For this week's nugget we are joined by NHS dietitian Didem Varol, who guides us through the delights and challenges of opting for plant-based food when eating out in Turkey, or when re-creating Middle Eastern flavours at home.

Follow Didem on Instagram @plantgevity or find her at www.plantgevity.com

This week we are delighted to welcome Professor Paul Behrens to the Nutshell.

Paul is a British Academy Global Professor based at the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford where his research focuses on the impacts of food system transformations.

His research and writing on food and energy systems, land use and climate change has appeared in scientific journals and media outlets and he is the editor and author of the textbook ‘Food and Sustainability’.

As an academic with a background in Physics, Professor Behrens is an environmental expert, and he combines this expertise with a communication style that is accessible to all in his book ‘The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Futures from the Frontiers of Climate Science’ which we discuss in this episode.

To buy the book:

https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/PaulBehrens

To connect:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-behrens-6b586427/?originalSubdomain=uk

Links to further information discussed in this episode:

https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet-commission/the-planetary-health-diet-and-you/

https://en.fvm.dk/Media/638484294982868221/Danish-Action-Plan-for-Plant-based-Foods.pdf

https://www.carbonbrief.org/cropped/

https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/author/zacharyboren/

https://www.ft.com/susannah-savage

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/arthurneslen

https://www.food.systems/

https://foodfoundation.org.uk/publication/meat-facts

https://foodfoundation.org.uk/sites/default/files/2025-05/TFF_Meat%20Facts.pdf

https://foodfoundation.org.uk/initiatives/broken-plate

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2514664525000104

This week's 'nugget' episode showcases the work of Dr Camille Hirons, a GP with special interest in lifestyle medicine and reducing health inequalities.

Esselstyn CB Jr, Ellis SG, Medendorp SV, Crowe TD. A strategy to arrest and reverse coronary artery disease: a 5-year longitudinal study of a single physician's practice. J Fam Pract. 1995 Dec;41(6):560-8. PMID: 7500065.Buettner D, Skemp S. Blue Zones: Lessons From the World's Longest Lived. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2016 Jul 7;10(5):318-321. doi: 10.1177/1559827616637066. PMID: 30202288; PMCID: PMC6125071.The Core 20 NHS work on health inequalities:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/about/equality/equality-hub/national-healthcare-inequalities-improvement-programme/core20plus5/

Connect with Dr Cami:

https://www.lifestylemedicineaccelerator.co.uk/

On Instagram: the_lifestyle_med_gp

Get qualified:

https://plantbasedhealthprofessionals.com/iblm/iblm-certification

And to get tickets for the upcoming Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine in person and online conferences:

https://nlmc.org.uk/

This week we are pleased to be welcoming Dr Neal Barnard, M.D. to the Nutshell.

Dr Barnard has an incredible plant-based health CV including founding the Barnard Medical Center in Washington DC, which aims to make nutrition part of routine medical care, as well as working as adjunct Professor of Medicine at George Washington University.

He is however perhaps most well known for his role as Founder and President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine ( PCRM) - an organisation advocating for preventative medicine, good nutrition and higher ethical standards in research.

He himself has led research studies focusing on the role of diet in problems such as diabetes, weight management, and chronic pain and as a result has produced a number of fantastic studies, and books, and we had the opportunity to talk with him about his latest book 'The Power Foods Diet'.

Link to find out more about PCRM:

https://www.pcrm.org/

To buy Dr Barnard's latest book:

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-power-foods-diet-the-breakthrough-plan-that-traps-tames-and-burns-calories-for-easy-and-permanent-weight-loss-md-barnard-neal-d/7616351?ean=9781538764954

Don't forget to get your tickets to this year's Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine Conference in London, by following this link:

https://nlmc.org.uk/

And if you enjoy this episode please don't forget to share, rate and review!

Sea salt, iodised salt, Himalayan salt, and lo-salt: what should we be using? Well less of all of them it seems, but why exactly, and how can we do that? Daisy and Clare talk it through, whilst leaving room for a touch of the plant-based eater's favourite - kala namak.

This week, in episode 10, we are talking about chronic kidney disease and diet, and so are excited to be joined by Angeline Taylor, a registered dietitian of over 15 years who has worked within the kidney specialty for most of those years.

Angeline is extremely passionate and committed to supporting those with kidney conditions to live a healthy lifestyle.

She holds the positions of Renal Dietitian in the NHS, Chair of the British Dietetic Association Kidney Specialist Group, and Renal Dietitian for Kidney Care UK's Kidney Kitchen. She also sits on the UK Kidney Association Sustainability Committee and advocates a plant-based approach to managing kidney disease.

Angeline sees patients with a variety of kidney conditions at various stages of the disease, from early to advanced stages of chronic kidney disease, dialysis, kidney transplantation, as well as acute illness on a busy NHS ward.

In collaboration with the Plant-Based Health Professionals UK, she has developed a range of factsheets on plant-based diets for people with kidney disease.

https://plantbasedhealthprofessionals.com/factsheets

The international guidelines discussed:

https://kdigo.org/guidelines/

The BDA’s Kidney Dietitian Specialist Group

https://www.bda.uk.com/specialist-groups-and-branches/kidney-dietitian-specialist-group.html

Angeline’s work at Kidney Kitchen:

https://kidneycareuk.org/get-support/healthy-diet-support/kidney-kitchen/

To connect with Angeline: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angeline-taylor-32901946/

Nuts are full of fibre, unsaturated fats, vitamins, and polyphenols. So this week's nugget will get you up to speed on why you should be including them in your diet, whilst reassuring they are not 'a second on the lips, a lifetime on the hips'.

In line with the recent World Day for Laboratory Animals on 24th April, we spoke with Savita Nutan, founder of Medicine Without Cruelty.

In this episode Savita highlights the suffering of laboratory animals, how unreliable animal experiments are, and how poorly they translate to human health outcomes.

As such Savita is committed to ending animal testing in science, medicine and dentistry.

Her organisation’s mission is to educate, advocate, and innovate, ensuring that scientific progress is achieved through humane and effective animal-free alternatives.

And it seems that innovative technologies are revolutionising research and testing offering accurate, ethical and sustainable solutions without needing to use animals, so tune in to find out more about this important topic.

To connect with Savita:

https://medicinewithoutcruelty.com/