I found teenage at a much more stressful than old age.

Can you remember when you were a teenager?

That was really stressful. You were quarreling, at least I was quarreling with my parents. I was in love with the wrong people. I didn't know where I was going. When you're young, you spend a lot of time worrying about what people will think. I do sometimes look at myself in the mirror and think, honestly, this is too much. You've got, you know, you've got orange earrings, the size of tennis balls on your ears.

You've got, you know, you've got orange

earrings the size of tennis balls on your ears. You've got these ridiculous glasses. What is old?

I don't know what old is, except that it's liberating. Hello, and welcome to Ways to Change

the World. I'm Christian Guru Murphy. And this is the podcast where we talk to extraordinary people

about the big ideas and their lives and the events that have helped shape them.

My guest today is known to millions as a judge on the Great British Bake Off,

but Prud-Leath's influence stretches far beyond television,

from founding a prestigious cookery school and building a Michelin-starred restaurant,

to shaping national conversations around food, education and public health.

In her latest book, Being Old and Learning to Love It, she turns her attention to aging,

writing candidly about life in her 80s from love and loss to staying relevant and what it really means to grow older well.

Prue, welcome.

We begin this conversation usually with a question, which is if you could change the world in any way, how would you change it?

Simple.

I would make sure that every child at school learned to cook

healthily and learned to eat it so that they'd prepare it and eat it and they'd end up loving

healthy food. And if they, we could do that to a single generation of children, they would

grow up liking healthy food and therefore eating it

by choice. And they'd teach their children that way. And we'd solve the obesity problem.

...