James Collier, Co-Founder @ Huel

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today, returning to the podcast, we have James. James, welcome back on the podcast.

Thanks for having me back, Peter Wood. And I asked to come back, right? Which is cool. You must be doing something right.

Well, let's hope so. And, uh, yeah, it's a completely different setup, different space, and, you know, different stage for both of us. And I think, you know, for those who don't know, it almost seems like a ridiculous question to say now, but, you know, could you just say what is Huel to you and your role within it?

So Huel is complete food. For anyone who doesn't know the product, we're meal in a basically either a powdered formula that you mix with water, or there's a ready-to-drink, which everyone's seen in all the sort supermarkets. We've got the hot and savory products, which you, you mix with hot water and eat with a spoon and, and some other products as well. So they're nutritionally complete, as in people can have them as, as a meal. They've got all the, um, protein, fiber, essential fats, vitamins, and minerals. Um, and we can get onto that a bit more in a moment.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and my role in Huel is I'm, um, Chief Sustainable Nutrition Officer, uh, and co-founder. Basically, I'm the nutrition guy, originally, but we've got a team now of, of several nutritionists who support the company brilliantly. And I'm sort of charge of ultimately of everything sustain— sustainability, environmental and everything ESG as well falls under my pillar, although that's not my area of expertise. I'm, I'm— nutrition is my thing.

And so a career in nutrition, was that always something that you thought you'd fall into? If we go back to, you know, the beginning of your career? What, what were you thinking about your career back then?

If we go back to the late 1800s, I'm not that old. And, um, my career back— so yeah, I was, uh, I don't know what we discussed last time, um, but we'll go over it again anyway because obviously got so many more, uh, subscribers now that will be listening in. I, um, I always wanted to do nutrition. I think I was brought up, um, with, with my mom had, um, terminal breast cancer, uh, diagnosed at 8, so she managed to survive another 11 years by changing what she ate and having a lot of focus on nutrition. So there's always a lot of talk about nutrition and good food. But also I was, I found the gym when I was 16 years old and then a couple of years later when it was time to go to uni is what can, what do I wanna study? Do I do the sensible route, economics, or do I do what I, what's gonna gimme bigger muscles? Because knowledge equals power. Definitely right. So I did, I did that and it turned out I actually did make the right choice. Um, and, um, yeah, and that's, that's— so I went to uni to study nutrition, nutrition and dietetics, and I left uni and did what everyone, well, most people do on that course and go join the NHS as a clinical dietitian, which I knew was a— wasn't forever. I knew it was something that would be for a few years, but it was so valuable experience that I've got. And then I, then I went into the bodybuilding fitness world for a lot of years, but I was always consulting as a nutritionist along the way. So writing, I obviously seeing clients face to face, do meal plans for care homes, things like that. And then it was 2014 when I started working with Julian Hearn, who's the principal founder of Huel, on what became Huel. And I'm gone, you know, we've made pretty big things. It's really exciting.

Certainly have. And you mentioned that your sustainability team within Huel has grown a lot since it was just you there. I think that having a career in nutrition is a whole different landscape to when you would've started off and a whole new spectrum of things you can do. What is it in the people that are joining your team that you are really looking for and what's making them stand out for a career in nutrition?

So the nutrition side of this, in my whole team there's 8 of us, sustainable and sustainability and nutrition, and 6 of us are nutritionists or dietitians. So, um, we— everybody's either a registered dietitian, a registered nutritionist, or an associate registered nutritionist. Now, that is— they are formally recognized, um, accreditations in nutrition that indicate that someone's had a good grounding. But obviously there's a lot more than that. But I think that's important. They're not saying there aren't other people out there that have got some brilliant nutrition knowledge, but because I'm very fortunate, I get loads of people applying for a job to work at Yule, and especially in the nutrition team, we're a nutrition-first company, then I think that's an important thing to select primarily. Then of course they've got to have the right ethos, the right culture to work at Yule, because although we're a very great place to work, a lot of people say, you got a brilliant culture, for want of a better term, um, and it's— got to hustle hard and work fast. It's one of the values we have, and people have got to be able to do that, right? Whilst it's a lot of we want people to, we want people to enjoy their work, and we have a lot of celebrations. We want that. But sometimes, you know, you've got to have that hard work ethos. So you've got to be keen and bright. And in the nutrition side, you've got to be knowledgeable as well. And I've been told I'm quite hard at interviewing. So when there's the shortlist of a few candidates for any role in the nutrition team, I will see them and I can ask some quite challenging questions. And obviously there's some controversies out there in, in in nutrition at the moment. And I might ask some about the controversies just to see, are we on the same sort of wavelength here? And yeah, so I just mainly want keen people that have got an excellent grounding in nutrition that's relevant for the role they're applying for.

It's almost, uh, you want them verged on obsessed about nutrition and improving that, right? And I think for you like all things nutrition, fitness has been an obsession, and it's culminated in you actually writing a book which will be launched soon, Well Fed. Can you tell us why you wrote it and also just what you've really obsessed on within that book?

Oh, what a question. The obsessed bit. I'm going to pause on that bit and I'm definitely going to answer it. Well, if I can— you've asked why I've written the book. Let me go but I'm gonna do that the long-winded way, but trust me, it'll be worth, worth listening to.

It's a good thing it's a podcast.

Yeah, it's a good thing it's a podcast, not a, not a 45-second short on social media. I think it's important though to give the, give the substance and the background about what's driven me to write the book. Sure. So obviously my background is human nutrition, started working at Huel and we were, we're a sustainable nutrition brand. So it's all about how, what, the products we make, how they influence the environment, especially greenhouse gas emissions. And that wasn't my area. I knew back in 2015 when Hugh started that climate change was probably something we should be concerned about. Didn't really know much else. But because I come from a science background and I, you know, we have to look at good scientific evidence in every decision we make, I thought, I've really got to know a bit more about this. And so started to learn a bit more. Still way off ever being an expert in this, uh, you know, I know my limitations, but I've got a reasonably good understanding of how what we eat impacts the environment. So I thought, if I really want to do this, I've really got to be honest with myself and my own behaviors. So in 2019, I changed the way I ate. Now, I was always making good food choices for my own health and performance, um, been going to the gym for decades. But I thought the food choices I make are going to have some impact on the environment. And then as I was looking at that, I started looking about some of the animal farming methods that are used, the intensive animal farming, and I'm just not comfortable with some of them. Um, so that brings in the, the issue of ethics. Now, ethics is a subjective term. What you deem as ethical, I might have a different opinion on. But I don't think they need to be that far apart. And I'm not judging anyone else on their food choices and what they do. And I don't, I don't think it's, it's wise to, but I know for me, I've made these food choices and they're based on rationality. So I changed my diet to be obviously focused on my own health and performance, but recognizing what I eat influences, um, the environment and others. And by others, I mean humans and non-humans. So I reduced my animal-derived calories to roughly around about 10% of my total energy, whereas the— for context, the Western average is about 28-30%. And in practice, that would mean a couple of days a week of avoiding animal products almost entirely and reducing the amount of meals and having different— having alternatives. Obviously, having Huel makes that a lot easier for me, but also avoiding intensively farmed animal produce. Where animals were reared in a way that I find questionable. Now, I realize there's a whole conversation we can have about what's ethics, and some people would deem even the ones I still eat are still unethical, and I get that, and I've discussed it at, in some depth in the chapter on ethics and the food system in the book, sufficient depth, but of course there's some takeaway points there. And I'm getting to answer your question, don't worry. I know if everybody's listening, they're thinking, oh, is this guy sidetracking? No, I think it's important to give some substance behind where I'm going. Then COVID hit and we all got a little bit bored doing things or not. So I thought I'd write a few articles. So I thought I wanted to name this dietary strategy I was doing in case anybody else thought it might be a good idea. So I called it contemplative nutrition. And I had these three aspects, health, the environment, ethics. And then I wrote 3 articles and later I thought, this isn't, this aren't articles, this is a book. So I thought, and there's really 4 pillars. I thought, well, what we, not just affects our physical health, also affects our mental health. So I put the 4 pillars of contemplative nutrition and I wrote a couple of chapters and I thought, there's not 4 pillars, there's 5. And the 5th pillar is less what we eat, but how we eat and who we eat with. So it's contemplating, um, how we, uh, community and, and meals and things like that. So that became the fifth pillar, and that was the, this broad structure. So I want— the book is in three parts. The first is why we eat what we eat and why I'm writing this book and what the problem is, um, and that includes, um, cravings and appetite and, and taste and Things like that. And also misinformation, which we can talk, I wanna talk more about in a moment if we can. Then there's the 5 pillars in part 2. And then part 3 is looking at how we can change, how we can improve, how, what decisions can we make as individuals? Because it is very much a food theory book rather than a diet book as such. But there are some very actionable takeaways for people that's based on rationality and reason. And that's what it is. It's a highly evidence-based book. I think I might have 600 or 700 references in there. It's hard because sometimes you use the same reference in different chapters. So it's hard to say. So I started writing it in February '21 after I'd already written the 3 essays, and between them they were about 10,000 words. Um, and then, uh, uh, I kind of thought I'd finished in July '22. I think we had a chat about June, July '23, didn't we? So, and I was looking for a publisher and I had a real awful experience trying to find one, and, and then it wasn't until, um It wasn't until May this year that I got HarperCollins on board, who have been brilliant. And, but they did ask me to change quite a bit. Um, so what I've sort of outlined is what it actually does look like, not what I'd written, written then. So yeah, so what drove me to write the book? I think that now I've— now you've got some sort of, uh, context behind it. Because I've been really lucky in life in so many ways. Um, and, uh, one professionally being one. And, um, I've got a lot of ideas that I think will be useful for other people to hear and to, and to take action on themselves. So I want to hopefully empower people to understand what they eat a bit more. And it's called Contemplative Nutrition for a good reason. I want people to contemplate what they eat, but not contemplate too much. Nobody's gonna wanna think about it, you know, have to, um, think about every food choice they make in any depth because it's just not going to work. People are going to get bored and not do it. So just be aware that what food choices you make, of course, are going to affect your own health, and that has to be the, the first thing, by the way. It's also only going to affect others and the environment. Uh, so just— and also enjoy writing. I didn't know I enjoyed it. I've always liked writing articles, but I didn't know I kind of um, how much I loved it. And I got the flow state, which is writing the articles. And I wrote on other topics as well before I wrote the book, and just thought, yeah, why not? And, uh, it's part of my bigger— it's probably the biggest part of my bigger new career, for one of a better term. If you think of my career, I had the clinical dietitian part, yeah, then I had the bodybuilding fitness part, then the food industry part, which is still very much active, working at Huel. And I call this new part for want of a better term, nutrition communicator. Because I communicate nutrition, but it's, it's the writing book essays, it's public speaking, having conversations with cool people on podcasts and doing the whole social media thing where you stand in your kitchen talking about food in your phone and feels a bit weird, but we all have to do it. And that's the bit, the bit I least like. And I trying to push the Instagram thing. You've seen the LinkedIn side of things and people can follow me on both of those and try and do some good little bite-size information, but I think I need to go onto YouTube and you can go a little bit longer, can't you? And talk about stuff. I am on YouTube, but it's all the same content at the moment. So I think it's important that, you know, I want to share my ideas and they're not just about individuals. It's very much about the food system because as I started writing, I thought, this is a whole— we've got to review the food system.

I think it's a the practice of writing a book, having been in the world so much, you would've consumed so much information that you might not have even been able to reflect on, right? And I think, you know, when you're at university or in academia, you really get, well, you're forced to, um, to think big and, you know, really reflect and everything like that. But I imagine that you've made learnings in, in this process of writing a book that you never could've even imagined, right?

You only know what you know, right? You don't know there's things out there to unknown unknowns, to quote Donald Rumsfeld. Walt in that famous quote. Like, and I, so you actually, it's a good point, Peter Wood. And my wife reminded me of this recently when I was starting to really plug the book. When I started writing the book, I wrote it for me and I thought if one person reads this book and gets something out of it, then that's a win. Oh, obviously that ambition is too, too small. I've got much bigger ideas than that now, but, but I partly wrote it for me. Now what, what do I mean by that? That's why I write articles. A lot of the articles I write are on topics that I didn't know much about or I felt I needed to know about. I needed to get in the weeds of, um, or at least an aspect of them. And we— you've probably heard, and a lot of people say this, I mean, if you've got ideas in here, it's good to write them down, make sense of them. And that's part of it, but it's not good enough. You have to commit to publishing them, and you have to publish them in a way that people are going to want to read them. Because if you publish them, you open yourself up to criticism, and it makes you be intellectually on point and know that you have— you have— you truly backed up your argument as full as you can. So if people come at you and trust me, they do in nutrition, you're in the best place you can be. And of course there's gonna be people challenge, and I've written part twos of, and part threes of articles because I hadn't realized until people have criticized something I've written in on a piece, actually I can do a better job. So I follow up with a part two and maybe agreed with someone on something or disagreed with them on another. And that involves the ideas. And when doing the book, obviously doing the books on another level because you can go and edit your Substack, you can't edit your book. And especially when I've got someone like HarperCollins on board, who are, you know, one of the biggest publishers in the world, and they're really backing me on this as well, which indicates how much they value the book as well. It's been quite humbling actually.

Obviously you've got these people working on it with you, but I think unlike articles where you're getting that instantaneous feedback, then writing the next one, you're really in your own head when writing this book, aren't you? You're really like digging deeper than you would have before, right?

Yeah, I've got a friend who his neuroscience background, who's cross-checked some of the bits. If I'm unsure about my wording, I say, I know he's hard on me, right? That's brilliant. I don't want somebody who's going to give me an easy ride. And he— and sometimes I disagree with him, but it doesn't matter, it's made me think, or I've reworded something. And literally, I sometimes— I can agonize over 3 or 4 words sometimes. That's not— what's the point of that? Because writing is, is crucial. You get your point across properly. And literally, you know, my editor as well, she's disagreed with the wording I've done some things and sometimes she was right, but sometimes I pushed back. But it's so important that you make your point properly and you, and you want to use engaging language, right? It's, nutrition's a science. Science can be boring. So you have to write in a narrative. You have to write in a way, yeah, include all the science people wanna learn, otherwise they wouldn't be reading the book. But you have to write in a way that's engaging. And it's gonna, and I, I think I've done that. I hope I've done that. So it draws people in, and I think there'll be very few bits in the book that people are going to find boring. I mean, I'm patting myself too hard on the back here. You'll be the judge of that when you get your free copy.

Absolutely. And I'm interested in something you were saying earlier about the different stages of your career. And I think at the moment, I think people are getting very obsessive over that first step they make in their career, like especially with social media, like there's people draw such light over what they're doing all the time. Um, I see you're entering this new stage which is much more public and out there. Do you— does it feel different, this next transition, um, compared to like the ones that you did, you know, back in the day? They were kind of more just your choice and, you know, it's all in your own world, and then now everybody's sort of watching it.

You've got really good at asking these questions, haven't you? Nobody's asked me this sort of thing before. And that's, uh, yeah, this is great. It shows you how well your podcast is doing so well, right? It's, um, of course, making me think it is different. And you've caught me on the week where a couple of weeks where everything's taken a massive step up because HarperCollins and Hewell have been getting me on some other really, really top-level podcasts, um, and some interviews with, you know, top newspapers. There's several of them and magazines. And, um, so I've been I've had quite a busy week and I'm quite tired. I haven't had probably time to reflect yet, but I think it's different. Um, and being public— I mean, I've done quite a few podcasts, but, uh, a lot of them have been not that big. And now I'm putting myself out there, it's— it does make the way— change the way you think. And part of what I'm doing is to be— is all about honesty and humility. And rigor, making sure that you're on point with everything. And that means I'm going to get— but I'm going to get things wrong, so I'm going to get criticized if I'm getting criticized for the right reasons. But yeah, it has— it is changing the way I think a bit. Um, I've answered your question there.

You have. I think just to dig a little bit deeper though, um, I think the actual realization that you're ready for that, that next stage? I guess it can only really be prompted by yourself. Um, obviously Huel's achieved such amazing commercial success, but for you, did it reach a point where, oh, you can't rest on that? Um, you know, you need to be able to give back more than that, even if it's a bit uncomfortable and different. Uh, and you know, you, you could very easily just sort of get comfortable with the position that you got to in the business, right?

Yeah, that's a good one. I have thought about this, and that, yeah, financially I'm fine, and I could— I kind of probably do part-time hours now at Yule, although I'm not on set days, and I could probably carry on with that and do nothing else but watch Netflix and go for coffees with, with my friends, except they're not there because they're all at work. So, um, but that doesn't fire me up. And also, and I feel that, like I alluded to a few minutes ago, I've probably got useful things to share and always feel like it's my— I feel like I have to. And I might sound quite arrogant and self-righteous, and people might be looking at this now thinking, he's a bit full of himself, this guy. Well, maybe, but it is genuinely what I feel. And if I— if what I say is incorrect, and if I'm truly trying to live the values that I've just mentioned by being intellectually honest and rigorous in everything I do, then I'll get pushback. And I've got to take— I've got to listen to pushback. Now, the pushback Don't get me wrong, there'll be the haters there that don't like some of the things I'm going to say. And if they just— if people aren't backing up and they're just giving out pure negativity, then I'm just not going to listen. Um, I'm also not going to listen to those that all they do is blow smoke up my ass and tell me how great I am. Lovely, love these people. That's not useful to me. How's it useful to me? Yeah, there's the other— so there's 10% and 10%. The other 80%, let's split them in two. You've got the 40% who are interesting people who like to listen and learn and absorb, you know, different opinions and take some of it away. Brilliant. And you've got the other 40%. They're the ones, you know, I'm reaching that first 40%, but I'm also reaching this other 40%. These are the ones that will value evidence and will value being correct and will push back and ask me some questions and will agree with some of what I say. And if you're, you know, if any of the listeners are one of those people now, then please do do feedback. I will listen, I will read stuff. I won't have time to reply to everything, but I will listen. But don't just give me a flippant response, you know, back up what you're saying. And if you've got a study, link it to me and I will read it. And that's part of what I'm trying to do here. I know I'm going to get stuff wrong, and I'm okay with that. One quote about science— I don't know if it's something I came up with or I read it elsewhere— is, you know, science is the continual pursuit of the truth while being content that you might never find it. And that's okay, cuz we know that there's very few things we know to be, to be absolute true. It's all about evidence and science changes. This is why people say, oh, nutritionists are always changing their mind. Well, they're not. They disagree with each other a lot. And that's, some of that's built on evidence. Some of that's built, built on ideology. Unfortunately, we can talk more about that in a moment. So, um, I don't think I've fully answered your question. Could you remind me?

Moving on from that question, because I think you've articulate very, very well because there is a lot of misinformation, a lot of, you know, to and fro in the nutrition world. In your opinion, for someone who's like, you know, come into, let's say, nutrition consciousness, maybe they've, uh, they've lived, um, beyond their means for long enough, they've gone through university, and they're thinking right now is the time to start thinking about my nutrition. There are 3 things that they just need to like really like think about in its simplest form. What is that?

Okay, 3 things. Okay. Nutrition is complex, but it needn't be complicated. Okay, to quote a phrase from this book called Well Fed that's coming out soon, nutrition science isn't rocket science. It kind of says it all, right? We, yes, it's useful to know and learn and move forward, and we absolutely, that's up for people like me, or more importantly, academics who do research. But for most people, have a rough understanding of what's good and bad. And we all kind of know, we, you know, um, and we can talk about types of foods in a moment. I think we probably should because there's a few things I think probably need clearing up. Um, so that's, that's one. The other one is be careful who you listen to because social media following definitely does not mean giving good information. It's all about— there are financial motivations, there are, uh, motivations where you, you've, you get, you get carried away because you got a big following. Can't think of the right word, sorry. Um, so, but we, we can talk more about, you know, certain watchouts, who's likely credible or not, because some, some people can give out a lot of misinformation and come across very credible and can cite studies to back up what they say. Except when you read the study, it doesn't actually say what they've said. Um, and how do people know this, right? Because reading science is, is, is hard. I mean, have you heard of— I'm going to come back to the third one, but have you heard of, um, Brandolini's Law? Have you heard that phrase before? So I'm good. This is a paraphrase, it's not the exact, uh, ad verbatim, but it's the energy required to refute bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than it was to make the bullshit asserted in the first place. Kind of says it all. Social media's on that. So I can make up a claim All right, and I used this, this example the other day, and it's one I've made up, so this is not true, folks. Caveat before, before I say it. Um, instant freeze-dried coffee that you get, well, that's, um, that's toxic to the body, causes inflammation because it's, uh, you're consuming the whole ground coffee there in its freeze-dried format rather than what's been filtered when you have compressed ground and compressed beans. Okay, it sounds really credible. If I hadn't put that caveat in, I've just made it up. Now, I made that up a minute, it's out there. I could film a video, put it out there. Now, if somebody was to refute that and just say, but they've got to actually go and look at the research and show people that's not true and explain from a mechanistic— well, that's not true, and that takes hours. And then they've got to make the video. That's just boring. It's also very impactful. And this is what we're fighting against.

Yeah.

Have I made that point quite clear?

Yeah, well, I was actually going to ask you about, do you feel alone in this mission?

No, I'm not alone. Absolutely not. There's a lot of people out there. This is the optimistic side, right? There's a friend of mine, Robbie Lockie, who's running the Freedom Food Alliance. He'll be pleased to have mentioned this for sure. And he's got 50 or so nutritionists, academics, food industry people from around the world. Who have got together. And while we might disagree on some of it, whatever we disagree on is done in good faith. It's science disagreement. And one thing we all agree on is there's a real problem with misinformation and we're going to be, well, he's leading it and I'll back him in what he's trying to do here. We'll be talking to Meta and Google and big channels as well as possibly health policy as well about, we've got to, got to work on this because people will struggle. People, a lot of misinformation. So that's two, and we can talk more about that. I've spoken about complexity. I spoke about misinformation. And the other one is sort of fundamental to the theme of the book really, is being mindful that what the food choices you make affects you, but also affects others and the environment. With the caveat is it's very important that you look after yourself first. Because if you're not in good health or in a position to look after yourself, how can you look after others? And another quote from Well Fed is, "A diet isn't sustainable if it can't sustain an individual." So it's brilliant to look at sustainable diets and care about animals, but you've gotta look after number one first. Some people might not like hearing that, but I think it rings true for everything. Because if you're well, you're in good health, and you can, you can make an impact. Everybody can make an impact by making some changes. So they're the 3 things, Peter Wood.

I think it's interesting because as much as misinformation and the ability for anyone to put out information on any topic really, things like health and wellbeing, all these topics are being discussed more than ever. So we're at this like interesting cross-section where we need the accurate information more than ever because it's being spoken about more than ever. It's coming to consciousness more than ever. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, this is, and I'm sure this is for other disciplines as well as nutrition. Of course, your more astute listener and viewer now should be thinking, why should we trust this old bloke, this old baldy bloke with tattoos? And if they're already asking that question, they've already won half the battle because everybody should be questioning what I say. Everybody shouldn't just be saying what I say is the truth. Um, but, and they need to hold me to account and I need to hold myself to account. But don't dismiss what I say either. Um, it's, and, and a good rule of thumb, and I think we can give some more, more basic watchouts in a moment if you'd like, but the, but the biggest one is Somebody who's overly confident about what they say is likely talking shit, okay? People who speak in caveats and nuance are more likely credible. Someone should be confidently unconfident. And if you hear someone with that sort of tone of voice, then they— you should probably pay attention. They might get some things wrong, but by and large, they'll be an honest communicator that cares about the information they're putting out. Now you mentioned about others, you know, am I alone? No, I'm not alone. There's some really good people across the spectrum with different ideas on diet that are doing this. And some of them have got much bigger followings than me. Mine's still relatively small. And that's great, but unfortunately those giving out misinformation generally have bigger followings. Of course, the word misinformation, right? Someone, well, that's not misinformation. They might, you know, someone might have a different opinion on that. So how do people navigate it?

It's refreshing to hear this perspective and have it applied to Huel because, you know, it's all one thing reading about nutrition, but these people are, well, it's one of the most consumed products in the UK at the moment.

Maybe, yeah, I wish it was. People know it, but I think we're still a little way to go.

Yeah, but like hearing it, what you're producing, what you're actually, putting nutrition into is being consumed by others into their body. So yeah, it's, you know, it's incredibly important that, you know, you really work out and are diligent about what you're putting in your drinks, right? And I think I— one thing that I'm curious about, your relationship with Julian, obviously, uh, you know, he's a marketing genius, all these kind of things, but what— how has he allowed you to actually really just focus on what, how it makes it the best product and not like skip any corners and always just empower your team to deliver what's best in nutrition.

Julian's skill is he asks some really good questions, um, and challenges really hard, and it really puts— keeps you on your toes. So he might hear things, he listens to a lot of nutrition podcasts and stuff, and he might ask something and I'll, and I'll 'Can we back this up?' And, you know, the idea of Fuel was his. Let's not forget that. And most of the product, well, every, pretty much every product since, the idea was born out of one of his ideas, and I've probably furthered it. But that's how it works, really. And he's a marketing guy, but he's very good at listening to what people want and need or benefit from. So he asks the right questions.

Yeah, I mean, asking the right questions is everything, right? Um, I think, yeah, if we sort of go back to the world of nutrition, you were sort of— you were getting into the conversation, discussion around the kind of questions you want people asking. Um, can you give me an example of, of what that would look like from, you know, initially receiving that piece of information and then how an actual, like, great conversation can be sparked from that? I know this is for nutrition, but it can be applied anywhere, right?

On social media, if someone sees some content on social media, they question it.

Yeah, you are saying like, you know, there are people that would just give like dismiss or whatever. Like what does good discourse around these topics look like?

Okay, so in, in, in Well Fed, I've got a list, I think there's 10, 10 watchouts and I'll name it, I'll give a few of them now. So the general theme though is the confidently unconfident thing that I've alluded to. One key thing is, and people just, is the individual talking in absolutes? You must eat this, you mustn't eat that. Don't do this. Whilst it's really catchy, it's probably likely untrue. There's no must or mustn't in nutrition. You know, diets can be good and bad, foods are not good or bad. Another one is using the word truth as clickbait, or fact at the end of every sentence. Is it really the truth or fact? It's a watch out. Um, another one is, um, Are they transparent about their financial biases or any links they have to industry? Now, I have an obvious one. There's nothing I can do about that. We all have our biases. That bias is there, and it's there, and it can never go away. Even if I were to leave Yule, I'm emotionally attached because I create the original products, and I've been behind so many of the nutrition decisions to date. Can't take that away. So I must be transparent about it. Uh, lots of people aren't. They might be earning money from underhand ways or paid in a certain way. Um, now, but I'm not actually convinced financial transparency is always the key motivator for some people who put out misinformation. I think a lot of it is loving praise and attention and growing a following. And it feels good, right? I mean, I've, you know, sometimes I've, you know, acquired 100 new followers today. I feel quite good and motivated, but I have to check myself. Is it good? Are they the right? Am I still doing the right thing? And I think, you know, with some big influencers got some huge followings. They have a responsibility, and I think they're doing a lousy job of it. Um, so being transparent, and, you know, and are they— another one is, are they egged on by an audience that continually adorns them with praise? Does the— does what they're saying truth track? But more importantly, does their audience care about what their favorite prophet is saying track the truth? So the truth, you know, does the audience care? And quite often they don't. People are led by their emotions. How does hearing this make me feel? And let's be honest, what, why I'm, I'm gonna make a claim now that I cannot back up. I'm gonna do everything I've just said. Watch out for it. But I reckon nutrition is as, if not more polarizing than politics. People have got more different opinions and get so angry about someone having a different opinion. It makes sense on one level, right? What's one thing every single person does? We eat, right? And so, and if you look back at the way we view view food. We are ideologically attached to the foods we eat. Let's look at the word culture. This is really interesting, right, what I'm going to share now. The word culture, look at the etymology of it. Where does the word come from? Well, it's very similar to the word cultivate, and culture actually means the tilling of the land, the acquisition of food from the land. Now we use the word culture for the way we dress, the way we behave, the way we dance, the way we interact with other people, and even more recently in, in business sense, the culture of a work environment, for example. But the word is actually, actually comes from the food we eat. It's so the culture of our food is something is so important. So no wonder we're emotionally invested in, in the food we have, uh, and when we have, you know, different appetites and cravings. So we, we're attached to food. And the other thing, of course, is let's say someone's not been very well and they change what they eat. They just basically, whatever dietary strategy they follow, it's because they were eating crap before, they feel better. But then that worked for me, so I'm gonna tell everybody cuz that's definitely gonna work for everyone else. But they're not recognizing that other people have got different lifestyles and, you know, sleep habits and jobs.

James, what do you then think about the word expert?

Expert. Okay. I love this question and it's an absolute— there, there's a lack of recognition for true experts, but I do not think there is such a thing as an expert in nutrition. It's too broad a field for there to be an expert in nutrition as a whole. However, there are experts in nutrition. Now the emphasis is the same. I've just said exactly the same thing with different emphasis because there are true academics or researchers who are experts in a particular narrow field of it. So there are experts in protein metabolism, experts in vitamin C, experts in food craving, experts in supply chain of ingredients in the food system. You, you get where I'm coming from.

Yeah.

And I'm absolutely not an expert in anything. I am not an expert in nutrition, but what I am is skilled in nutrition. And by that, I mean I have quite a broad range of knowledge to do with human nutrition, the food system, sustainability, and how food feeds in, food industry, food policy, but an expert in nothing. So I can talk to the right people and link up things. And that's important. Now, what I think the word expert in general, The word experts becomes subjective. Like, some people think, oh, he's an expert, it sounds like— no, what, what are you saying? Or she's an expert because that made me feel good. And, and this is— I think it's got worse since the COVID thing, although people were questioning expertise prior to that. Tom Nichols, in his favorite famous book, The Death of Expertise, is worth a read, and that was pre-COVID. But I think the way the governments of the world have handled COVID has been awful. And it's caused a lot of mistrust. Now I'm not one of these, you know, I'm not going down the road of the vaccine challenges or anything like that. That's not what I mean. I just mean the honesty that was in the early days of COVID has led to people mistrusting science. And it seems things have got worse with misinformation. This reflects, you know, I'm not one to comment on health more general 'cause it's not my areas, but I can comment on the food system. And there's a lot of misinformation out there at the moment. And it's led because people don't trust academics anymore. And it's not the academics you shouldn't trust. And you should listen to experts, absolutely should listen to experts, but listen to more than one expert. Listen to different opinions. But how do you know who's the expert? Because I've just said, and you know, there's some people that are very credible going out on podcasts with letters after the name or the word doctor in front of them. You know, are they a chiropractor? There's another watch out. And it's, um, uh, you know, and they sound incredible. You know, I'm not an academic. I've got an undergraduate degree. That's all I've got, one degree. I've got 30 years. Why should people listen to me? Well, well, it's up to them, but they should be asking those questions.

And, you know, we've discussed a lot of different topics on this podcast, a lot we could go more in depth on. And, and, you know, in your book you would have gone even more depth if people choose to do that. But I think one thing that I love to leave people with on the podcast, I'm curious how you'd like to leave people with from the book, is, is a feeling. Like, you want people to come out the back of it with a different feeling to how they went in before, and then they can use that as they wish. They can go— you use it to inspire them to do more, work harder, or they can do more research into something. But what feeling do you want people to be left with after this conversation?

Easy one. Empowered. Because I— the focus of the book is not just prescriptive. It's absolutely not prescriptive. I make a point, it's Contemplative Nutrition: The Diet Strategy with the Five Pillars. Is not prescriptive. The very nature— the key is in the word contemplative. I want people to think a little bit more. If you've got a little bit more knowledge on everything, you can, you can feel more empowered to make the right food choices for your own health primarily, and your own mental health, what's going to affect others, and the right ethical choices. And that's crucial. I want people to be feeling empowered to know what they're doing is okay, because Food choices is not black and white. Foods are not good or bad, and that's okay. But you can improve your diet. And a lot of people are having some lousy diets that are— and those dietary choices are also causing immense environmental strain, or causing— contributing to. I need to correct myself there. And so if you feel empowered, you can, you can do better because we can all do better in every facet of life, right? We can make choices to do better. So feeling empowered means we can make one step in the right direction.

I love that. I'd say similar to how I'd like students and graduates to feel about their careers after they listen to The Graduate Guide as well. And James, I've loved this conversation, but my final question to you, which I ask every single one of my guests, and, you know, I'm curious to see if your answer might have changed from when I first asked it, but when you first started off on your career, you might have had a certain idea of what success would go on to look like. But then fast forward everything you've learned and achieved What is your definition of success and how has it changed?

I can— I, this is— I've been asked this question, this theme before, and it's not one I love answering, to be honest. Success is subjective, right? And I know you're kind of asking me my definition, so there is no definition of success. It is subjective. For some people, it's— it can be quite— no, I'm not going to answer it that way because if I do, it's wrong. Ooh, that is a question. It's for some people, it, people have different interpretations, right? And a lot of people attach, you know, look, I'm gonna say something else actually, this, and I will answer your question. In the West, we, the type of philosophy that we, a lot of us have is, is individualism where it's very much a me-focused perspective. It's how we, what can I do to achieve? How do I fit into this nation, this world? And I'm always trying to better myself. More Eastern philosophies are more collectivist. Where it's more we-focused. What do I do? How does it affect others around me? Now let me just straighten up one thing. Individualism has been shown to, typically speaking, not always, have a higher standard of living. And I've been brought up in individualist culture in the UK, and I'm glad I have. However, I always feel we can be a little bit more— a little bit less me-focused and a little bit more we-focused. How does what I do Affect others. Now, linking that back to success, a lot of people see success as how— what have I achieved, you know? What's my, my salary? What's my job? Other people look at me. I've spoke about that sort of, um, how people view on social media. People see that as success, and that's maybe part of it. I'm not going to dismiss that because it's— excuse me— an individualism. That's how people, people view things, and we live in the West. But success to me now has probably changed. It's quite what you're asking. I think now success is, is re— is, let me see this, let me see if this sounds good when it comes out. I'm not going to commit to what I'm saying now. Is recognizing how our actions affect other people as, as well as ourselves. Now I've realized that's probably a bit woolly for some people and it's not really a true definition, but, and I, and I started this whole bit saying I didn't really like answering this. So wooliness is probably all that people are going to get here.

Love it. James, thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me back, Peter.

Appreciate it.