We’re half way through the year and “dry July” is underway. So what better time to talk about health, nutrition and diet?

In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 66, our guest is Professor Caryn Zinn, Professor of Nutrition at Auckland University of Technology (AUT).

Her story starts in South Africa, where she was born, and her early University studies were conducted in Cape Town. Upon graduation, she moved to New Zealand for what she thought would be a period of time. But it was to become her life.

Her first job here was as a public health dietician in Whangarei, but academia called and a Master’s degree focusing on Sports Nutrition and a PhD centred on weight loss followed.

A chance engagement in 2014, challenged her conventional nutrition paradigm, and she developed her own nutrition philosophy in light of the emerging science on insulin resistance and metabolic health. Her journey endured multiple challenges from the change resistant establishment, but her conviction ensured that she prevailed. She is now regarded as one of the most recognised leaders in therapeutic carbohydrate reduction, both in New Zealand and abroad.

Professor Zinn speaks openly about the challenges of leading pioneering change in a sector that often prefers the comfortable route. But her story is compelling and like any scientist who “follows the evidence” her approach is now well accepted.

During the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast, Caryn Zinn speaks to Bruce Cotterill about how a team effort led to the publication of not one, but five books resulting from their research, including the highly regarded “What the Fat?” Her writing has introduced hundreds of thousands of readers around the world to the low-carb, healthy-fat way of eating.

There is plenty of discussion about what’s right and wrong with our diets, how we can be better, and how to get help if we need it. There’s also an interesting discussion about how supplements can support our lifestyles and some common sense advice around alcohol consumption.

But most of all, this is a story about a high achiever who dared to believe that another way was possible, and in fact better, and who committed herself to changing attitudes and outcomes in a world challenged by change.

Leaders Getting Coffee – Episode 66 with Bruce Cotterill and Professor Caryn Zinn

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