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How would you feel if I was to tell you

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that nutrition science
has come such a long way

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that in my hand I have
some pretty special pills.

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You’re never going to have to eat again,

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You won't be eating any meals,

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all you need to do
is take one of these pills

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breakfast, lunch, and dinner
for the rest of your life

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and it's going to give you
the perfect balance of protein,

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carbohydrates, and fat.

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It is going to give you
the number of calories or kilojoules

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that you need to stay at exactly
the perfect weight for your body.

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It's going to give you
all of the antioxidants

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and what we call phytochemicals

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which just means plants nutrients,
plant chemicals

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that are good for us.

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All in this amazing little pills.

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Isn’t science amazing?

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How would you feel?

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(Booing)

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“Boo!” Yes.
That's what I was hoping for.

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I hope you are feeling,
“God, that would be awful!"

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"How disappointing!”

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I hope there are some memories
coming into your mind right now.

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They certainly are in mine.

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I remember my mom’s awesome lasagna

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that she always used to make

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when we’d used to appear
as millions of people

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and she had twenty mouths to feed

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and she would whip up this lasagna.

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I remember my grandmother
used to make this extraordinary

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gingerbread cake

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that my mother could never replicate
despite being the better cook.

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I remember the pancakes
that the grandmother of a family friend

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always made us whenever us kids
appeared at their house.

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I remember being a teenager
doing exchanges with a student in France

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and we had bowls of hot chocolate
with white bread

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yes, white baguette with butter and jam

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and we dipped it into our hot chocolates.

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I remember the amazing paellas
that we used to have as a family

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in Spain on our family holidays.

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The point is food is much much more
than a bit of nutrients.

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You’d be pleased to know
that science is not nearly at this point.

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Thank goodness,

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because food is more
than the nutrients that it contains.

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Food is part of who we are.

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Food is part of our culture.

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It is part of our upbringing.

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It’s part of how we negotiate
and interact with each other.

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Just think about, those of you
in the room with a partner,

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what did you do on your first dates?

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I'm willing to bet that you
went for dinner at some point.

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What do we do when we're celebrating?

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Apart from popping open the champagne,
we probably have some celebratory cake

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or we have some food.

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What do we do at Christmas and New Year?
What do we do at funerals?

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Food is always involved.

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I’ve traveled to some pretty
remote places in the world

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and it’s the same everywhere you go,

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whether you're in the most
modern urbanized city

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or whether you're in some village
in the middle of Africa somewhere;

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people want to share food with you.

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The sharing of food
is the sense of friendship,

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a sense of who we are as human beings.

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And here's my concern,

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is that ...

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and I'm a Nutrition Scientist,
I’ve devoted my career to the space;

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my concern is that nutrition
is destroying some of those things.

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But here's the problem,

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because we do have quite literally
a big problem.

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Here in Australia,

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and unfortunately
in most of the rest of the world,

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certainly all of the developed world,


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and, fastly catching us up,
the developing world,

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it is now the norm in Australia to be fat.

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Now that's not an aesthetic problem.

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I'm not here to talk about body image,
that's a whole other talk.

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But that problem coaches us in
a whole number of chronic health diseases.

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We know that diabetes is on the rise.

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Type 2 diabetes is now the fastest-growing
chronic disease in this country

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and 280 of us are diagnosed
every single day.

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Every 12 minutes an Australian dies
of cardiovascular disease.

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Ladies, one in three of us
will develop cancer

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and guys, I'm sorry, one in two of you
will develop cancer before you're 85.

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Now, while much of that
can't be prevented,

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we do know that diet, and lifestyle

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but diet is intricately involved in all
of those chronic diseases.

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If we were to change the way that we eat,

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we could dramatically
reduce those numbers;

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we could dramatically reduce
the early death that is in this country

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and dramatically improve
the quality of life

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for so many people.

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So, why is it that it’s so hard to do?

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If you've ever tried to follow a diet,

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isn’t that an awful word?

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I hate calling myself a dietitian
because that word “diet” is in there.

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But diet really just means
the way that we eat

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and what we are eating.

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It’s really hard to change
the way that we do

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and part of that is because
of how ingrained the way that we eat is

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in the way that we live today.

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So, how you’ve been brought up to eat

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will always have a dramatic influence
on the way that you’re eating today

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and the way that your future children

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and the next generation comes through.

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But I also feel that part of the problem
is the amount of confusion.

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I was involved in a recent survey

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where we asked people about
how they felt about healthy eating

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whether they were confused by it.

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87% of people said that
they were completely confused

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by what on earth is healthy eating.

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That’s coming from
some of the media sensationalism

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that we have around this area.

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And don’t get me wrong,
I’m involved in the media

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and I love that people are so passionate
about this area,

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but unfortunately, it ends up in some
things being slightly skewed and bent

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and what was the truth kind of gets bent
out of all proportion.

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So, let’s take butter as an example.

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Did you see the Times magazine
not so long ago

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where it had "butter"
in the front cover and said:

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"There’s hope.
The scientists have got it all wrong".

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And suddenly my Facebook page
and other people’s

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were going crazy saying:

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“Yes! Burgers and bacon and everything
are all back on the menu!”.

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That wasn’t what the research
showed at all.

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The research actually showed that,
hang on a minute,

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if we replace saturated fat
with a bunch of refined carbohydrates

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we are in just as bad a state,
possibly even worse.

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That’s actually what the research showed.

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Did the research say:

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“Hey, saturated fats
are actually really good for us”?

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No, they didn't.

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It questions, yes,
the relationship between

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saturated fat and cardiovascular disease

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but that’s one aspect
of saturated fats in our body.

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It certainly didn’t show us that, "Hey,
eating saturated fat reduces your risk".

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No, it didn’t say that,
but that’s the media reporting.

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So that’s just one example
out of many that are showing us

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how we’re actually
causing more confusion.

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So, let’s take a little trip back
through my lifetime,

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because essentially the thing
that I want to remind you about

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is that we haven’t really got fat
until the last 50 or so years.

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I’m not that old

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but really is just those last few decades

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that we are starting to have
this really major problem.

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So, here’s what I’ve seen happen.

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When I was a teenager, mom and I
first got interested in trying to diet,

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became aware of my body and thinking,

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“I've got to be skinnier".

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Skinny equals beauty

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unfortunately in this country
and in the UK where I grew up.

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And here’s what happened:

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mom and I embarked
on a whole bunch of diets.

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We did the Cambridge diet,

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which was all shakes and pills and so on.

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We were both ill by about day 3 in bed,

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so we decided: "Ok,
maybe that’s not the way to go".

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Then we tried something else
called the Scarsdale diet,

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that involved eating
a dry piece of wholemeal toast

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in the morning with an orange,

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I ate that breakfast
for I don’t know how many weeks.

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I couldn’t do it today.

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Tuna sandwiches I still struggle with

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‘cause we had tuna sandwiches
every lunchtime,

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a piece a fruit, a low-fat yogurt, so on.

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We tried everything

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and finally
we settled on the low-fat diet,

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and of course that was the era
of the low-fat way of eating.

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I remember eating
an entire French baguette

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because it was fat free,
so guess what?

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In here, license to eat.

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And that’s exactly what we see.

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So, the low-fat era took off,
and what happened?

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Food companies responded
to our need for low fat

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by giving us a whole bunch
of low-fat food.

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Unfortunately,
it was full of refined starch,

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lots of added sugars, additives
and preservatives,

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and whatever else, flavors galore

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to try and make the food taste
even remotely good.

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Psychologically, we all had
that license to eat.

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“Oh, it’s fat free,
therefore, calorie free,

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I can eat as much as I like”.

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That’s the way that we interpreted it

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and we continued to get fatter.

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So then, suddenly
the finger of blame went:

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“Hang on a minute, we’ve got it all wrong,

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it’s not fat, it’s carbs!

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It’s carbs that are to blame.

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Go back to eating lots of fat.
Let’s focus on the carbs".

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And that’s kinda where
we are at the moment.

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So, I went shopping, and normally

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you’d expect a little shopping basket
to be full of food.

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Here there’s not very much food,
but this is what people are eating.

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So, now we’ve got a whole bunch
of products here.

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This one says "Raw protein".

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So, we are fixated
with the problem is carbs.

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This is raw protein and in the ingredients

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says it’s got brown rice syrup
and brown rice protein.

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How do you reckon
they got it out of brown rice?

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Yet this is called the raw bar.

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We’ve got "Think thin".
Cookies and cream.

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We’ve got high-protein, low-carb bars
in chocolate flavor.

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You know what we want:
our cake and eat it,

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we really do.

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And things that make it sound like:

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“Eat this and I’ll get you burning fat”.

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All of those bars in here
have more than a thousand kilojoules

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but you know what we are scared of?

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(Laughter)

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God forbid you eat a banana.

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It's carbs.

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It’s going to go straight to the belly.

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That’s the situation we are in.

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We’ve got cookie.

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You know, we really wanna have
the chocolate, the sugary,

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the cakes, the biscuits,
so we’ve got this kind of thing

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"naturally good".

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It’s free of pretty much everything.

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But you know what’s in it?

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Basically rice, butter and sugar.

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Just happens to be gluten-free flour.

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This is the situation we are in

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where people are completely confused,

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and the food industry keeps responding

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by giving us more and more of what?

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That's a basket, apart from my banana,

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of processed food.

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I live in Bondi, and I went
into one of the local whole foods cafes,

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it’s honestly called Whole Foods,
that’s on its banner.

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They serve these
amazing green smoothies

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and I asked for the green smoothie
without the protein powder.

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She looked and recognized
who I was and said:

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“Why are you not having
the protein powder?"

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"Is this not a good protein powder?
Should we have a better protein powder?”

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And I said, “Because I don’t eat
processed food,

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or try not to eat too much of it".

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and the dawning on her face
was like, "Oh!"

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I could see she had never considered

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that this green pea protein powder
was actually a processed food.

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So, why is it that we are
kind of recognizing

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processed carbs are not
all that good for us,

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we’ve certainly recognized
processed fat, trans fat

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are not good for us,

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but now we’re doing it with protein.

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We’re processing the life out of that

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00:11:25,130 --> 00:11:27,610
and thinking that’s going to be
all our answers.

246
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So when we look worldwide at the moment

247
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we’ve got a number of different
nutritional thinkings.

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We’ve got a very low-fat approach,
that’s practically vegan,

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from Doctor Dean Ornish
over in the States.

250
00:11:43,217 --> 00:11:44,797
He’s got lots of great research,

251
00:11:44,797 --> 00:11:48,467
he’s shown some amazing studies
and published some amazing results.

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00:11:48,467 --> 00:11:52,244
We’ve got doctor Loren Cordain,
who’s the kinda father of the paleo diet

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I'm sure there’s some people in the room

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who might have tried or at least heard,

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it’s the most googled diet at the moment,
it’s paleo.

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That same Kathy, by the way,
that serves the green smoothies,

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now serves paleo banana bread,
paleo brownies, paleo protein powder.

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Where is paleo man eating any of that?

259
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But we can’t see how ridiculous
that is, can we?

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We’ve got the very low-carb approaches,
started of course by Doctor Atkinson,

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now incorporated by a whole bunch
of other different people,

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still really popular
in the fitness industry.

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We’ve got the South Beach Diet
and the low GI diet.

264
00:12:30,408 --> 00:12:33,168
And then we’ve got traditional diets
around the world

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00:12:33,168 --> 00:12:34,818
like the Mediterranean diet,

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00:12:34,818 --> 00:12:36,578
which is actually pretty high in fat,

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but it’s fats from really good stuff,
like extra virgin olive oil,

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avocados and nuts and seeds.

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Really solid evidence
behind that kind of a diet.

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We’ve got a very contrasting diet,
but they have

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some of the longest living people
in the world in Japan:

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the Japanese diet.

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The Okinawans have
more people that live to 100

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than anyone else in the world.

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So that diet has been studied extensively
to see, can we learn anything from this?

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and it's very low fat.

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So why did our low-fat thing not work
and theirs does?

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Because when we look
at all those different approaches

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they have some commonalities,

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and that commonality is
that they’re based on real food,

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on whole foods.

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And the state that we are at
in nutrition research -

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and I need to remind you
that nutrition research,

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or nutrition as a science,
is still a very very young science.

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We only discovered vitamins and minerals
last century.

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00:13:32,541 --> 00:13:35,381
We have so much more
to understand and to know,

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so it’s a fascinating science to get into
and to study and to read about.

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But there’s so much we need to know.

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But there are,
despite the apparent confusion,

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00:13:44,975 --> 00:13:48,285
there are some very clear messages
coming out of this science.

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00:13:48,754 --> 00:13:52,334
that is that there are some foundations
that we can all employ,

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00:13:52,454 --> 00:13:58,271
the most important one of those
is that it is about eating more plants.

293
00:13:58,271 --> 00:14:01,635
We absolutely must eat more plant food.
That’s the first thing.

294
00:14:02,729 --> 00:14:06,579
But the other interesting thing about
looking at these traditional diets

295
00:14:06,579 --> 00:14:08,429
that seem to be so healthy

296
00:14:08,429 --> 00:14:12,271
is about the attitudes
to food in those places

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00:14:12,981 --> 00:14:14,661
I’m going to give you three words

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and I just want you to think about
which one of these is the odd one out:

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bread, pasta and butter.

300
00:14:22,836 --> 00:14:24,556
Which one is the odd one out?

301
00:14:25,975 --> 00:14:26,955
Butter. Why?

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Because bread and pasta are carbs.

303
00:14:30,583 --> 00:14:33,193
This question comes from
a real psychology study

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00:14:33,193 --> 00:14:35,333
that was published a few years ago.

305
00:14:35,333 --> 00:14:37,513
More than a decade ago
now actually I think.

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00:14:37,809 --> 00:14:39,989
And they looked at the different cultures,

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00:14:39,989 --> 00:14:41,479
and they had the Americans,

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00:14:41,479 --> 00:14:43,819
the Belgians with the French,

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00:14:43,819 --> 00:14:45,459
and the Japanese.

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00:14:45,742 --> 00:14:48,392
The French answered that question
by saying,

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00:14:48,612 --> 00:14:51,822
“Pasta is the odd one out,
‘cause bread and butter go together”.

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00:14:53,118 --> 00:14:56,538
The Americans answered that question
just as some people here did

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00:14:56,538 --> 00:14:59,618
by saying: "Bread and pasta go together
‘cause they are carbs”.

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00:15:00,324 --> 00:15:02,724
Who has the bigger problem with food?

315
00:15:02,804 --> 00:15:06,624
That study showed that the Americans
were much more concerned and worried

316
00:15:06,624 --> 00:15:08,154
about the foods that they buy,

317
00:15:08,154 --> 00:15:12,094
they were much more likely to buy
the foods that are in my shopping basket.

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00:15:13,572 --> 00:15:15,832
They didn’t place much priority,

319
00:15:15,832 --> 00:15:19,302
and they certainly
didn’t place much pleasure in food,

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00:15:19,518 --> 00:15:20,878
whereas the French do.

321
00:15:20,878 --> 00:15:21,928
When I was a student,

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00:15:21,928 --> 00:15:24,618
I spent a summer waitressing
in a restaurant in Paris.

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00:15:24,717 --> 00:15:26,367
And it was in a business area

324
00:15:26,367 --> 00:15:29,037
and what would happen
when all the local business people

325
00:15:29,037 --> 00:15:30,397
would come to the restaurant

326
00:15:30,397 --> 00:15:33,277
for a sit-down lunch with a knife and fork

327
00:15:33,277 --> 00:15:35,817
converse and chat over the table

328
00:15:35,927 --> 00:15:37,977
and then go back to work in the afternoon?

329
00:15:37,977 --> 00:15:39,257
What happens in Sydney?

330
00:15:39,257 --> 00:15:41,457
You’re lucky if you grab a sandwich
on the way.

331
00:15:41,457 --> 00:15:43,077
People are eating in the street,

332
00:15:43,077 --> 00:15:46,027
something my mother always told me
it was really rude to do.

333
00:15:46,027 --> 00:15:49,677
Everything is grabbing on the run.
Everything is on the run. Rush rush rush.

334
00:15:49,677 --> 00:15:51,187
We don’t give any priority,

335
00:15:51,187 --> 00:15:53,367
and we don’t give any respect
to food anymore.

336
00:15:54,560 --> 00:15:57,560
You know, when I was at school,
I’m not particularly religious,

337
00:15:57,560 --> 00:16:00,520
but at school we had to say grace
before we ate our lunch.

338
00:16:00,520 --> 00:16:03,210
The whole school had to sit down
at our tables,

339
00:16:03,210 --> 00:16:05,160
and we all chanted the grace,

340
00:16:05,170 --> 00:16:07,080
and then everyone could start to eat.

341
00:16:08,485 --> 00:16:11,175
Something nice about that kind of respect,

342
00:16:11,175 --> 00:16:14,135
'cause at the end of the day
what we have to recognise is that

343
00:16:14,135 --> 00:16:17,175
we are really lucky that we have a choice.

344
00:16:17,175 --> 00:16:21,845
We can choose to follow low carb,
or low fat, or paleo.

345
00:16:21,845 --> 00:16:23,505
We have that choice.

346
00:16:24,326 --> 00:16:25,766
But where I want to leave you

347
00:16:25,766 --> 00:16:28,796
is by saying if we're really
going to get some change,

348
00:16:28,796 --> 00:16:31,966
and changing those awful statistics
that are hitting Australia,

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00:16:31,966 --> 00:16:33,335
I need you help.

350
00:16:33,792 --> 00:16:35,842
We need to lose the diet wars.

351
00:16:35,842 --> 00:16:37,682
We need to give up on the promises

352
00:16:37,682 --> 00:16:40,372
that the quick fix is in the pills,
potions, and shakes,

353
00:16:40,372 --> 00:16:42,232
and everything’s going to do it for us

354
00:16:42,232 --> 00:16:44,322
without us putting in any effort ourselves

355
00:16:44,322 --> 00:16:47,042
and we’ve got to go back
to eating real food.

356
00:16:47,614 --> 00:16:50,293
And you can choose your ultimate diet.

357
00:16:50,293 --> 00:16:53,203
As long as you have those
core whole food foundations

358
00:16:53,203 --> 00:16:54,513
with lots of plant food,

359
00:16:54,513 --> 00:16:56,313
whether or not you choose to add meat

360
00:16:56,313 --> 00:16:58,443
or other animal products into it,

361
00:16:58,443 --> 00:17:01,123
then you can make it
individualized to you.

362
00:17:01,483 --> 00:17:03,123
And above all,

363
00:17:03,560 --> 00:17:06,160
we absolutely must eat with joy.

364
00:17:06,447 --> 00:17:09,037
We have to take pleasure
in what we are doing

365
00:17:09,037 --> 00:17:12,367
because otherwise you're not going to
do it for the long term.

366
00:17:12,367 --> 00:17:15,317
It’s only when you change
for the long term,

367
00:17:15,317 --> 00:17:18,037
you change the way your thought
processes work,

368
00:17:18,037 --> 00:17:22,156
that’s the only way that
we’re actually going to get real change.

369
00:17:22,156 --> 00:17:23,796
And I hope you’ll agree with me,

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00:17:23,796 --> 00:17:25,846
that that is an idea worth spreading.

371
00:17:26,234 --> 00:17:27,454
Thank you.

372
00:17:27,454 --> 00:17:31,764
(Applause)