Prof Tim Spector

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1,755 appearances 15 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 15 Sep

Prof Tim Spector’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 15 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 4.

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ZOE Science & Nutrition · The science behind food that isn’t food, why you love it and why you should not fear it all | Prof Tim Spector & Prof Sarah Berry · 10 Sep 2026 podcast

They've done short term studies, yeah, often on animals showing high doses of these products don't lead

to uh canc liver cancer i in these animals.

But they haven't done long term human studies to rule out that possibility.

But I think

The population studies and the metro analyses suggest that, say, for cancer, there might be somewhere between a twenty percent increase and a fifty percent increase using very crude measures of ultra processed food.

I think it may be that when we get a better definition it's higher, but it's not a massive increase.

Nobody wants a fifty percent increase in cancer risk.

through a lifetime of eating ultra processed food, but that's

probably the the levels we're looking at.

It's not like a tenfold increase.

Yeah, and that's what the food manufacturers do when they make a ready meal.

If you noticed, you know, your your pasta is nice and soft and gooey and uh uh easy to eat it.

It's like you know, everything tastes like mashed potato.

The final study to discuss is from uh Terrafanzino's group in the US that have been studying this concept of hyper palatable foods.

And a hyperpalatable food is a food that's been deliberately produced to override our um fullness signals and at the same time excite our reward centres.

So changing that normal balance that we have between sort of uh fullness and reward.

Sugar, salt, fat, and carbohydrates are uh tweaked

uh in the right proportions to produce what's called the bliss point.

And this is what nutritional scientists have been working on uh since about the nineteen sixties and uh they first started working in the tobacco industry.

to do this for cigarettes, interestingly.

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