Hello and welcome to Being Well. I'm Forest Hanson. If you're new to the podcast, this is

where we explore the practical science of lasting well-being. And if you've listened before,

welcome back.

I've been looking forward to today's conversation for a while. We generally focus on topics

related to mental health on the podcast, but there's no doubt that our physical health

plays an enormous role in our ability to lead a fulfilling life. And there's nothing

quite like a pandemic to throw that into sharp relief. That's why I'm so happy to be joined

today by one of the world's leading nutritional scientists, who is also heavily involved

in one of the world's largest ongoing studies of COVID, Dr. Tim Specter. Dr. Specter is

a professor of genetic epidemiology and the director of the twins UK registry at King's

College London. Twins UK is a scientific study of over 14,000 identical and non-identical

twins that's been running for nearly three decades. Much of Dr. Specter's current work focuses

on the study of the gut's microbiome. He's also one of the leaders of the COVID symptom

study, a fantastic ongoing study that includes doctors and scientists at Mass General, the Harvard

School of Public Health, the Stanford University School of Medicine, of course, King's College

London and the Health Science Company Zoe, which Dr. Specter is one of the founders of.

Finally, he's the author of a number of wonderful books, including The Diet Myth,

identically different, and his most recent book, Spoon Fad, Why Almost Everything We've Been

Told About Food Is Wrong. So Tim, thanks again for taking the time to do this today. How are

you doing? It's great. That's a pleasure. Again, thanks so much for being here. I've been really

looking forward to the conversation. As I kind of mentioned during the intro, there are a lot of

different places that we could start with you. You are an extremely knowledgeable person,

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