I talk about five rules, really, to improve your gut.

First is try and get 30 different plants a week into your diet.

The second, the rule is fermented foods,

trying to get at least three different types of fermented food in every day.

Third, I'd go for eating the rainbow and thinking about colour.

And the reason is that colour tells you the chemicals in those plants that are helpful for your gut microbes. And the chemicals are

called polyphenols and they are rocket fuel for your gut microbes. And number four would be

giving your gut a rest.

So again, there's time restricted eating, increasing evidence that if you can leave,

you don't have to do massive fasting, but if 12 to 14 hours will give benefits to your metabolism, fire your gut microbes.

And finally, it's switch from eating ultra-processed food to real food. And that means quality,

not calories. If you remember five things about gut health, do that. Because the food choices

you make are most important choices you can make for your health. And these are things we make

multiple times a day. 60% of the US diet is fake food.

And we're now getting the science to show why it's bad for our gut microbes, why it makes us

overeat by 25%, why it's been making us so sick.

So what if I told you that the state of not just your physical health, your weight,

your energy, your risk of disease, but also your mental health, including feelings of depression

and anxiety and low mood, just might be coming from the bacteria in your gut. Wait, what? That

sounds a little bonkers, right? But that is what

cutting-edge science focused on the microbiome is starting to reveal, which is why I wanted to

sit down with Tim Specter, professor of epidemiology leading microbiome researcher, and co-founder of

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