Okay, hello and welcome to another episode of Sigma Nutrition Radio.

We're at episode 403 of the podcast.

My name is Danny Lennon,

of course, alongside Alan Flanagan, as usual. And today we are delighted to have a very, very special guest, Professor David Jacobs, someone who has influenced both Alan and I

in our thinking around nutrition science in a number of ways, both broadly

about nutrition science, as well as specifically on some of the concepts we'll hopefully

discuss today. So Professor Jacobs, welcome to the podcast.

Well, thank you very much. It's very nice to be here.

Yes, and there's lots that we could get into, but I suppose as a good starting point,

to give people listening some context, could you maybe first speak to perhaps the origins of how

you came to start thinking so deeply through these, I suppose, meta-level questions about nutrition science,

and what drew you to that in the first place?

I think I'd like to start with my work on whole grain foods.

We could go a little bit further back

if you're interested in the relationships with Ansel Keys and that work

and a little bit before I started really getting into nutrition. But starting in 1994,

there was a question asked to me as part of a consultation with General Mills, the cereal

company, flower company, about whether whole grains were better than refined grains.

I had done quite a bit of work kind of on the edges of nutrition and especially with respect to serum cholesterol. But I had not done that kind of on the edges of nutrition and especially with respect to serum cholesterol.

But I had not done that kind of thing.

And so we did a project and found that whole grain in the literature was related to reduced cancer rates in a series of case control studies.

And the power of that single nutritional variable was pretty remarkable.

...