Doctors' Notes: Diet
What's Up Docs?
BBC
4.4 • 659 Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Drs Chris and Xand continue their conversation about food with Professor of Psychology Ashley Gearhardt. Drawing on her clinical experience, they explore what it means to live with food addiction and how shame and stigma make it harder to talk openly, seek help, or make changes. They also explore how Ashley came to study food addiction, and the links between industrial processing of food and tobacco.
Presenters: Drs Chris and Xand van Tulleken Guest: Professor Ashley Gearhardt Researcher: Samara Linton Producer: Maia Miller-Lewis Social Media Producer: Leon Gower Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar Editor: Jo Rowntree Tech Lead: Reuben Huxtable Digital Lead: Richard Berry Composer: Phoebe McFarlane Sound Design: Melvin Rickarby
At the BBC: Assistant Commissioner: Greg Smith Commissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:05.7 | Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, and I'm Ed Gamble, host of another BBC podcast, The Traitors Uncloaked. |
| 0:12.7 | But my show is available only on BBC Sounds, just like Ellis and John's Saturday bonus episodes, |
| 0:18.2 | The Pop Top Ten podcast with Scott Mills and Rylan, and comedy specials |
| 0:22.2 | from the likes of Harriet Kemsley, Susie Ruffle and Rommashranganathan. |
| 0:25.9 | However, and maybe I'm biased, it's really all about the traitors uncoaked. |
| 0:30.3 | So for a whole bunch of exclusive scoops and podcasts, listen only on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.7 | Welcome to Doctor's Notes. I'm Dr Chris Van Telegan. |
| 0:38.1 | As ever, I'm here with my identical twin brother and doctor. |
| 0:41.9 | That's me, Doctor Zand. |
| 0:43.5 | And this is bonus extra content. |
| 0:46.1 | We dive deeper into the topic we've just discussed in our BBC Radio 4 podcast, What's Up, Docs? |
| 0:51.7 | We've just finished recording an interview about diet with Professor Ashley Gerhardt, |
| 0:55.5 | who's a clinical psychologist and a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. |
| 1:01.2 | We've been talking about diet, food, about the kinds of food we overeat and about why we overeat them. From that discussion, we really want to |
| 1:14.4 | expand more into the subject, which for some people is very controversial, food addiction. |
| 1:21.4 | Chris, I think this is such a good topic because everyone has some skin in the game. We're all |
| 1:27.0 | eating food. We're all eating food. |
| 1:27.6 | We're all surrounded by food. |
| 1:29.2 | And we are all, I would say everyone has a little bit of confusion about food. |
| 1:34.2 | Some of us have got a lot of confusion because there are stories told about the foods we eat on the packets by the marketing, by the the large corporations that drill into our brains, |
| 1:47.0 | distort the way we think about our diet. And so this feels very, very perfect for doctors' notes |
... |
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