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The Food Programme

Is There A Perfect Diet Just For You? The Future of Personalised Nutrition

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4943 Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dan Saladino takes part in a gruelling nutrition study to work out what to eat. Founded by Professor Tim Spector "Predict" is one of the biggest food and diet studies ever devised.

A technological revolution means it is now possible to monitor large groups of people as they eat food. With this accumulation of 'big data' and the use of Artificial Intelligence it's also becoming increasingly possible to personalise nutritional advice. Dan spends two weeks on the study, being tested and scanned as he eats specially formulated muffins, drinks and meals, all designed to test his response to fats and carbs. At the end of the tough eating regime, Tim Spector gives him some good and bad news about his relationship with different foods.

Dan also speaks to Professor Eric Topol, Professor of Molecular Medicine at the Scripps Research Institute in California and the author of Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again. He believes this more individualised approach to nutrition will soon create the biggest shift we've seen in modern medicine. In the future our phones, watches and smart speakers will be providing increasingly detailed information about how and what we should eat.

To get even more of his own personalised nutrition advice Dan has his gut microbiome tested by a company called Atlas Biomed. The microbiome is the collection of trillions of bacteria inside all of us that we now know exerts a big influence on our health. The lead researcher at Atlas Biomed Dmitry Alexeev tells Dan what (or perhaps who) is inside his gut and what this might mean for his future health.

Presented and produced by Dan Saladino.

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the

0:03.8

podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.

0:08.6

It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.

0:15.3

What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism

0:19.8

and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.

0:23.7

And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject

0:28.4

you might not even have thought you were interested in.

0:30.2

Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,

0:36.1

you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.

0:39.7

BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

0:45.0

I've been prepared to do a lot for the food program,

0:50.0

but this is a first. I've been hospitalized.

0:54.0

I've been hospitalized.

0:55.0

Sit here.

0:56.0

Yeah.

0:57.0

Swim your legs around and make yourself comfortable.

0:59.0

It's January and I'm on a bed inside St Thomas's Hospital in London and I'm in the safe hands of Joanna.

1:06.2

I'm one of the nurses and so I'm going to be doing all your samples throughout the day.

1:10.3

So you've got practically bits and pieces. I'm about to undergo more medical tests in one day than I've had in my entire life and

1:19.1

these tests will reveal what happens to my body when I eat food.

1:24.0

Can I just get your name?

1:26.0

Yes.

...

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