Professor Tim Spector

Absolutely.

Mark, are poor food choices to blame for the rise in chronic diseases?

A thousand percent.

Tim, are chronic diseases mostly due to our genes?

I like that.

So finally, Mark, what's the most common misconception surrounding chronic diseases?

That's amazing.

So you're saying all these things that are described as chronic, meaning you sort of have them forever.

That's right.

Actually, you can, in many cases, make changes that mean you stop having them.

So I absolutely want to get into that.

What I'd like to do is just maybe just start with the basics.

We just mentioned this word chronic conditions and chronic diseases.

What I'm a bit fuzzy about, like what exactly that means.

And so when we use this word chronic, that means once you've got it, you've got it forever.

And so coming back to this question about genes that we had right at the beginning, from your perspective, Mark, are these conditions sort of written in my genes when I'm born and I have to do something very clever to avoid getting this?

Now, Tim, as we're listening to this and Mark's talking about it, in the U.S., I think you said six out of ten people are living with chronic conditions.

As you think about the rest of the world, is it different?

So basically you're saying the American food arrived and diabetes went to like less than 1 in 100 people.

Even on a global basis, it's the same story now that basically something really quite depressing has happened there.