of our dairy products will contain– like yogurts, for example, ice cream. So they're an area that I would look to, if you can, remove. Now that's really, really difficult to remove. 00:10:57 ****Aleksandra King:** What do they do to you? 00:10:57 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Well, the research suggests that it affects the gut and the gut lining, and what we do know is that that can create inflammation. And inflammation is at the root cause of everything that we know to be lifestyle-related. So anything we can do to reduce inflammation is a good thing, and we know that a diet that's higher in antioxidants– so look, if you're someone that's travelling loads with work and you're not in control of what you're eating, in terms of– you don't know whether you're going to be eating something with emulsifiers and stabilisers, it's sort of beyond your control– what you are in control of is what you eat in the other meals, or whilst you're travelling. Then really up your antioxidants. Think about brightly coloured fruits, vegetables. The colour should come from the fruit or vegetable, not the packaging. Because of course that's what, again, manufacturers have done a really good job of– making a whole aisle of a supermarket look really bright and colourful, because we do eat with our eyes. But the alert doesn't need to be in the packaging, it needs to be in the natural colour of these foods. So that's what we should be looking for. 00:11:57 ****Aleksandra King:** Okay, so those are the red flags. And then when it comes to our cooking– and most of us actually, a lot of us do cook. We think we're all– if you have to ask people, most people think they're generally quite healthy, and I would use the word generally. It's the other stuff, it's all the snacks and everything. 00:12:13 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. Sweetened yogurts– I'm going to– not the Greek yogurts. 00:12:18 ****Aleksandra King:** What else? I mean, anything that you're going to have in between meals. 00:12:21 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** But again, that says more about our culture and the way that we live our lives. Fair enough, people are going to snack. But if you look at, again, how marketing is– sort of think about the impulse purchases, and how, whenever you go to buy anything, whether you're in a supermarket, whether you're buying a rail ticket, whether you're in a shop somewhere, there is an impulse buy section which is there to make you want to buy something. And it's going to be a snack. It's ideally going to be nuts or fruit, but it's very rarely that. And if you stop at any service station in the UK, there will be, by every till that you go and check out, there'll be something that's there to– 00:13:01 ****Aleksandra King:** We were just in Devon recently, and family– my mother-in-law came with me. We were driving, we had to stop at the service station, and my husband was like, should we get a McDonald's? And I was like, no, we're not going to get a McDonald's. I don't want it. I got frustrated, because I already knew that I wasn't eating that healthy. I was on trainings– they were having a little trip, but I had to do training– and I knew that I had biscuits there, and I thought, oh no, not McDonald's, please. Then I looked around and I was like, well, what are the choices? Greggs, McDonald's. Why isn't there a whole food, beautiful farm– I don't know, something? 00:13:37 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. \[laughter\] It's just not commercially viable. I mean, there's a really good services on the M25 that recently lost its Leon. I mean, Leon was probably the best alternative to McDonald's. Yes, you had to pay more for it, but if you wanted that kind of fast food fix on a journey, that was a great place to stop. And the fact it's gone, and it's been replaced by– actually, I think it's a Pret a Manger, could be a Starbucks, I'm not sure– that means the choices that were available are not now available there. And healthy choices are not there. And then you go in, and there will be a Marks & Spencer's– so thank goodness for that, and you might be able to get some berries. Which you haven't washed, because you're not by a tap with clean water. \[laughter\] So you're eating all your chemicals. 00:14:17 ****Aleksandra King:** All your choices– some sandwich, which is also ultra-processed, or some chocolates, or some crisps. It's absolutely devastating. Why can't they give us a smoothie, with some nice real fruit? 00:14:29 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** The best thing you can do is buy a banana, because you can peel that and eat it. That's not a bad choice. I mean, you are so, so limited. I do a lot of corporate wellbeing, and some of the companies I've worked with have people that are out on the road all the time. They work through the night, some of them, and the sorts of places that are going to be open for them to grab something whilst they're out, they're few and far between, and what's available is so shocking. It's very, very hard for me to advise anybody on what they should be doing when they have that fewer choice, those fewer choices to make from. That's very hard. So I totally get that. Travel with food, maybe, was something someone else said, which was quite good advice. 00:15:10 ****Aleksandra King:** Okay. So breakfast– is it the most important meal of the day, and if it is, what shouldn't we be eating? That's the question that I was originally going to ask, based on what you're saying. 00:15:24 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. So it depends on who you are. I do a lot of content creation, a lot of social media, and I do understand that people don't like nuance, but I'm afraid it exists. For some people, breakfast is absolutely the best meal. Hands up, that's my favourite meal of the day– I always live for my breakfast. But I am a morning person. If you look at chronotypes, and this is where we look at what's going on with the sort of hormone levels in your body, I am such a lark. I get up early in the morning, and quite frankly, I am ready to go to bed nice and early in the evening too. However, if you're more of an owl, you're probably not a breakfast person. You're probably somebody that– you do need to plan for when you get hungry, but you're probably somebody that benefits more from a brunch. But I would say that first meal of the day is really important, and it does need to be a really balanced meal. And again, we have had, I think, a lot of messaging over the years about what a good breakfast looks like, but you only need to travel to somewhere in the Middle East, or somewhere in South America, or go to Japan, and you get to see a very different version of what breakfast looks like. And breakfast in a lot of countries is not a different meal from any of your other meals. It is what we might consider here in the UK to be more suitable for a lunch or an evening meal. 00:16:47 ****Aleksandra King:** Yes, yeah. I noticed that. When you say, oh, you have to eat protein with your breakfast– yes, you might have the bacon, which– bacon is not ultra-processed? 00:16:55 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Really bad for you. 00:16:56 ****Aleksandra King:** And then you think, but we're eating dinner for breakfast. It is a strange– 00:17:01 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. And there should be no problem with that. And I think, again, this is about a mindset change. If you have travelled, and you have seen that, you understand. If somebody says to you, when you're having a bowl of cornflakes every morning, you've got to get your protein– that's a big step change for you. Where are you going to get your protein? You probably think, oh, maybe the milk. Where am I going to get my protein when I'm having cornflakes for breakfast? But if someone says to you, like, you're already having two eggs for breakfast, you need to get more protein– that's a really easy step up. Add another egg in there. If you want a bit more fibre, put some avocado. If you want to add a bit more fibre, change your white toast to your whole grain sourdough, or something like that. It's a very easy change in mindset for the person that's already thinking of their breakfast more like a lunch or an evening meal. 00:17:47 ****Aleksandra King:** So, nice– like bacon and eggs and beans and nice toast. But so is yogurt with berries? 00:17:58 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. And again, those are breakfasty things, but we don't have to look far to where the origins of those things came from. I mean, growing up, we didn't have a lot of yogurt even, and plain yogurt, yes, but we wouldn't have had a fruit yogurt. And therefore yogurt wasn't anything kind of to be aware of. I didn't have to worry about modified maize starch, or any stabilisers, or any sweeteners, or any colouring in my yogurt as a child, because it was just a plain yogurt. There wasn't any. But things have changed. And that's where it's almost like a game, and you have to kind of keep up with the rules, and the rules keep changing. And that's where it feels like it's unfair to people that don't do what I do. 00:18:40 ****Aleksandra King:** What have they done to our food? Or what have we– because it's humans, we've done it to our own food. 00:18:45 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah, we've accepted it. 00:18:46 ****Aleksandra King:** Awful. 00:18:47 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** But I also think that there's a lot of money to be made when you start– and people have had– somebody said this to me the other day– there are more ingredients in that one, and yet it's cheaper. Or there are fewer ingredients– I think it was– I was comparing crisps. 00:19:02 ****Aleksandra King:** Yes, yes. 00:19:03 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** I was comparing a baked crisp, which ostensibly is healthier– it tells you it is on the pack– versus an olive oil crisp. Now I don't eat crisps that often, but if I'm going to eat them, I'd probably eat the olive oil ones. 00:19:15 ****Aleksandra King:** Yeah, because fewer ingredients. Yes, but that's so much more expensive. 00:19:20 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** But it's the point that the ingredients are expensive when they're real ingredients. So when you put all of the additives in, they're a lot cheaper, and they give the food longevity, they give the food shelf life. And that's what people really want– they want to be able to come back in a year's time, and don't worry if those baked crisps haven't sold, because they'll still be in date. You can still make money on that. 00:19:39 ****Aleksandra King:** Oh, think about that– crisps sitting there over a year old. \[laughter\] Things that you come back to a year later and they still look the same– they're probably not for you. 00:19:51 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. 00:19:51 ****Aleksandra King:** Same with bread, when it lasts a little bit too long. Thinking, in the States it lasts for a very long time, doesn't it? 00:19:56 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. And again, you have to look only across the Atlantic to find that there are some interesting ingredients that have been added to bread over the course of time, and sugar being one of them. If you go to the US and you ask for rye bread, for example, it doesn't look and taste anything like the rye bread that I know I've had. I've married a half-German– his father used to get the bread from a German baker in Ireland growing up, and so that's the rye– that's the standard. 00:20:28 ****Aleksandra King:** I love German rye bread. You really have to chew it. 00:20:31 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah, you really have to chew it. But if you go to America and you ask for rye bread, it's nothing like that. It might have some rye in it, but it tastes sweet, and it's really, really hyper-palatable. 00:20:41 ****Aleksandra King:** On the subject of sweets– so we spoke about ultra-processed foods, we understand that they cause inflammation, they're all really dangerous. And then you've got sugar as well, and there are things out there that say sugar causes cancer, or inflammation. I don't– does it cause any cancer or inflammation? I'm not sure. So which one's almost the worst one? Is it sugar, or is it– 00:21:02 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** I don't think you can sort of say it's a simple– 00:21:04 ****Aleksandra King:** It's very simple, but I'm not going to go back to the– I'm doing it because I find it on the internet. When I was researching for this podcast, I was saying, what are people asking? What are the things that I see, what pops up– the team are picking out the things that the everyday person is asking. And there are things out there– sugar causes cancer, don't eat sugar, it will give you cancer. That's what you see. Do you see that? 00:21:24 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** And you see the same about ultra-processed foods. And I should say, in their defence, not every ultra-processed food is a dangerous food. Anything that contains some ultra-processed ingredients isn't necessarily a bad food, and you can think of examples. Obviously if you're thinking about a budget as well, you've got to be careful, because you could be too sort of exclusive with this– I'm going to eat ultra-processed free– and that's not accessible to the mainstream. And that's a worry for me, because healthy eating should be accessible. We all admit that it's not entirely. But I think it's really important to think about whether– again, nuance– ultra-processed foods that are the worst culprits, the ones that contain the greatest number of additives, and the ones that are hyper-palatable. And this is– if you think about– I had one of my first ever clients come to me, and he was on a typical Western diet, and I sent him away with a diet plan, and he came back two weeks later, and he said to me, my jaw hurts. It hurts from chewing. And I had a moment of– and this is before we even talked about ultra-processed foods– this is a moment of realisation where I just think, this guy wasn't even chewing his food before. Everything he was eating, whether it's burger buns, or burgers, or soft cooked chicken, or fried chicken– 00:22:45 ****Aleksandra King:** The more red-flaggish it is. 00:22:46 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. So the more hyper-palatable. And that's one of the issues with ultra-processed foods that we want to be aware of– they're very easy to eat, more of them, and they can be– not for everyone, but there can be an addictive quality to them. And I think, again, some people are more prone to this than others. So we shouldn't tar everyone and every food with the same brush. We should say, if you are somebody that, when you eat, say, two biscuits, you can't stop at two biscuits, and you want to eat five, maybe the whole packet– some people I've come across– then that's possibly an issue for you, but it's not necessarily an issue for everybody. But you could say the same about sugar. Now sugar is very inflammatory, and I think for years we had the wool pulled over our eyes as a population, because we thought for years that fat was the culprit. And we recognised that, yes, there are some bad fats, and we do need to be careful not to consume too many trans fats, and not a diet too high in saturated fats. But there's some good quality saturated fats, there's some good quality unsaturated fats, there are some good quality omega-3 fatty acids, and we do need all of those in our diet. We do need those to survive. Sugar– we'll find it. If you took sugar off the table, and we didn't eat another sugary thing in our lives, we would still find enough sugar, if you like, nature's sugar. What did people do before we discovered the sugar cane? Well, people ate honey, and they ate fruit. The human body does not need sugar, so we would be fine without it. We'd be perfectly fine without ultra-processed foods. But both exist in our modern diet, and we just have to make better decisions according to what our body does, and how our body reacts to both. That's what I would say. 00:24:22 ****Aleksandra King:** You realise, when you look at sugar, like the white granules, how processed that is. Because I had the privilege of tasting real raw sugar cane as a kid, and sucking it, and it's really– it's delicious. Looks nothing like, or tastes like, sugar. 00:24:38 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. And that is the most refined form. And if you look at any brown sugar, it will have some element of– it will be slightly more– I'm not saying it's nutritious– it's slightly more nutritious, because it will have minerals left in it. Like molasses– if you think of molasses, that dark, treacly syrup, that's actually a source of chromium and iron. But we don't want to be eating spoonfuls of it. But if you were going to put any sort of syrup in something, maybe that would be a better choice. So it is, sadly, nuanced. 00:25:06 ****Aleksandra King:** Okay. Before I move on– we'll go back to the breakfast, lunch and dinner, so just to help everyone live breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack. Before we go there, you mentioned oil. We've heard that olive oil is great, but then you've got to be careful, because some are just for drizzling, and if you use it for roasting, that becomes cancerous, because you can't use it at such high temperatures. 00:25:26 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** I would disagree with, actually. I think you can use olive oil. It's self-protecting, if you like– the levels of polyphenols in it are protective. So I would say you can cook with olive oil, and I would be perfectly happy to do so. It's not a sustainable way for us to eat as a population– there are too many of us and too few olive trees. We do need to be aware of that, and consider that. Then we also need to think about– olive oil has been here since the Roman times. Again, there were far fewer of us on the earth at that point. So we just need to be aware that we do need to seek other sources of oil. We can't all eat olive oil. 00:25:58 ****Aleksandra King:** Yeah. On the oil, though– so there's olive oil, there's all kinds of– there's rapeseed oil, there's sesame oil, there's all these oils. And then there's vegetable oil. Is vegetable oil a processed food? 00:26:11 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yes. Anything that's been super-refined like that, we shouldn't be consuming, from an inflammation perspective. If you do want to go down that path, then I suggest we do need to look, like I say, beyond olive oil– then something like an extra virgin rapeseed oil, a cold-pressed rapeseed oil. It's local– we grow lots of it here– and a cold-pressed version, rather than the refined version that you will see in a lot of products in the supermarket. Because again, as soon as a manufacturer cottons on to the fact that they can create something nice and cheaply, they'll put it in their food. 00:26:42 ****Aleksandra King:** Yeah. There's so much to think about. Let's go back to breakfast. How do we improve our breakfast? 00:26:49 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** So think of it, firstly, as it could be any meal of the day. So your breakfast doesn't have to be what we typically consider breakfast here in the UK. But I would say do think about fibre, which I think is– it's very hot at the moment, it's a hot topic at the moment. It'll have its day and it'll die down again. I wish it didn't, I wish it wouldn't. I think protein has had its day, and people talk about protein still a bit, but I do think fibre is having its day right now. Fibre is a really important consideration, and it's harder now to get than it used to be. The way we used to grow our crops, the way we used to prepare our food, and the way we used to eat made it a whole lot easier to get fibre into our diet. The way that we prepare our foods now, particularly ultra-processed foods– it's almost impossible for a human being to get about 30 grams a day. Now that's going to vary according to male or female, body size, etc. 00:27:44 ****Aleksandra King:** 30 grams– how– visually, what would 30 grams look like? 00:27:46 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** So we're looking at, say, for example, a kiwi fruit would be like two to three grams of fibre. 00:27:52 ****Aleksandra King:** Really? What about a normal apple, a standard-sized apple? 00:27:56 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Five grams of fibre. 00:27:57 ****Aleksandra King:** And we need thirty. 00:27:59 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** We are talking about having to make sure that– now we have things like beans, obviously the right kinds of fruits– raspberries are a good choice when it comes to fibre– but we also need to make sure that the grains that we have are whole grains. We need to have seeds, we need to have nuts– all of these things that we would have had. I mean, if you think about today, the frequency with which we eat meat alone– there's an opportunity cost to that. And I'm not just talking about during the war here in the UK, I'm talking about, like, in the fifties and sixties, I'm talking about between the two wars, prior to that– people couldn't afford to eat the amount of meat that we eat today, the way we produce it, etc. So what did they eat instead? Well, there were a lot of pulses. Pulses are cheap, they're a source of protein, and they're a source of carbohydrate as well, but they're a source of fibre too. And I think– where people used to– pease pudding, for example, very old-fashioned, and I know often served alongside bacon. But again, that bacon wouldn't have been prepared in a factory. It would have been prepared– or even a ham, or a ham hock– it would have been prepared by your butcher locally, and it wouldn't have the additives that we have in our modern-day bacon, because it would have been smoked. So our preparation techniques have changed. I appreciate I'm going off on one now, and I completely forgot the question. 00:29:17 ****Aleksandra King:** No, no, I also forgot the question. \[laughter\] Because– where are we? I'm supposed to remember the question, but it's so interesting, I forgot, because you're making me think a lot. 00:29:26 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** I mean, even the process of smoking something– you can smoke it with chemicals added in, or you can smoke it naturally without those chemicals. 00:29:33 ****Aleksandra King:** I just feel like– it's upsetting to know what's happened to the food industry. It's horrible, that we've all– that we're eating disease. It's horrible. And we need to have these podcasts, and we need to put that information out there, and we need to reprogram all of our minds and get away– I don't like the marketing that's marketing things that are dangerous for people. Those products need to stop existing. 00:30:05 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** What I would love to see is a different labelling system. Because I appreciate businesses want to make money, but I think if things were labelled differently– I eat ultra-processed foods, I'm not completely immune to that. I'm going to find myself travelling somewhere, abroad somewhere, I'm going to grab something. But I wouldn't make it the main part of my diet. I'd say my diet is probably 90 to 95 per cent ultra-processed free, because I make a conscious effort for that to be the case. 00:30:31 ****Aleksandra King:** Okay, right. Okay, so breakfast– we've got our– our breakfast looks more like dinner, and we've got in there– we try and pack it with fibre, we've got our protein. And if we think about how little fibre there is in fruit, we need to bring in beans, pulses and those kind of things, to up that fibre level. 00:30:51 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. There are certain fruits that are better– I've mentioned kiwi and raspberry– but there are some, like, gems that people don't necessarily recognise, like desiccated coconut. That's actually relatively high in fibre. Just popping that onto your porridge in the morning– 00:31:06 ****Aleksandra King:** You buy that in a can? 00:31:07 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Oh no, not desiccated– the dried one. 00:31:10 ****Aleksandra King:** And what about the liquid, when you put that into curries– the milk? 00:31:13 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah, you can get that. I mean, that's not going to have as much. But the desiccated– so this is the actual meat of a coconut that's been– powdery– 00:31:20 ****Aleksandra King:** It looks like– 00:31:21 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** It can be that, or you can have the toasted bits, the pieces that have been toasted, so there's even more flavour from those. And those are delicious on, again, yogurt. So you can make a savoury version of yogurt, you can make a sweet version. I think I sort of split, or divided, people the other day, because I suggested putting yogurt on toast, which is something I started doing at university, and it's very Middle Eastern. But it's a really good combination, especially if you've got whole grain toast. And I use lovely chia seeds quite a lot, which people talk a lot, again, about having in their day. But if you want to make a jam, and you don't want to have a sugary jam, just get a little bit of fruit and some chia seeds– you just boil the fruit down till it's reduced, add the chia seeds, and then it thickens up beautifully. And you've got a great combination of the sweetness, the natural carbohydrates, and the fibre and the protein from chia seeds– plus the yogurt, good slice of toast, and that's a great breakfast. 00:32:14 ****Aleksandra King:** You're making me hungry. Okay, we've had our breakfast. We go to work. What are we snacking on? 00:32:20 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** So ideally, we would not have to snack. Again, our bodies tend to do better when we don't. Now there are differences between– 00:32:27 ****Aleksandra King:** Hyperactive? 00:32:30 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** \[laughter\] Very busy people– people that are very active will require more frequent meals. And especially– I've worked with a lot of athletes– that's how I got into nutrition, is through sport– so I totally get that you need to prepare for, and you need to recover afterwards. So there are going to be different rules for different people. But by and large, most of us should be able to go between meals without anything, without eating. We shouldn't need to snack. And again– I talk a lot– I have a degree in geography as well, and I talk a lot about place, because I think it's really important to look at other places. Don't think the UK necessarily gets this part right. We're brilliant at some things– we're amazing at sarcasm, and we're world leaders at irony– but I don't think our food culture has been the best. And I do think, when we look to other nations, we can learn a lot. We don't have to look very far. I always think about the Scandinavians, and how much more healthy they seem to be, despite the fact that they don't get enough sun, when it comes to omega-3 and vitamin D status– because they actually consume the oily fish that's in the waters around them. We're a tiny island, we're surrounded by water, and so many of us don't eat any fish, and most of us don't eat any oily fish. 00:33:46 ****Aleksandra King:** Well, my husband– I'm married to a Brit– and he said that actually, growing up, they used to eat more fish than they do now. And there's another one, which is kind of a yellow one, I don't know the name– 00:33:59 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Kippers? 00:34:00 ****Aleksandra King:** Kippers, yes. So that was more of a breakfast, right? 00:34:03 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yes, exactly. 00:34:05 ****Aleksandra King:** Why did that go out of fashion? 00:34:06 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** I have no idea. There's all sorts of things we used to eat. Nose to tail– we used to eat the whole animal. I only have to spend time with my 85-year-old mother to see her eating tripe, and ox tongue. And that may offend some people, and I'm sorry if it does, but the reality is, some people are going to eat beef, and they're going to eat steak, but they're not going to think about what happened to the rest of the animal. The rest of the animal is only going to go to waste. 00:34:30 ****Aleksandra King:** So should we not go back to those practices? I know– someone like my dad, also very, very traditional– he'll boil– it is the whole animal, and to some it might be freaky, but yes, there's zero waste. 00:34:44 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Absolutely, zero waste. And that is where we become removed. There've been times when famous TV chefs have taken children to farms, and had a lot of negative press, where they've shown children actually what happens and how it happens. But quite frankly, I'm for children understanding where their food comes from. Otherwise it just gets delivered to them on the table– they have no connection with it, they have no relationship with it. And we do have an epidemic of fussy eating right now, and I'm not suggesting that's the only reason for it, but I do think having children educated in how foods– where they come from, and how they make it to the table– is a huge part. And I don't think it's up to schools, I really don't. 00:35:26 ****Aleksandra King:** And adults. \[laughter\] May I add. Okay, so try and avoid the snacking, and obviously grab the food that's originated from its source, without the label. Lunch– what do we do? What could we go for? 00:35:40 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Good question. So again, our typical meal deal throws us off the scent, if we think that's a natural meal and that's going to keep us going. Some people are having lunch at twelve and they're not going to get home till eight. That's when you're going to snack, because that lunch is not going to do it for you. The typical meal deal being a packet of crisps, a sandwich, and possibly something sweet or a fizzy drink. So if we look at that– if we break that down nutritionally, you've got an awful lot of carbohydrates, you've got very little protein, you've probably got no fibre at all. That is not going to be a sustaining meal. And quite frankly, if you're looking at achieving certain things– and I do think the younger generation are more aware of what their macros are, what their goals are. They know that they want to get a certain amount of fibre– maybe not so much fibre, maybe that's where they need to look at it– but protein and carbohydrates and so on and so forth. But that meal in the middle of the day, it just isn't going to do it for anybody. And therefore there's an opportunity cost, because you've got the rest of the day to try and make up for it– even greater focus on that breakfast, and even greater focus on that evening meal. But what if that lunchtime meal was as important as the other two? Or if you're somebody– and I know people that only have two meals a day, because that works brilliantly for them, sort of an intermittent fasting type thing– again, even more focus on those two meals. They've got to be absolutely right. You've really got to focus on that. So your typical British meal deal isn't going to do it for you. You do need to seek out alternatives. And honestly, the quickest thing is just prepare more of what you did the night before and take that to work the next day. It's the quickest, easiest– go back to a lunchbox, take your lunch. Buy a thermos flask– there's a squat thermos flask that you can buy, we have about five of them at home. My husband's on a road trip at the moment. He took one with him, he took the night before's supper with him, and he's honestly stopping at a service station and having this lovely stew, rather than having– 00:37:31 ****Aleksandra King:** Yeah, definitely– the horrible choices. It's really upsetting, these service stations. 00:37:37 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** It is. It upsets me. 00:37:39 ****Aleksandra King:** Okay. So you think about preparing, and you take your lunch with you, because you won't be able to cook, and whatever you grab, you're limited. 00:37:47 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Well, there are going to be the better choices at work as well. 00:37:52 ****Aleksandra King:** Like what? 00:37:53 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** So again, I would prioritise protein at lunchtime, because if you eat too many carbohydrates, you're going to get very sleepy. So I would think about, whatever is around you– is there a bean soup that you can choose? Is there some falafel, is there some hummus? Some people are absolutely– they've not got time to go and seek out something, but they can go and get some hummus, and like a carrot, even, or some apple wedges. Or like a chicken salad from– 00:38:20 ****Aleksandra King:** Gail's? \[laughter\] Great, perfect, really– oh, thought you were going to– no– 00:38:23 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Oh, no, no. \[laughter\] They're all– that is going to cost you, like, at least ten quid. 00:38:28 ****Aleksandra King:** It is going to cost you, yeah. 00:38:29 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** And most places are going to charge you something like that. A Marks & Spencer's, or whatever, Sainsbury's– a chicken salad would be a better option. But for most people, that's not going to give them even enough. And again, there's a mental element to this, because if you've grown up with a sandwich and a packet of crisps in your lunchbox, you sort of think of that as lunch. So you have to change the way you look at it. But certainly, yeah– prioritise protein at lunchtime, make sure that you've got some vegetables in there. Don't stress too much, but don't think of it as a sort of cheat meal. Think of it as an important meal. Give it its due credit. 00:39:03 ****Aleksandra King:** Important meal, yeah. It's as important as breakfast and dinner. We've dismissed lunch– it's not really given value to that. And we don't even– 00:39:11 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Do you know, it was 2021, I think it was, that in France they finally scrapped the law that made it illegal to eat at your desk. So up until 2021– and the only reason they scrapped the law was because of Covid. If you think about the French eating culture, they've always made time for lunch. You leave regardless. One of my brothers-in-law, he lives in France, he's a painter and decorator, and at lunchtime they down tools, and– wherever they're working, they get like luncheon vouchers, they can go and get a meal– and they sit with their workmates properly, and they eat properly. They're not even having a sandwich, they're having a proper meal. So the French really know a thing or two. And that eating al desko– we have a phrase for it here– it's so common. 00:39:56 ****Aleksandra King:** So unhygienic. But anyway. But you know, I lived in Portugal for two and a half years, and same thing. We would take out an hour and a half, and all go– the whole office– downstairs, cafeteria, and have a proper, like, fish, potatoes, everything. Full on. 00:40:12 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Think about the communication that goes on during that lunch hour. I bet people are much more efficient, more effective. I'm sure you've had guests on here that have said how much more effective and efficient people are when they take breaks during the day. I always used to laugh when you used to have the smoking policy– the most efficient people were the smokers, because they got to go outside, have a cigarette, come back in. They got a mental break. And those non-smokers just worked, worked, worked, worked, worked, but they became inefficient in their working practices. And I'd say the same with lunch. If you don't stop and make it an entity in its own right, you're missing a trick. You're just going to work yourself into an early grave, because your body's not going to thank you for that at any stage. You do need to take breaks, and eating whilst you're relaxed will help with your digestion. A lot of people end up, in the afternoon particularly, if they rush their lunch, or they've eaten their lunch that's sort of substandard, or they've eaten at their desk when they haven't been focused on what they're doing, because they've been distracted by an email that's come in– their digestion will be really struggling. Their whole digestive system will be really struggling. A lot of people think they have IBS, when actually it's just because they haven't made time for lunch. 00:41:14 ****Aleksandra King:** They haven't made time for lunch. We need to respect our lunch more. Okay. Yeah, love that. I never thought about lunch in that way, ever. Well, now– right, dinner. Is it the most important one, or is breakfast still the most important one? 00:41:28 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Again, it depends on who you are. Because that sort of lark mentality is like, breakfast is my number one thing– I almost go to bed the night before dreaming of my breakfast, which some people might think of as weird, particularly if they're not breakfast people and the last thing they feel like is eating breakfast. That evening meal, it is often a time when, particularly, families or partners will come together. So I would say it has more importance in terms of its sort of bringing together of people. However, I think what people these days probably end up feeling it has importance for is because the rest of the day has been a bit of a miss, and they need to hit this one. 00:42:04 ****Aleksandra King:** You've had something unhealthy for breakfast, you've had a sandwich for lunch at your computer, and you've landed at dinner. 00:42:10 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Exactly. And what am I going to make now? And you're too tired to cook. 00:42:13 ****Aleksandra King:** You're too tired to cook, and you've got half an hour. What do you do? 00:42:16 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Well, there's some great companies out there that are doing these meal kits. But again, it's almost like they know that there are going to be people who are in this situation. I see, where I live, I see a lot of those boxes out on recycling day, so I know a lot of people– they work, or they've got family, or both– and they use those kits, meal kits, where they're making it according to a recipe. That's one option. The second option is that you do quite a good job of batch cooking. And again, there's some brilliant resources online where you can batch cook, where you can prepare meals that are uncooked, freeze them, and then take them out and pop them straight into the– 00:42:52 ****Aleksandra King:** Just on that– you've written how many books? 00:42:54 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Seven. 00:42:55 ****Aleksandra King:** You've written seven books. And one of your books, or several of the books, go through different things that you can use to prepare these meals. But what's the simplest of the books, just for, like, the simplest meals? Which would you recommend for really busy people? 00:43:11 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Probably Sheet Pan. 00:43:12 ****Aleksandra King:** Sheet pan dinners, okay. 00:43:14 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah, that was one of my first books. And the concept is, you put everything onto one tray, and then you pop it in the oven. Now there might be things that you add partway through– broccoli might take less time to cook than the chicken breast, for example, so you add that a little bit further along the line– but it is a one-tray dinner. 00:43:32 ****Aleksandra King:** I like that. Just put it on the tray. 00:43:35 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. I think that's a really easy way to cook, and it's a simple way. Because– well, there's less washing up. When I speak to friends, often it's one person cooks and the other one washes up. Well, if the one person that's cooking is putting it on one tray, and the one person washing up is washing up one tray, that seems like a fairly good deal. 00:43:53 ****Aleksandra King:** Okay. And you've put together really easy, really simple food dinners that we can just– 00:43:59 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Really, really simple. I think it's often a sort of a misunderstanding that, like, I'm a chef. I'm not. I'm a cook, and I want to find ways that are quick and easy to cook from scratch, but without using ultra-processed foods. My husband is the process-driven one. He loves the whole sourdough thing– that's right up his street. Takes too long, I'm not for that. That's why I use a pressure cooker rather than a slow cooker. 00:44:21 ****Aleksandra King:** To get into the equipment– but basically, just so– because we're trying to help people, and people like me– I'm guilty. \[laughter\] So we'll put the links in the descriptions below, so it's easy– you go in, you do that, boom, boom, boom. Okay, let's go into equipment. And also, we're going to go into shopping, because you need to have the stuff in your house, and shopping can be a real pain as well, and it takes a lot of time. \[laughter\] Okay, so, right– equipment. Besides an oven, what else do you need? 00:44:52 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** I love an air fryer, because it's like a quick oven. If there are just sort of two of you, great. If there's a much larger number, having an air fryer can get difficult, unless you are doing those one-tray meals. The air fryer, just because it heats up really quickly– a lot of modern ovens do, but slightly older ovens, and it doesn't take you to go much further than five years back, they can take, some of them, like ten, fifteen minutes to warm up, whereas an air fryer tends to take about two minutes to warm up. So it's quick and easy from that perspective. And I think that is sometimes an obstacle to people cooking from scratch– the time it takes to warm up the oven is an obstacle, because people get home and they're absolutely ravenous and they just want to eat. So that's one less thing to worry about. So I love having an air fryer. But honestly, it doesn't matter if you don't have one, because there is the oven. If you're thinking about equipment in our British kitchens, which are not that big, and you've got a limited amount of surface space, I would say a pressure cooker– multi-cooker, I'm going to call it a multi-cooker, because that's what it is. There are some big brands on the market. I still think they're an undervalued bit of kit. I just wish more people knew about them, really. 00:45:57 ****Aleksandra King:** Yeah. I've never even considered a pressure cooker. 00:46:00 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** You see a lot in India, where there are a lot of pulses prepared and going into meals. There's a lot of vegetarians and a lot of vegetarian food in India, and a lot of those dishes will be based around beans and pulses. And preparing those– where you don't buy a can every time, actually preparing them from scratch– makes them much more easily digested. Some people get quite flatulent when they eat beans. Cooking them in a pressure cooker makes them much more easily digested, and less flatulent, which is good. \[laughter\] So that's what I do. I prepare them from scratch in the pressure cooker, and then I actually prepare them and put them into the freezer in the portion sizes you get cans, because I know a lot of people haven't got a pressure cooker. But I just wish more people did, because I think it would be great for risottos– 00:46:42 ****Aleksandra King:** Is a pressure cooker better than an oven? I mean, how does it work? I don't even know much about it. 00:46:46 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. So it basically sort of forces– a bit like, if you think about slow cookers and what they do– you can take a sort of a cheaper cut of meat, and by the time it's cooked for hours on a really slow heat, you can sort of tear it apart. You can do all of that with a pressure cooker, but you can do it obviously much more quickly. And the same with things like rice. I mean, the multi-cooker– it basically is also a rice cooker. The guy that developed it is of an Asian origin, and he wanted it to be able to do meat and rice. It also does make yogurts and other things, but let's not overcomplicate it. If you want a dish and you want some brown rice, it cooks brown rice perfectly. If you've got some pork belly and you want great-flavour pork belly, you can cook that. A whole chicken– you could cook a whole chicken in there. I cook chicken from frozen in my pressure cooker, and it's entirely safe to eat. 00:47:37 ****Aleksandra King:** And that is a game-changer, because if you, like, run out of everything– 00:47:41 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** I know. And you've got really very little in– I can take some frozen veg– like, I always keep a combination of frozen onion, celery and carrots, so it's called sofrito, mirepoix, base vegetables– it's called different things in different cultures– but you use that as a base of pretty much anything. You can get some garlic and some ginger in there if you want to make it slightly one way oriented or the other, and then you can just pop in your chicken and some sort of sauce. It could be a tin of tomatoes, it could be a tin of tomatoes and some herbs, it could be a coconut milk if you want to make more of a Thai curry. And then you just cook it, and it literally is pull-apart by the time you bring it out of the pressure cooker. People don't know this, and I think people are scared, because it's not a technique we would have learned growing up– our ovens, and– it's much– 00:48:25 ****Aleksandra King:** So let's go back to the tins. If we're buying the tinned beans, and the tinned tomatoes, and the tinned whatever– is that okay, or is that ultra-processed, and we're worrying about that? 00:48:33 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Some people talk about the lining in the tins, and whether– if it's something acidic in the can, or the tin, it can lead the lining to be– you know. That's for the tomato. And for the beans– again, I would say my reason for cooking the beans is because it helps me to digest them, it helps the whole family to digest them. They're lower in what we call phytates, which are the chemicals in them. 00:48:55 ****Aleksandra King:** So basically, buy it in a packet? 00:48:57 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** I think so. But, like, I totally get that people aren't going to have time to prepare their beans, and I don't want that to be a reason that people don't eat beans. So if you need to buy cans, buy cans. 00:49:05 ****Aleksandra King:** So how many times a week should you be eating beans? 00:49:07 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Oh gosh, that's a really good question. Again, it depends on the individual, but I would say most of us could add some beans or some lentils to, like, I don't know, four or five dishes in our evening meals. But salads– again, it's a bit of a social media thing at the moment, but a dense bean salad– they're all over social media, and great that people are finally embracing this humble little thing, the bean, that's so cheap. 00:49:32 ****Aleksandra King:** My mother-in-law made something really nice the other day, and I started eating it, and I almost couldn't stop. I think that it had nutrients of everything that I wanted. She made these big white beans in a salad, with tuna, with chopped onion, and some sort of sauce. And I tell you, I love that combination. 00:49:50 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah, it's right up my street. 00:49:52 ****Aleksandra King:** I couldn't stop eating it. I wonder what it was in there that I needed so much. 00:49:56 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Honestly, you make a really good point there. You're listening to your body, and very often, when we listen to our bodies, our bodies will tell us exactly what we need. I know a lot of women will say at certain times in their cycle they will crave certain foods more. There's a good reason for that, and we probably know what that is. But I certainly understand that we listen more to social media than we listen to our bodies these days, and I really, really urge people to just tune in to your own body, because your body will tell you a huge amount. And the food that we then subsequently put in is the message back to our body– I got you, kid, I understand what you're saying, thanks. So it is a two-way process. We do need to listen. 00:50:38 ****Aleksandra King:** You were speaking about Scandinavians as well. So I'm Polish, and just across the body of water, the Swedes eat a lot of herring, and we as Polish people also eat a lot of herring. And Polish women eat herring when pregnant. Now, we say don't eat raw fish, but throughout all my pregnancies I could not stop eating herring. 00:50:59 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Really important– brain development of a baby. 00:51:01 ****Aleksandra King:** Herring? 00:51:01 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. And again, I think we in this country, we're taught to supplement, and we're taught particularly to supplement folic acid, so B9\. But omega-3 is hugely important for the development of a baby's brain. So all pregnant women should be supplementing. 00:51:15 ****Aleksandra King:** I craved that like there was no tomorrow. 00:51:18 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** You probably got very brainy children. \[laughter\] 00:51:21 ****Aleksandra King:** They actually are. Herring– that's it, that's what you were talking about. It was the food. I just remember the feeling of– I just couldn't get enough. So, I mean, the main takeaways here are that we buy whole, we plan ahead, we strip it down to the most essential things. And when you think of a recipe book, and going into that, that also seems like work. So how does one that doesn't normally cook, or have the time for it, and finds it a bit scary– how can you step into the world of– I mean, what do you do? Do you open a page one and go, I'm doing that? And then what I asked earlier– how do you shop for that? Do you have to check the recipe first? I know I'm asking really basic questions, in a way, and they sound basic whilst asking, but even for myself– I'm going to go shopping, I'm probably going to go to Tesco, and I'm going to buy my usual thing. So what do you do? 00:52:17 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** I would sit down, if you can, once a week, and think about a meal plan for the week. 00:52:23 ****Aleksandra King:** For the week. 00:52:23 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** If you can do it. Because it's one bit of effort, but it will reap great rewards. So if there's time, an hour, at the weekend maybe– 00:52:33 ****Aleksandra King:** There's enough from scrolling. You can delete some of those scrolls. \[laughter\] 00:52:36 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Exactly. Take an hour out of that, let's just be real. But don't make it too big a goal. So you say you buy your usuals– so then think about one meal that's different from your usual. I mean, actually, again, growing up we had about a three-week rotation, so Mum would do the– so if it was Tuesday, week three, it was always going to be spag bol, and if it was Thursday, week two, it was always going to be stew. So we kind of knew by what day it was. That's obviously not the case in our house, but I know it works for a lot of people. But just plan what you're going to have, and don't make it that different from what you do currently. Change one meal, and then change two meals, and then change three meals, and do it week on week, so there's nothing too big and nothing too onerous. Also, if you've got children, and you're starting to feed them new stuff, they might be a bit funny about that, because they've got very used to what they're having, and anything that's different or odd can seem quite frightening. 00:53:27 ****Aleksandra King:** I try and sneak in liver into their spaghetti bolognese. 00:53:30 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Clever. I like that. 00:53:31 ****Aleksandra King:** Is there liver in this? No. They can't actually taste it. 00:53:34 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Shame. \[laughter\] I tried to conceal it, and I chopped up fresh chillies, and I disguised and everything, but they always know. I know a lot of people put– and I've done it, but I don't tend to do it as a standard– they put lentils, brown lentils, into either their chilli, into their minced meat. A, it's a cost saving, but also, B, it's a chance to get more fibre in there. So they'll sort of supplement the beef a little bit with some of the brown lentils. 00:54:03 ****Aleksandra King:** That sounds like– so it really sounds like you're pushing the beans and the lentils. \[laughter\] You're bringing them in. 00:54:10 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** And those are really rich in fibre. Those are the ones. 00:54:13 ****Aleksandra King:** And fibre– is that essential to preventing colon cancer? Because colon cancer is on the rise. So I just wanted to know. 00:54:21 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** So beyond that, this is about everyone's systems working well, and we talk about it from a digestive perspective. But it's also about– again, if we look at what's happened with people's cholesterol levels, there is this thing called familial hypercholesterolaemia– that's where families pass, from generation to generation, high cholesterol. But so many people think they've got that, when actually it's lifestyle and diet related. And it's really important to start looking at how you make those changes, and fibre is the key change, really. But if we get it in from the word go– our children– when you're weaning a baby, you don't want a too-high-fibre diet, but literally once they start moving into sort of normal everyday food, you can start adding in that fibre. That's where we want to get people used to the textures of things. And it isn't just about beans, honestly. Seeds and nuts– I mean, how many children genuinely eat a lot of seeds and nuts these days? Well, a lot of schools ban nuts, so they're not having it from nine until three in the afternoon. Do they get it for breakfast? I doubt it. So when are they going to be having those? 00:55:23 ****Aleksandra King:** With seeds and nuts, unless you've got them in a bowl and you're snacking on them, or you sprinkle them over your oats or your yogurt– when do you– it's quite difficult to cook with seeds and nuts. 00:55:34 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Well, I mean, again, nut butter. Put a bit of peanut butter into a soup, or into a curry, to give it that lovely creaminess, and put it into a smoothie, or have it on toast. My kids are great for peanut butter. 00:55:48 ****Aleksandra King:** And peanut butter– it shouldn't be– it used to be– we used to add all sorts, sugar. Do you just check and choose an organic version? 00:55:56 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** It doesn't have to be organic, I would say. Things like, with peanut butter and almond butter, I think as long as we're getting just the nuts and some salt– that's what I'm saying, that makes it accessible to most people. I think if you start making it organic– yes, there could be slight benefits to that nutritionally. I'm just saying you don't want to make this too exclusive for people. So enjoy your nut butter, but think about places where it can be enjoyed– like your soup, your curry, your smoothie, porridge. 00:56:26 ****Aleksandra King:** Yeah. My trainer at the gym actually was showing me something. He goes, look, look at the label of this spread versus this spread. Look, this one's got all these ingredients, and this one's only got two ingredients, see? And I was like, oh, wow. \[laughter\] 00:56:39 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah, you're really taking it seriously. It is good. But again, simple methodology here. I was in Sweden recently, and I was sent out– with my university friends, and we were in a very remote place, on a very remote island. There was one shop on the island that happened to be open. We'd run out of bread. They sent me to buy the bread. I had no idea– I don't speak Swedish– so I just weighed them. And a heavier bread is more likely to have less ingredients in it. Went home and did Google Translate, and I was right– I got the correct bread. So just think about– if it's heavier bread, it's a better bread to buy. And there are all sorts of tricks like that. 00:57:12 ****Aleksandra King:** Okay, we're going to have a brand war here, but let's go into it. So if you ask people, what do you prefer– do you prefer Burger King or McDonald's? We were having this conversation in the car, we were deciding– and it's all, let's have McDonald's. Okay. And I'm not going to say who said what, but one person said, oh, I prefer McDonald's because it's softer, and it's nicer to chew. And then the other person said, well, I prefer– was it Burger King– because it's healthier, it feels the meat's bigger, or whatever. But the consensus, actually, out of everyone in that car that day, was that they preferred McDonald's, because of the softness. 00:57:51 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. Because it's hyper-palatable. Soft and light– you can just eat more and more of it. I mean, I don't know about you, but if you did eat McDonald's that day– how soon after were you hungry, would be my question. 00:58:07 ****Aleksandra King:** It didn't feel like food. It didn't feel like a meal. \[laughter\] It went in one breath, and it was in, and then I got bloated, and I was like, great. 00:58:14 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** And I think that's the thing– whether people are thinking of that as a whole meal. Every deal suggests that– every way that it's advertised suggests that it's an entire meal. But I wouldn't see that as a meal. I would see that as more like a snack. 00:58:28 ****Aleksandra King:** You could crumble it up into a little ball, like that. How is that food? Yeah. But I didn't want to be the party pooper. It was a long drive, everyone wanted it, and they were all saying how wonderful it is, and it's soft and nice, and I was like, oh– so we did it, and I gave in. And I felt– yeah, just didn't feel great. And it just went– 00:58:50 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** The difficulty in that situation, though, is if you had said something different– I want to do this, or I want to do that– sometimes that can make you feel more anxious. It's all about weighing it up. You don't want to be over– 00:59:01 ****Aleksandra King:** I mean, literally, I can't remember the last time I've had it. All the kids, really– it's just not an often thing. It was exactly a treat, which I don't eat often. 00:59:09 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** The wonderful thing– I see a lot of black and white in nutrition, and I don't like it. I don't think any food should be labelled bad. I don't think anything should be, like– obviously if it's poison, don't eat it, but if it's something that is going to– if you eat loads of it– harm you, it's okay to have not very much of it. Let's be sensible about this. Let's not kind of lose our minds over– all food has to be organic, all food has to be ultra-processed free, all food has to be good food. It doesn't. 00:59:39 ****Aleksandra King:** No, I know. And it was nice– it was a good atmosphere, and everyone was in a good mood, and all that sort of thing, and we were able to get the food in the car and just carry on the drive and everything. But it was so frustrating that there wasn't another option. Just something better, healthier– smoothies, farm food. But you're saying it's more expensive. And you think, why, when allotments are the most, you know, productive of all– 01:00:02 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Every day on my dog walk, I'm like, please give me the leftovers. Please give me your surplus. \[laughter\] 01:00:09 ****Aleksandra King:** Okay, so could you list five pantry swaps that we can do now that will make us healthier? 01:00:15 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah, great question. So I would say– things that are in your pantry– 01:00:20 ****Aleksandra King:** That you think– is a better tomato sauce, like a bigger one– ketchup? 01:00:25 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. I mean, if you're a family that eats ketchup– all my kids love ketchup– I would go for a healthier ketchup. Because if there's one that's lower in sugar, that's a great alternative. And the same with any of your condiments– if it's easier to make them, or you could make them– but there's some great condiments out there that are lower in sugar, or like mayonnaise that you can get that's made with real ingredients– avocado oil, or olive oil, or any of those. So if you're somebody that loves a good condiment, like mayonnaise, brown sauce or ketchup, I would switch those out for a healthier version. Because if you're going to be eating a lot of it, then you want to make sure you're eating a better version. Obviously, if you love your chocolate, I would say go dark, if you can go dark. \[laughter\] That's going to be better. So again, a dark chocolate– it should be 70 per cent cocoa solids plus, and it shouldn't have any other added ingredients. Sometimes there may be an emulsifier in there– it's most likely to be soy lecithin, sunflower lecithin slightly better, no emulsifier is fine. They don't need to be there– there's plenty of chocolate out there that doesn't have emulsifiers in it. So I'd say a dark chocolate, a good quality dark chocolate. 01:01:33 ****Aleksandra King:** Know what I'm going to do with this? I'm going to ChatGPT all this stuff. \[laughter\] I'm going to check the lot. I'll be like, of all these things I buy, here's my shopping basket– you tell me which ones have the emulsifiers. 01:01:43 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. They're going to get banned. They're going to go in the naughty– the naughty stuff. \[laughter\] So I would say, again, if you're a family– like, again, my kids– they prepare– especially my daughter, she's been living away from home for three years, but she prepares a lot of food herself, and she knows exactly which brand of pasta sauce to buy that's cost-effective and doesn't contain any ultra-processed food. So again, if you're going to be using things like pasta sauce regularly– and we're that family– she knows what brand to buy. At home, I make our own, and I just fill the freezer with it. I also do the same with stock. I make my own stock paste. Honestly, people think, oh my god, that's far too complicated, but it really isn't. It takes me half an hour, and I'm not even doing anything for that half an hour– it's just simmering and reducing, and I stick it in a food processor and I blend it up, and it's in the freezer. And you can use it straight from the freezer, because it has such a high salt content it doesn't actually freeze entirely. And so I just use a tablespoonful of that, rather than a stock cube. Look at what's in stock cubes– even vegetable ones, there can be a lot of other added things. 01:02:47 ****Aleksandra King:** And I love a stock cube. It gives so much flavour, and it's so much bang for your buck. 01:02:53 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Something as innocent as a stock cube is not so innocent. 01:02:56 ****Aleksandra King:** I know. And a great flavour provider. 01:02:59 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** And then, like, cereals. We don't need to have cereals– and we discussed this at the very start of this– but I think if we're looking at breakfast, think about swapping out any of the cereals that you have for something obviously oat-based. It depends on kind of what your vibe is. Some people love eating more like quinoa and buckwheat as a grain, and both of those are what we call a complete protein– they contain all nine of your essential amino acids. They're actually a better choice from a kind of protein perspective than oats would be, and they're more traditional in certain cultures. So if you make a buckwheat porridge, or you make buckwheat pancakes, that's not a bad choice for some people. Other people– they wouldn't thank you for that, they would rather have other sorts of pancakes. But again, an oat pancake– I make an oat one all the time. Grind up some oats and some oat bran, and then I use Greek yogurt or cottage cheese to keep the protein level high, and I use three eggs, and that is a great combination. It's high in fibre, high in protein– three pancakes. I can put savoury toppings on, which I more typically do, I can also put sweet toppings on, and serve that. So swapping out your cereals for whole grains, I would say. 01:04:04 ****Aleksandra King:** I knew I was going to come and see you, and I didn't want to have the guilt of sitting here opposite you, and you say, Aleksandra, what did you have for– \[laughter\] So actually, before I came here, I had a little bit of mince from the night before– so mince with onions and nice chillies and everything– and a banana. But that's all I had time for. 01:04:22 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Brilliant. 01:04:22 ****Aleksandra King:** So I thought, protein, a bit of fibre. 01:04:25 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah, absolutely. And that's what you had time for, and you made time, because you knew you wanted to eat before you did a podcast. That's about prioritising. And if you just sat here and your blood sugar was low, you would be– you'd be perfectly fine, because your adrenaline would be flowing, but at some point this is going to take its toll on your body. And how many of us do that in the workplace? I know I did it when I was in a corporate role. The vending machine was my friend– sad but true. I'm glad I stopped. 01:04:52 ****Aleksandra King:** Yeah. Gut health– I mean, we talked about fibre, so that's the main thing. What else? 01:05:00 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** So prebiotics, probiotics. We talk a lot about probiotics, I think. So these are the bacteria that we get from fermented foods, predominantly. So again, if we just look at what's happened over the course of time, and we look at other cultures– excuse the pun– sauerkraut, kimchi– these are foods that are traditional, and they've been going for a long, long time. Kefir. And even yogurt– that's probably the one that's been in the UK for the longest. But we're quite happy to take other people's hand-me-downs– can you call them that?– ideas, and make them our own. So any of those foods that have been naturally fermented. And again– so my husband's of Germanic origin, and he had sauerkraut growing up, but when I actually made sauerkraut, it was a whole different ballgame, because mine was fermented, whereas the one he'd been able to buy in a supermarket growing up wasn't. It was a long-life version, so there was vinegar in there, and there was a bit of sugar in there, and actually it wasn't sort of as acidic. But fermented foods, we get some probiotics from. But the thing that I think people are more aware of now is prebiotics. So this is where we get fibre in foods that feeds the good bacteria. So for example, a banana– if we take a banana, a really ripe banana, really sweet and sugary, is actually much lower in prebiotic fibre than a slightly underripe banana. Now you don't want to eat it where it's like green– you do want to enjoy a slightly underripe banana. It's going to be higher in this prebiotic fibre, and it helps– it's called resistant starch, essentially. So it acts like a fibre in the body. And– I forgot what the question was again. \[laughter\] 01:06:33 ****Aleksandra King:** No, no– what– for your gut. We were talking about the gut. Yeah, I didn't know that, actually. I thought, with your carbs– 01:06:39 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Actually, a lot of people don't recognise that what you can do is freeze, or cook and cool, and then even reheat carbs, and you get a higher level of resistant starch, which helps with the gut health. So your bread– I always get really good quality bread. I get it sliced, so it's the right thickness, because if I slice it, it's too thick. And then I put it all in the freezer, take out a slice by slice, so I don't waste any money– because bread is expensive, if you want to buy good bread. And then I pop it into the toaster, and that would be lower glycaemic index, so it's not going to affect my blood glucose as much, and it would be higher in the right kind of fibre. But things like onions, leeks, garlic– those are really good foods– and cauliflower. All of these foods we should be getting more of. But again, if we skip the food preparation process, and we go to something that's already made, or some sauce that's already been made, we're not going to get the benefits of that prebiotic fibre. So prebiotics and probiotics. And when it comes to fibre– if you're not used to it, which a lot of us aren't– we haven't had enough for a long time– don't introduce loads all of a sudden. You'll get some nasty side effects from doing that, and it will put you off. So you want to gently increase your fibre levels, and I find one of the best ways that I introduce it with clients is via things like flax seeds and chia seeds, because they're very measurable. Sometimes people find beans quite useful as well, but to supplement, like, the beef in your bolognese, rather than to eat a whole meal of beans. So just enter into it very, very gently, and change small things bit by bit. Because if you suddenly introduce a whole lot of fibre to your diet, your gut will not know what's hit it. You'll get some side effects that you don't want, and it will put you off wanting to carry on. 01:08:19 ****Aleksandra King:** I see. I was going to say, because I don't know how many chia seeds is too many, how many flax seeds is too many. I know that you can have too much ginger– like, ginger, you should only have a little bit, like half a teaspoon a day or something. So how do you know? 01:08:30 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah. Well, it is anti-inflammatory, ginger, and I would say you can put it into all your dishes, and– turmeric. But again, this combination of things could be really useful. So using turmeric, ginger and some black pepper combined can help with improving how bioavailable it is to your body. So again, just these little titbits of information. Like, I made this morning– I did some dark chocolate, like little melted dark chocolate puddles, and I just pushed in some freeze-dried strawberries. Because the anthocyanins in the strawberries work synergistically with the flavonoids in the dark chocolate, so you get a better outcome– better for gut health. 01:09:05 ****Aleksandra King:** Better for those romantic images, where you've got the strawberry and they dip it in chocolate and give it to the– you're actually really helping. \[laughter\] 01:09:13 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** But these little things can really help you make decisions. Like, when you're thinking about, should I have this or that, and I quite fancy both– well, I'll have that one, because that one's going to give me a better outcome. That's kind of how my brain works. 01:09:25 ****Aleksandra King:** I heard you need to have, ideally, if you want to absorb iron from meat or whatever, you need to have it with vitamin C. 01:09:33 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yeah– particularly plant-based iron sources. You should be able to absorb enough from animal-based sources. There's no harm in having vitamin C alongside– I very often do. I very often have something like an orange or something after a meal, or kiwi fruit as my kind of dessert. But yeah, certainly if you're eating plant-based iron sources. And again, things like cooking your pulses in a pressure cooker, which reduces the phytates, will make the iron from the pulses more absorbable. So there's these little tips and tricks– which is why I do what I do. 01:10:07 ****Aleksandra King:** Yeah. I think what we need to do is a follow-up on this, and we need to go into a kitchen– come to my kitchen, or come to your kitchen, whatever kitchen– and a whole bunch of food, and then just look at the food and prepare something. I mean, it's just like– almost like, what's going on up here? We'll do like a little follow-up, possibly, just to help us. Because it's all– it's getting absorbed, but it's like– yeah, I want to get into a kitchen and have a look. And I'm definitely testing the labels and putting them into ChatGPT. \[laughter\] This is now going to get very electrical. See, the next project. 01:10:38 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Yes, yes. The next project. 01:10:39 ****Aleksandra King:** But a final question, and I'm going to make it a difficult one. One takeaway for people– one thing that, if you could impart to them, to give people watching one thing that's going to help them, guidance– what would it be? 01:10:56 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Oh, a good one. Something that I haven't already said? That's a very good question. Can I give– I can't give two? 01:11:08 ****Aleksandra King:** \[laughter\] You asked me for one– no, you can give two. 01:11:11 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** I do think– try and listen to your body more than you listen to social media. I think that's a key takeaway, because I think we can get so distracted by the messaging that we see online, and we can start to overthink nutrition, and our body tells us much more than social media will ever tell us. If you're sleeping well, if you've got energy, if your digestive system is working well, you're not constipated, if you've got good skin, and your hair is growing brilliantly, and your nails are nice and strong– great. If any of those things aren't working well– if you're struggling to get pregnant, if you're finding your moods are up and down, if you find that your blood glucose is dropping regularly throughout the day– think about what you need to do to address that. But I would urge people to listen to their body more than they listen to social media. And I think the second thing is, get label reading. You may be surprised by what you find. I think if you're only coming into this as a newbie, or someone that's not really thought about this before, or has thought about it but not really known what to do about it, I would look for emulsifiers and stabilisers on most products. And I wouldn't say be black and white about it– you don't have to cut them all out– but just be aware. If your diet consists of a lot of products that contain those, have a think about where you might want to make some changes. Those would be my two. 01:12:30 ****Aleksandra King:** Yeah. For me, it's like a relationship. It's a breakup. It is a breakup– I don't go back. \[laughter\] I'm going to break up with the emulsifiers and the stabilisers. 01:12:46 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** I think that's the tough thing. We all have to eat, and we do need to make some decisions that are right for us– and, as mothers as well, that are right for our children, and our partners probably as well. We do have concerns for other people. That does tend to be part and parcel– certainly I feel that way, I'm sure others do too. And on that basis, you take that responsibility quite seriously. If you are the person that's doing the shopping, if you're a person that even puts the food in the cupboard that someone else cooks, it's just making sure that, as far as possible, things are as good as they can be, within your budget and within reason. So I think you've just got to be realistic about it. 01:13:22 ****Aleksandra King:** Jenny, it's been educational. \[laughter\] Thank you so much for coming on. 01:13:27 ****Jenny Tschiesche:** Thank you for inviting me. ## Follow Aleksandra - [Instagram](https://instagram.com/king.aleksandra) - [X](https://x.com/aleksandrabking) - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleksandraking) - [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@AleksandraKing) - [Aleksandra's Inner Circle](https://laylo.com/aleksandraking) Business and collaborations: [aleksandraking.com](https://aleksandraking.com) | [aleksandra@aleksandraking.com](mailto:aleksandra@aleksandraking.com) *The views expressed by guests are their own and do not reflect those of Aleksandra, the podcast, or its producers. This podcast is for entertainment only.*