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Life, Health & The Universe
Life, health and the universe are all connected. In a world where we are more connected than ever, we have become disconnected from ourselves. In this podcast, along with guests, I discuss ideas in a celebration of life, an exploration of health and some wonderment of the universe.
Contact Nadine: https://lifehealththeuniverse.podcastpage.io/contact
Life, Health & The Universe
Forecasting the Future: Insights from a Food Futurologist
Let us know what you thought of this episode!
Do you think that today's food trends could shape the future of our society?
Join us as we sit down with Dr. Morgaine Gaye, a groundbreaking food futurologist who has successfully predicted monumental societal shifts, from the rise of electric cars to the COVID-19 pandemic.
She shares her fascinating journey into futurology, highlighting the emotional rollercoaster of accurately predicting significant global events, and offers a rare glimpse into the rigorous process behind these predictions.
We also dive deep into Morgaine's personal history, revealing how her unconventional upbringing in a family with peculiar eating habits influenced her career.
Expect a candid discussion about the challenges of growing up with a bodybuilder father and a butcher mother, and how these experiences have shaped her food preferences. This segment unearths not just family dynamics but also the broader socio-economic factors that guide our food choices, providing listeners with a rich context for understanding the complexities of dietary habits and health.
Finally, Morgaine unpacks the intricate relationship between food industry practices and personal health. She navigates the pitfalls of outsourcing our dietary decisions to big brands, emphasising the need for informed, individualised choices.
Our conversation also touches on the evolving plant-based movement and the societal shift towards community-based living.
Wrapping up, we contemplate the transformative Age of Aquarius, a time marked by a move from materialism to compassion and understanding.
With personal anecdotes, professional insights, and forward-thinking predictions, this episode offers a comprehensive look at the future of food and society.
Check out Morgaine's Page in our Guest Directory here
Hello, hello, it's Nadine and I'm here with this week's episode of Life, Health and the Universe, and today is a very exciting day for me because I'm joined by my guest, dr Morgan Gay. Welcome, morgan, it's great to have you here. Morgan and I go back a very long way and, although I've spent, uh, the best part of well what? 28 years in australia before that, before that we went to college together, so that was a really long time ago. So that's how we know each other and it's kind of is a little bit of an excuse to catch up, because you know, life is full and you're always on the move, it would seem.
Speaker 1:But we're going to talk about some of the things that you do as well. And, yeah, we probably going to take up a bunch of our conversation, but you probably get sick of people asking what it is when you tell them what you do, and I often start my podcast with a like a big intro. You know, read the biography kind of thing, and I don't have one for you, so I'm just going to intro you as you're a food futurologist, amongst many other things, um and uh. Yeah, you're a super smart cookie, but, as I said, you probably get sick of people asking you what that is, but that's where I'm going to start. Welcome, that's all right. Thank you so much for joining me. You look fabulous.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you so much. It's early here, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's just so interesting that we go back so many decades and we went to the same university and our lives have gone in such different directions in many ways not in all ways, I think, but it's almost like they eventually converge in some different universe, which is great, and, yeah, it's just. It's amazing how time is, and my job is really about that. It's about time and I find that, you know, I spend a lot of my time in the future. We're all supposed to be mindful and in the present, and most of my time I spend thinking about or living into the future, for better or for worse. So, yeah, what do I do? It's a really difficult one to describe because, although I'm called a food futurologist, food in some ways is the very last part of my job, and people think maybe I'm a foodie or I'm a chef, or that I like eating out or any of those things, and what I eat and what I think about food and what I do for my job, and not the same thing. So I'm none of the aforementioned and what I try to do is show consumers, people, clients, whoever it is that wants to know what this future landscape of humanity looks like. So, if we go forward seven to 10 years time, what's that look like in terms of preoccupations, geopolitics, economics, what's the topics of the day? What's the considerations of the day? Everything from just the cultural zeitgeist, the aesthetics, the things that make people tick, and so I look at all of that stuff and, of course, off the back of that, we'll see. Then, how do people go to work? What do people think about work? What motivates people? What do people want to eat? Why do they want to eat it? So, for me, I'm more interested in the why than the what. About the future? Why are we going to go there? And then what? So what does that mean? And that's it really? So, generally, I am spending most of my job doing talks, big sort of one hour trend briefings, I call them. They can be bespoke, they can be subject specific or they can be general about this future landscape, and there's about 300 unique images per hour, because I make it super visual, because I think it's really hard to describe a future if you can't show it, so I try to show images of what that looks like and that might be. It's all visual of different things interiors, design, some food, some but then really talking about the why we're going to be living into this space and yeah, so I predict all sorts of things and in the past I have predicted all sorts of things.
Speaker 2:2018, I was talking in my talks about COVID. I never said COVID, but I showed pictures of people in masks and hazmat suits and picture of virus. I talked about Trump getting in the first time, way back when he wasn't even particularly in the running. I've talked about the British politics a lot over the years. I've talked about the dissolution of Europe, which is yet to come. There's a lot of things yet to come. So there's a lot of things and sometimes it's very difficult because I just heard something just a couple of days ago about prediction I made in 2015 that hasn't come, but it's for 2030. And I've just had some inside information that that's what's now on the cards and I feel personally quite upset by it and quite sick because of it. I must have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach because it's a very weird feat to be right about something that's so monumental, and it's not always it's never usually a good feeling. It's a very weird job that I have, so that's what I do.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, I've got so many questions, Morgane.
Speaker 1:And like there's so many things that you said that I'm like take a breath, and where do I go first? Oh god, well, let's just go right back, okay. There's one thing I was gonna say, right, and I've been planning this kind of line that I was gonna say to you, um, that you're kind of like 21st century sage, right, or like you know. But then I read, I started reading your book, and it's one of the first things it says is I'm not psychic. And I'm like, damn it, she's debunked it already, before I even got a chance. But you kind of are right like you, okay, so you don't. It's like, yes, you are, you're following, you're following trends and behaviours and you know history and all of these things, but you're bringing it together and you're predicting things that haven't happened. That's kind of stagey.
Speaker 2:Or like there is a little bit of it's like, if I have some fee I don't even know how to describe them Some things I just feel like I could predict, but I can't do it on demand, like if it was tell me my fortune, am I going to meet the man of my dreams? But I get some information. I don't really know how to describe it. So I've just done quite well on the football scores. I know nothing about football. It definitely helps. So I sometimes get some random bits of feeling, and I had a feeling about a woman that I didn't really know two years ago and I actually contacted her and I said I know you don't really know me, but I sing in a female barbershop group and you're our director. You don't know that yet, but you inside yourself know that we're the chorus for you and we know that you're for us. And ultimately and I don't know how it's going to happen it's going to happen and so and well, she is now.
Speaker 2:It took two years. I don't know how I. It's just this feeling. It took two years. I don't know how I. It's just this feeling. Sometimes I have a feeling and then when I've said it to somebody or to about something I wished I'd never said anything. I was shut up. Why do you say, cause I shoot myself in the foot, I'm scared. Then, oh no, if I'm right it's bad, if I'm wrong, it's even worse, so anyway. So I wouldn't say I'm a sage. I wouldn't say I'm psychic sage.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't say I'm psychic, but sometimes I get some bits of information yeah, you got. Then I have to prove it. Yes, yeah, yeah. So let's go right back. Okay, so we went to. We went to college together. We studied theater. You were in theater, weren't you in the theater stream? Um, at a small college in the UK, did our degree there, but you've got a doctorate. Yeah, that's not in food futurology no, that is not.
Speaker 2:I started um because I'd done a minor. I was doing a minor in music a little bit at dartington and I dropped out of that and I was never interested in acting or performing.
Speaker 2:Really I was interested in making. I was interested in space, I think I was interested in space, in shape, in space, and so then I ended up going to some lectures after university about Islamic geometry and I'd done different things before that and after that and I'd grown up in a Muslim country in the Middle East for a long period of time. So I started looking at geometry and architecture and then went down that route a lot more and had this question about I don't know why are a, why are humans, why are we alive? What's the point? Not oh, I want to die, but what's the point of being alive? And I wanted to answer that question. So I started doing looking at quantum mechanics and philosophy and that's what I ended up doing my PhD in. So it's like a quantum philosophy PhD Cool, looking at the way things connect, and really that's sort of what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:What you're doing now? Yeah, but where did your job come from? Like, are you the only person that does it? Did you make it up? Is it a thing?
Speaker 2:All of those, all of those. Yes, there are now quite a few futurologists and I've been doing it for decades. So when I first started and how I first started was probably that I have a school friend who's known me since I was eight and because we go back such a long way and she knew me at a time oh gosh and she was a TV producer and she was making a TV series for BBC World called Business 2025. And wow, that was futuristic 2025. I mean, wow, can you imagine? Right, we're almost there.
Speaker 2:They and they were using futurologists and she had three and she needed another one this is like three days before the shoot and she said can you do it? You'll be good at that, you're good at that stuff. She gave me the five topics. She said just say anything. Just say anything. I mean no pressure, and she knew that I would be the sort of person that would just step up and do it.
Speaker 2:But what transpired is that I seem to be much better than the futurologist. And actually, one of the things that I do remember was electric cars, and none of them. They all said, no, there's no way we'll be driving electric cars. And I said, yeah, well, definitely, that's definitely going to be a thing. So it was interesting what's come up, what's happened since then, because a lot of the predictions I was correct, even though it wasn't my job job. So I think that she knew that I had that capability in me and I had lots of the different traits of making that a possible job, because I think one of the things that you do have to have and you have that much more in youth, I think but also my character was quite fearless, because you have to be able to step up there and say stuff that you believe in that nobody else believes in, and to be shot down and to take that risk. And so I was.
Speaker 2:Really I was like a massive risk taker when I was younger. It gets less, I think, as you get older, but I was super risk, just like anything didn't care wild, would do it. So I suppose she put me up for it and I did it and it kind of set the ball rolling, but it took a long time to actually monetize it and put value on selling ideas, because it's an idea. And then how do you prove to somebody that you're right or that you've got an idea that they want, until you give it away and then you have no commodity. So it's been a real journey. It's been really feels like I'm only just getting my feet under the table not really, but you know, it feels like I'm only just I'm now.
Speaker 1:I'm still learning all the time yeah, yeah, oh gosh, hundred questions came up again and they've all kind of dropped in and out.
Speaker 2:Um okay, so that's how you became a food futurologist.
Speaker 1:Oh, that was yeah, you've kind of said you know there's a lot of pressure on you because, um, what if you get it wrong? And obviously part of um you building up your reputation has been like the amount of times that you've been accurate about stuff, and the more you do that, the more trusted you become. But do you get worried when you step into that role and you you know someone's hired you to do a talk or to present on what the food is going to be like in an organization and do you get scared that it's not going to come true?
Speaker 2:Or do you get?
Speaker 1:scared that it is going to come true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the food part is actually the easy part for me. So if I just if somebody, so I've had like long term. So I did a job for Philadelphia cream cheese in Europe. It was developing the vegan version and that was great and that for me was sort of in my that's in my wheelhouse. It's really my sweet spot. That's good for me. What's harder is when it's really generic to a company that isn't in food. And so, for example, if it's a because most, not always, but most of my audience tends to be men, and if they're in like men in finance perhaps might be a certain type of person.
Speaker 2:And I've stood up on stage. I've only had, I would say, three negative experiences ever in my job and that will have been one when I stood up and actually the questioning at the end went down a really weird route about the royal family. It was really odd and it was very odd. I don't know why it went down that route and it seemed, I don't know, it just got more and more difficult. Yeah, sometimes it's not good, it's not pleasant and it's not good.
Speaker 2:And I don't get scared, obviously, when you're speaking like in front of a thousand people and I don't have any script or any notes. So I never know how I'm going to be. If I'm going to be flowing, I hope I am. So I never know how I'm going to be. If I'm going to be flowing, I hope I am, but I want it to land. I want the audience, I want to connect with the audience and sometimes now it's more on Zoom. But even now on Zoom, because I've got more used to Zoom over the years, I can feel the audience on Zoom now.
Speaker 2:It didn't be at the beginning, I couldn't at all, and I zoom now. I didn't be at the beginning, I couldn't at all, and I think I just don't like it when there isn't a rapport. So it's not that I'm afraid, it's just I want to be able to connect with the audience and, irrespective of you know that I get paid, I get paid, but I want it to be positive and I want people to feel benefit from it. So it's important that they get. They think it's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, for sure. You say in your well, I've read somewhere. You do say in your book that you're, like, actually not a foodie, you're not a chef, you're not really that into cooking or anything. Can you tell? I did have to have a little chuckle, like just with the. I haven't got very far into the book yet, but with your descriptions of your like, where you came from and your background as a child with food, can you give us some of the things that you experienced?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean I, you know, I grew up in a quite a dysfunctional family of one child me and not really any other relatives or anybody else around, and my dad was a bodybuilder and a powerlifter and it was back in the 70s, so he was trying to. He was back before you could get all of these available protein shakes and all of the things. The information about fitness in a way was so limited. It was the Arnie days sort of thing, you know. So my dad was eating baby food and Complan and Filey's Rusks and I don't know a lot of baby food a lot of calories in and was quite exacting about food.
Speaker 2:But it was the 70s and things just weren't that available. You know it was, it was meat and two veg, basically, and my mum was a butcher and I didn't like meat and it was. You know, my mum used to think that you can't have a salad unless it's unless it's summer, and probably it wasn't even available anyway, you know, and the lettuce was probably the iceberg lettuce and lettuce tomato cucumber as a salad right.
Speaker 2:Oh, just awful awful, but I mean for me. Even as a child, I remember distinctly being dissatisfied and disappointed by the food offering, and also by my parents as well, yeah, and just finding the whole thing really unsatisfying and miserable. I think and I was just actually talking to my partner about this yesterday that sitting at home at the table where my parents were together so before the age of about nine or 10, we had this enormous grand boardroom table that probably seated about 12 in this dilapidated house that all needed fixing up, that had sort of painting writing on the wall. When we just needed a mess, we just painted it on the wall. I mean it was the most bizarre.
Speaker 2:But the table itself was this massive mahogany beautiful thing and we'd sit down as three people the most tense meal ever at one end of this table with nothing else in the room, and you sort of can hear the knife and fork scraping and I'm thinking I don't want to eat this, I don't like pork, you're eating your dinner, I don't like pork and I sort of oh, just the things that I wanted to eat. I couldn't help my mum. I mean one of the good things I suppose and I'd say this in the book is that she only made proper food. It was at least proper homemade food. There was no packet ready meal, anything really. And I wanted all of that because I was a child and of course I did. I did used to go up to my friend's house who had a chest freezer which was like exotic, to my friend's house who had a chest freezer which was like exotic and and she used to have fish fingers and we used to get the fish fingers out of the freezer and suck them, the breadcrumbs, off.
Speaker 1:I don't, oh my god, just the things that we, the stories that you fit into that book and just the way you tell them.
Speaker 2:I mean just the whole history of food. I think every single family has got histories with food.
Speaker 1:I mean I know you do because your dad was a baker yeah, so, yeah, like meals, we all sat around the table and it was, all you know, very important that we all had um. We had dinner together and you had to eat everything. No one was allowed to leave the table until you'd everyone had finished and the plates were empty and it was. Yeah, so that was kind of like. It was kind of a bit scary. Sunday lunch was at lunchtime, didn't have dinner. Yeah, didn't have um tea time. We had lunch and it was always a roast and sunday breakfast. I think we all had to sit around the table as well um but yeah, I just remember, remember it being um.
Speaker 1:I remember getting told off because I wanted tomato sauce on my roast dinner and I cried when I wasn't allowed. And now I look back and I'm thinking well, if you give me fucking tomato sauce on everything else, of course I'm gonna want it on my roast yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, but we were.
Speaker 1:I mean, we did have a little bit of the beef burgers and chips, you know, fish fingers, chips and peas, baked beans on toast situation going on. The first time my mum used a bouquet garnet. She, she left it in in the thing and I was like mum, I've got a tea bag in my dinner.
Speaker 2:Well, you were definitely way ahead of the curve. I mean, my mum wouldn't even know now what a bouquet garnet is like. She has very limited, limited knowledge of of that. She just made plain basic. I say that's not true. She made, she didn't all. It wasn't all plain basic food because she'd been in africa and we had these weird curries that my dad still makes. My mom hasn't can't remember it, but my dad's still making these weird curries. That were the african curries and they have different condiments on the side of the plate, which is pineapple chopped pineapple sultanas, um, a desiccated coconut. It was very odd and yeah, it was basically a dessert. It was a dessert. It was like fruit salad with curry. It was an odd, odd thing my parents are very strange with food.
Speaker 1:How much do you think that's influenced what you do with your own food today and like? Do you feel like that's separate from your work? Um?
Speaker 2:is. Do you feel like that's separate from your work? Yeah, that's, it's definitely separate from my work because I mean, I absolutely didn't want to work in food and the most. The biggest sea change for me in terms of food was and I think it's in the book, I can't remember it's so long ago, but um but I met a friend at school who I went to his. I met him at a party. It was in my year at school, we were about 13. I met him at a party, went to his house from the party and I just remember this house was like something from my dreams it was. It was like I found my people and it was this farmhouse on the hill. It was at night, it was in the summer's evening and the French windows were open and the curtains were billowing. Through the French windows, classical music was playing. I went into the house.
Speaker 2:The mother was sort of German and a little bit hippie. She was like would you like some homemade peach nectar? I was like I found my people, thank you. So I'd come from this extremely. I was living with my mom.
Speaker 2:We were really in poverty and free school meals and extremely working class, and then I found this bohemian, very bohemian family and I stayed and they had a bath in the middle of the room and there were all plants from the outside growing inside the house. It was an absolute bohemian madness, really crazy. And I stayed there and lived with them for about six months that night and they were making their own pizza bases and elderflower champagne and I don't know, probably knitting their own shower curtains, I don't know. And and it just took me into the roots. I was already vegetarian. It took me down that route of real. That was just the eight, it was the early eighties. It was whole foods. You know, it was the, it was the whole meal, whole food, lentil. The whole thing took me into then. It took me into that space for myself. But terms of a job, my job's completely separate from what I do for for my food.
Speaker 1:I think well it's then of course, I know a lot, so let's talk a little bit more about um trends, right? So you follow trends and in in your book again you talk about how, um, we, what? Well, the subtitle is why we eat and what we eat. And you pretty much say you think you know that, you think you're making your own personal choices, but really you're not. So how does that?
Speaker 2:all work. Yeah, I think that's. It's really of all the things. In some ways, that's the biggest idea in the book, or?
Speaker 2:the biggest thing that I hope people grasp is that you think that you're making a free, you think you have free will in what you choose. Of course you do in some ways, but there are a lot of predestined factors going into choice and I think we know we're being manipulated in clothing when we talk about fashion, but with food we think no, I like this but I don't like that. And it's really about socialization. It's about who your friends are. For example, it's like in Australia, tim Tams or a lamington. It's a cultural norm that people are used to and then you bring a lamington. That because the court, there's a cafe right on the corner by me here and it's the cafe that's been sort of the accolade is that it brought the flat white to london or the uk and it's australian and it sells lamingtons and I can tell you they're not that popular except with Australians. So it's because we don't have the cultural history. They sell Anzac cookies. They've got loads of the Tim Tams, they always sell them, they have those things. But it's because it's a cultural thing for Australians, not that other people taste and they go, wow, love those Tim Tams, got to have some more of those. And I think it's the same for British people when they smell someone walking down the street on a maybe, especially on a cold day, and they've got chips and you can smell the vinegar. There's just something about that. When you're British, when you go, oh, there's a delicious history that's connected to our olfactory bulb and our memory and so all of that plays into our choices, plus the fact that we are. You know, if you're a vegan, you don't tend to hang around with lots of people who want to go to McDonald's. Your McDonald's friends are, because you're a McDonald's person typically. You know like attracts like. So we find our food tribes. So it's all really interconnected. And brands spend a lot of time honing in on who is their consumer target market and then playing into that. So we know from you know my job is part to know all of this about texture and taste and packaging and branding what attracts people.
Speaker 2:So, for example, children don't like texture, they like creamy. They don't want things with bits in. If it's got bits in, they don't like that. So, like, the orange juice with pulp isn't typically a children's preference. And it gets the same with old people. It's why old people love ice cream. So if you're old, you love an ice cream, you go back into that curve and also our taste buds die. So that's why we start to prefer more complex flavors as we get older, like coffee, like darker chocolate, things like olives not always but generally and beer tend to be an older person's profile taste, not a child. So already we're starting to see that profile. But your taste buds die as you get older and older. So then of course, when you're much older, you need to salt your food more. Perhaps you need stronger flavors. People start putting chili in and things like that. So already we're starting to create a preference thing.
Speaker 2:Then you think about textures and we divide it up into texture preference people. So, for example, smooshers are people like Oprah Winfrey perhaps, who likes mashed potatoes. She'll push smooshy things through her teeth. There's something about creaminess that attracts her, creaminess that attracts her. Other people like crunch, so they're crunches.
Speaker 2:Other people are meddlers. They want something that's soft and chewy and crunchy. They want all of that kind of party in the mouth experience. And so, for example, even countries are divided by texture. So America like chewy cookies. Chewy is their thing and that's why all the cookies for them chewy cookies, chewy is their thing and that's why all the cookies? For them it's big cookie, chocolate chip cookies that are chewy, english people biscuits. They're crispy because that's why you dip them in your tea. It's a crispy thing.
Speaker 2:So already culturally there's a divide. So it starts. There's just so many concentric circles of preference and taste where you're choosing or you think you're choosing, and then there's also the thing about perception. So I've done tests and I think it's in the book where I was asked to drink. There were different tests and one was that we were all to drink this white liquid in this little shot glass. It was disgusting, absolutely disgusting cold white liquid, quite creamy, and it tasted to me like fish, something like liquidized fish. It was horrible and we didn't know what it was. And they said all they'd done is change the color of what it was, because what it was was cold Heinz tomato soup and when you take away the color and you take away the reference points, people can't identify it.
Speaker 2:And that's why all of those signals, those consumer signals, make people believe that it is what they think it is and that they like it, and that's why we've got things like pink. These don't have to be artificial. You can use wild blueberry powder to make food for your kids pink and it makes them think it's 11% sweeter. So you can fool them, so you can do naughty things like that. But it's what brands do Pink food we think it's sweeter than it really is.
Speaker 2:Or bright lights in any kind of fast food chain. Dunkin' Donuts do this. They put really bright lights in their places and they've got a really high rating for good coffee because it makes you think the coffee is stronger if the lights are brighter. So there's a ton of these tricks and so that's why we think that we can tell what our palate likes. But we're influenced every step of the way, and smells are pumped into bags. So popcorn, when you open the bag of popcorn, smells amazing because it's the popcorn that's been pumped into bags. So popcorn, when you open the bag of popcorn, smells amazing because the popcorn that's been pumped into the air in the bag.
Speaker 2:It's not the actual popcorn itself so you know food business is really really clever, really tricky yeah when you wrote the book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I always, I kind of feel like this is almost like a dirty secret of the food industry and that and that, like if you, if you're working with them, that you shouldn't be telling anyone what they're doing, kind of thing yes, like so like is that? Was there any kind of, is there any kind of like thing that holds you back from saying oh, I better not say that, because Bob you wouldn't be able to tell me if there was.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, no, I mean because I signed an NDA with all the brands. There's lots of things I can't say. But I can't say what they're doing, or you know, there's a lot of things I can't say. And when I first wrote the first draft of the book, by the way, the book started a bit like you know, if you've ever made a vase on a pottery wheel, it starts like this and it collapses. You cut it down and in the end you end up with a bowl. Maybe that's just me. Well, that's what the book started, like this huge thing, and ended up whittling down because I was so sick of it by the end and, sadly, as you may have noticed, there are some typos in there, so there are a few missing bits of punctuation or it's just. It's infuriating. I just got so sick of it. I thought better done than good, get it out, Because the publisher originally and this is before COVID, the publisher wanted me to expose and it'd be a lot more of a dirty secret expose and I couldn't do that. So what?
Speaker 2:everything I've said in the book is not something that um you've signed a disclosure kind of thing no, no, no, this is just stuff that I know, that I've been experienced, I've experienced myself, or that I this is not stuff that I've learned in a company that they said whatever you do, don't tell them, we're doing this. So there's none of that and there's no sort of insider secrets per se. It's just common knowledge within industry and people know, yeah, and that's it really. But I mean I think more, more than that. It's more of a journey about. I mean what I'd hope for the book is that it's more of a journey about. I mean what I'd hope for the book is that it's my bit of story about food.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a little bit about personal story about food, because I think everybody has it, everybody, and there's so much and I didn't say all, but there's so much to say about our own relationships with food, because it's the one thing that you can't escape. It's really difficult, even if you're not eating anything. It's the one thing that you can't escape. It's really difficult, even if you're not eating anything. It's because you have a dysfunctional relationship with food or there's something in there. It's about relationships, family, and food symbolizes mother. So it's a real. We're tightly bound with it all.
Speaker 2:And then the part that is about people waking up to the fact that they think they're making a free choice, but they need to have a little bit of a recalibration, because even the businesses that are selling you health are still selling you something, and I think that's the thing, is that to really. I mean and you know this better than anybody it's getting back to the absolute fundamentals, which is the human system, and not just everybody's human system. It's your human system, because it doesn't. What works for your human system doesn't work for my human system, and I think that's thing. It's why, when people do diets or whatever, they don't work for everyone, and it there'll be the majority of people that it'll be the, the holy grail, but not for everybody.
Speaker 2:So, for example, a lot of people who are vegan or vegetarian will eat a lot of legumes, beans and whatever. I cannot eat legumes and beans and whatever. I cannot eat legumes and beans and whatever because I'm allergic. I can't digest them. So I can't digest the lectin and the protein in beans. It makes me unwell, so that's me. So it's no good Anybody come and say oh well, what you need is some tofu and some tempeh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, not so much, and that's why I think that we've farmed out, we've outsourced our health and wellness and our own self-autonomy to not just the big brands because we've done that for a long time, where we've gone hey supermarket, feed my family, but also to the brands that we, or to the people who that we think really do know and even they don't know. Not, no, no, you know, we are really so unique, each one of us, and I think it's that you know our dna and our family history and everything. So it's we are.
Speaker 1:We're complex and we're also simple yes, I always say that a lot. Yeah, we, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, um, yeah, it's. It's like people might get say to you oh you look amazing, what do you do, kind of thing. But again it's like, well, make educated decisions right, and to be kind of it's almost like you just need to be aware of what's going on.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, yeah but there is some shit going on right.
Speaker 1:Are there any shit things that you think?
Speaker 2:oh, that's just like, yeah, I mean, it's very tricky. It's very tricky because so I was at a. I was at a well-being happy. It's called the happy place festival by somebody who's quite well known in the UK called Fern Cotton, who's married to one of the Rolling Stones' sons and she's written lots of books about happy place and she's been quite successful. But actually saying, I'm not that happy and I've had to really get into touch with myself and my own wellbeing and she's had eating issues, she's disclosed all this. She's trying to give women tools to feel better and to be authentic and real and it's great because it's coming from a person that you might not think struggles with all of that. So she set up this festival called the Happy Place Festival and I went there and my friend was selling a really great.
Speaker 2:He's a marine biologist and he works a lot with different sorts of seaweeds and he's amazing. He's really doing good stuff. But that's the difficulty is that what he's selling is wild Hebridean, different types of seaweed which is full of iodine and natural sources of just really good stuff. That's all he's selling is just seaweed. But then there are other stands there selling other things and one of the stands there was the company Dole a big American brand, I would say Dole and they sell like tinned fruits and things like that, and they were selling a little snack pot or something and it said you know the good for you vegan snack. And I said okay, so better for you. I said better than what? Oh, well, better than the other things you might choose, like what you know once you start to drill down and I did.
Speaker 2:And I challenged the brand manager, who just happened to be there that day, and I said can I have a look at the ingredients, do you mind? I went, oh, carragee and gum Interesting Guar gum, right. So. So what is it? So what's the positioning on it? What is this that you're saying? So we just got into it, and I think that's what's difficult. So, on the face of it, you go, oh, it's fruit and it's some coconut yogurt type custard. It's healthy. And then right, yeah, and then you start looking down what it really means, and I think that's the thing is that we're still, there's still some watchwords that help brands position for people, and that's their job.
Speaker 2:By the way, I don't blame them. It's difficult, you know. What's really difficult is that their consumers are wanting options, they're wanting solutions and then typically often not wanting to invest time to make that happen for themselves, because they're well, I'm busy and everybody's got the same amount of time in the day. But the reality is people want to apportion their time differently. They don't want to spend an hour making X, y, z. They'd rather spend an hour watching their favorite TV show, and that's how they want to apportion their time. And so brands create solutions for those people like that. But we have power to choose, and I think that's the thing is that we can choose differently. But that's the difference between why have you got biceps and I haven't. It's because I've chosen to do a lot of things to make my biceps big that you haven't chosen to do. It's tricky, it's really tricky, right. It's about choice, and the brands are there because they're offering solutions that people are asking for and their shareholders are needing money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a big big one really isn't it I guess, and, yeah, raising awareness is important, which I think that what your, your book does, um, yeah, I mean the brands do respond.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right no, the.
Speaker 1:the one thing I think of is like there's a I don't know if they have it in the UK, but there's a. There's a lolly or you know sweet company called the Natural Confectionery Company, right, lolly type things in a bag and it's all right, natural. And and uh, louis got some in a birthday bag. You know, he went and we kind of usually tip him out and I was like, oh look, let's have a look online, because it was a obviously part of a multi-pack, so it didn't have the ingredients. And we went online and it was like made in Thailand, which is okay, but it was like the ingredients list was like literally hundreds of things in the natural confectionery, yeah. And so we also. We get tricked because we're trying to do the right thing. We also we get tricked because we're trying to do the right thing. And you think, well, I want to give my kid some sweets because I don't want them to miss out, and so I'll choose the ones that are the healthiest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sweets are healthy, which I'm always telling my children.
Speaker 2:It's super difficult.
Speaker 2:It's so, so difficult. Difficult, especially as a parent, because you're confronted with keeping them not like. You don't want them to be the weirdo and you want them to be able to. You want them to be able to choose help. You want them to be able to choose for themselves and I think if you restrict it all, then they go the.
Speaker 2:I've seen that where they go the other way, where they want it all. It's almost like if you let them have it all, then they go the. I've seen that where they go the other way, where they want it all. It's almost like if you let them have it all, they don't want it. If you don't let them have any of it, they want it all and then they go crazy. It's so, so difficult. That kind of parenting, especially now because of social media, of exposure to things way more than we had, um, and also send them to parties and oh, tricky, so tricky it's all difficult, yeah, you just, yeah, we just try and treat them like normal human beings and help them make, um, favorable choices and not overdo it with most things.
Speaker 1:Um, um, what else? And here we go, uh, okay, so what's the difference between something, uh, gaining popularity and a trend? So let me give you an example. I was thinking about this. I read in your book about veganism and how that's gained in popularity, and you kind of go historically, why some of those things would have happened, even though people wouldn't necessarily realize that they've made the decision to change their diet to to a vegan diet. Um, so let me I'll use me as an example, right, so we started doing crossfit, however, many years ago, long time ago, but there was a diet attached to it. There was a diet called the zone diet originally, which they kind of advocated for. So a lot of crossfitters followed the zone diet then the pain.
Speaker 1:Well it's. Oh, okay, it was zone diet was kind of broken in. Food was broken into blocks so depending on your body weight you'd have you'd be able to have blocks of protein, fats and carbohydrates. Um, right, okay, and depending on what your goals were, how many times you were exercising and stuff, so it kind of included not so favorable foods it was. It was in there. It was kind of like you can have them, but then they're not ideal. So that was all you know, eat real foods and stuff. And so we've kind of gone down that route as part of and it is part of our culture, right, it's part of what crossfitters do they? They, yeah, they follow a paleo diet and it's definitely led us down a pathway in all other parts of our life right with something like the paleo diet?
Speaker 1:um, would you say that that is a something that's gaining in popularity, or has gained in popularity, or is it a trend?
Speaker 2:oh, oh, yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely a trend. Yeah, I mean so you're, you're not talking about a fad, no, a trend, because a fad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a trend. A fad's kind of a bit more short term, is it?
Speaker 2:It is, yeah, yeah, a fad's really like, I don't know, whoopie pies or something like that. You know it comes and goes. It's a moment, yeah, I mean the thing is with veganism it's more about the plant-based movement. I would say so, this whole plant-based movement, because the vegan meats have declined. They've had a. They've declined during covid, the vegan meats, because most of them, when people have had time to read the back of the packet, they've gone.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's quite a lot of ingredients on there that I can't pronounce and I have tummy ache a lot. I wonder why? Because it's hydrolyzed pea protein and it's all sorts of To make it taste it's all sorts of rubbish. Yeah, to make it taste like bacon, right, yeah, so that's been part of the issue is that they've now. So it's declined because a lot of brands jumped on the bandwagon when they started to see that rise of popularity of plant-based meats, started putting out any old rubbish. It got to a critical mass. Then, during covid, people started reading the, the, and then, and then a lot of them have gone, have disappeared off the, off the market, right, so there's not that many left. There's no, there's comparatively, um.
Speaker 2:And then you've got, of course, the paleo strand and one of the things with trends always is that it's a little bit like massive rise in ai. Of course there's going to be, and there's already the the. You always have to have the balance, the flip side of the coin. So what we also see is this huge rise of people living off grid, much more gardening, living home, community, community-based networks, like a whole community systems, living, communicating, people coming off social media, people promoting not using cards to pay and using money. You know that whole thing. So it's gone.
Speaker 2:It's like the polarity and paleo and plant-based not exactly exactly opposite sides of the coin, actually, no, but it's about, you know, the paleo and the plant-based. It depends on what sort of plant-based, because you could say I'm vegan and you could eat chip sandwiches. Yeah, you could eat you, you know. I mean really, you know there's a million things that you could eat that don't involve meat or dairy and you could say, well, I'm a vegan. It doesn't mean to say that I am a healthy, balanced, food-eating person. So I think that paleo is really more in that clean eating space. Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:And I don't, and that's absolutely a trend, completely, yeah, yeah, completely, that people have the. I mean, it's such. It's so difficult because on one side, we know that the cheapest way to eat is to cook from scratch and the healthiest way to eat is to cook from scratch. You know exactly what's in it. You're buying the ingredients as close to source as possible. So get some veg, get some potatoes or whatever. You can make a big meal.
Speaker 2:If you are impoverished, you don't have a lot of money, but your family, some rice, whatever, and you could make a big meal for people. But on the flip side of that, there there is such food poverty and restriction that some people might not even have gas or electric to be able to cook with, and so in the uk this is quite a thing at the moment. So then they get things that are coming from the food banks, and the food banks are not giving them fresh food. They're giving them tinned food and processed food. So in some ways is clean eating a privilege, because you've got time and you've got the education and the capability, and so then you think, well, if it's not clean eating, then it's packaged food, and that's because I've got my food from a food bank? I don't know, I mean, this is the thing. There's just not one simple answer.
Speaker 1:But I think that paleo suits a lot of people Not everyone, but it suits a lot of people a lot of people not everyone, but it suits a lot of people. And I guess you I mean you you talk, talk about trends and quite often some of the well, I've heard you on an interview, um, talking about air protein as an example, when I've seen you talk about, you know, these kind of quirky things where you can package breathing air or something. Was that one a while ago, or something? There's something, no, no, no, I can't remember, I can't remember it was something and it was like some random kind of thing, that it would become like fresh air kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Fresh air in a packet, though no no, I don't think I've ever said that. But anyway, yeah, air protein was one um and they kind of that. Although, like a lot of the things that you predict sound a little bit out there, they do come true. But when you, when you kind of think that some things are trends, like healthy eating, that's kind of like a trend. Some trends aren't bad right.
Speaker 2:Oh no, oh God. No, not at all. I don't think trends are bad at all.
Speaker 1:And we can kind of look at the food industry and go, they're trying to make us buy. You know the food industry and go, they're trying to make us buy. You know they're directing our attention to certain types of food. Or you know, like you said, um, the the coffee thing with the bright lights, and it's like you can feel a little bit tricked like they're. You know it's a big half. We're not, we're not actually making any of our own choices, but but there are some ways that it has a positive impact as well.
Speaker 2:Not everyone's out to get us. Well, this is the one thing that I think. They're only making stuff that they think you want and if you don't buy it, they don't make it. And such a high percentage I mean such a high percentage of foods that are. It takes about three years for a brand to come up with an idea.
Speaker 2:Now bigger brands come with an idea, do all of the due diligence, because it's a big deal. You know you can't be killing people with what you make and and the bigger you are, the more checks and balances you have. Then you've got to do all the marketing and get that on the shelves. It takes about three years and most of them only last six months on the shelves because people are the litmus test. If people don't like it, then they're not going to make it anymore. So you have a lot of power as a consumer and they're only making these snacks with whatever you know, the coconut. They're only doing that because they've found a gap in the market where consumers are saying we want that thing. Yeah, you wouldn't have been making a plant-based coconut custard thing 10 years ago for consumers because the market wasn't there.
Speaker 2:So I think that we are so powerful beyond our wildest dreams as a consumer, with what we buy, what we choose. That is exactly how we vote and the politics of food is the biggest way we vote. And the politics of food is the biggest. It's the biggest way we vote. You think it's the election, but actually it's how you shop. It's massive. It's massive because it affects communities, affects shipping, affects cultures in the world. You know you're buying quinoa. You're probably buying it from, depends on where the quinoas come from. There is British quinoa, but there's also things from Peru. And then you think about the community in Peru. You know how you shop matters. It really matters, and it's a huge responsibility for people, and I think that that's what food is. Again, going back to it, it's mother. It is the complete nurture of self, family, community, planet.
Speaker 2:It's huge, but hey, no, but no, no pressure no pressure for you, pressure people, but it yeah, you know it. If you want it, if you want to take it on, you can and and I mean right now, since, since brexit in the uk, one of you know, there's a lot going on in the world and it's hard to keep up and, no matter what you desperately want to keep up, it's still difficult, right, because there's a lot of information and what's true and what's not true. And for us, brexit happened. People don't know this. Brexit happened. People don't know this. I mean really genuinely don't know that the labeling laws were governed by the European Union, so for the whole of Europe they're governed.
Speaker 2:When we come out, then it shifts for the UK. What also happens is that we start to buy fruit and veg from countries that are not regulated within the EU and that means that they can use sprays on crops, when it's non-organic, that are considered to be carcinogenic, that the EU would not allow. But now Britain are buying those in. Nobody knows this. So you buy some oranges. It's pretty hard to get organic oranges in the UK. So you buy regular oranges and you think, well, they're oranges and you're peeling them and you've always shopped for the last, most of, for some people, all of their lives trusting that, even if it's not organic, it's not deadly. But when you read the little tag on the bag of oranges, it's got things in it that said this is carcinogenic, in the tiny small print.
Speaker 2:Holy crap in the tiny small print. Holy crap. Because we can now have things from countries that are not allowed within most regulations within the world. We're buying things from countries that are unregulated and nobody knows, and that is a massive responsibility on the consumer. And they can say, well, we put it on the packet, yeah. But come on, who would have thought to have read the tiny little label on the bag of orange? You know, they're just, they're just oranges, there's no ingredients in these. What would I need to read the ingredient label?
Speaker 1:that's tricky yeah that's tricky wow, that's heavy sorry, I suppose was this? Is this the?
Speaker 2:is this the light and fun podcast works?
Speaker 1:oh, no, it's life out of the universe. We want to know all of the things that are going on and be like conscious humans. Right, that's based. That's one of the things I love about you know, hearing these things is we, we can make, if we, the more we know, the the better the choices we can make, whether it's with our food, whether it's with our lifestyle, the what we listen to on the, you know, on the socials, or whether we watch the news or not. All of those things, yeah, like yeah, yeah, they're important and um, yeah, we can make much more. We have hit the hour and I, um, yes and uh, I have got something else, just a little thing. Well, it's not really little, but like just gonna hit you with it.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I am like I follow a few different people in esoteric areas and there's been a lot of talk in the last little while about, you know, this dawning of the age. Well, the dawning of the age of Aquarius, like where we literally did go into Aquarius. I think it was Pluto went into Aquarius for the first time in like 274 years or something, and so like there's this shift for humanity and it kind of, yeah, it's all started and although you're a food futurologist. I'm not going to ask you your predictions. Oh, you should. Okay, what are your predictions? But I've. Okay, what are your predictions.
Speaker 2:I talk about this, so this is oh yeah, this is right up my street. So, oh yeah, completely yeah. When I'm looking at, you know, when I'm looking at these trends or whatever, I mean, I look at these curves of humanity, and 91 year cycle is a big one, okay, um, there's a lot of different cycles and this 270 year thing is that we're changing a complete way of humanity being and the motivating factors into another way. So if we take it out of the esoteric and we, you know, because a lot of people think, oh well, that's woo, woo or doesn't really apply or it's astrological or whatever, there is still another place for that. And I talk to you know, when I talk to businesses about this, it's exactly the same thing. It's that the reason I knew 2020 was that that was a.
Speaker 2:For me, that was an eight year prediction. So I started in 2012 saying this is coming. This is coming because that was a. For me, that was an eight-year prediction. So I started in 2012 saying this is coming, this is coming because that was almost the pivot. And then you've got six years until 2026.
Speaker 2:I mean, this year is it's volatile, there's a lot of volatility and war and next year also, things that are going to. It's almost like if trump in don't think it's going to be for four years because things are going to shift. It's shifting, it's just not what it seems. Nothing is what it seems. There's going to be a lot of reveals yet to come. Things about COVID coming out the woodwork, things about lockdown coming out the woodwork, information that's still becoming available to us.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of revelation in the next, in these six years, and also breaking down of systems, which is part of this. As we move into a new age if we want to call it that the age of Aquarius, you don't just have a seamless transition from what state of being and one way of operating in the world and all of the systems and all of the things which has been about having. Really it's been a system of having, having money, having a job, having a better job, moving into knowing where kindness is going to be a massive part of the value system. We haven't had that luxury, that knowing and the kindness and understanding what it means to be human. We haven't had the luxury that knowing and the kindness and understanding what it means to be human.
Speaker 2:We haven't had the luxury of even thinking about that in the last 270 years We've been busy with all of the other stuff, like how do you get light and how do you heat your house and things like that. So this is the next phase and these six years are a complete and utter overhaul of humanity in a way, and that happens on a personal level. So that's why there's a lot of breakup of relationships. There's a lot of things dissolutions of governments it's why we'll see the fall of Europe.
Speaker 2:I believe it's why we'll see all of the ways that things have come together and sort of held together relationships in the widest context, way in which we can trust banking systems or housing systems or growing systems, food systems, governmental systems, and how the way it's all held together starts to kind of it's like there's like a tremor and an earthquake and it's breaking up and it's messy and people get scared and there's an insecurity and there's a fear.
Speaker 2:And what people are attaching to a lot of businesses are attaching to data to feel safe. Give me statistics and data and things where I can go okay, I'll be okay, I'll feel okay, and the algorithm will cause we've, we've got all. We're all algorithms up, so we're trusting again. We're all algorithms up, so we're trusting again outsourcing our faith, our feelings of goodness into something other, which we've done for so long. And until we bring it back to the self, we'll start to stabilize, and that's what the next phase is. So it's all going to come good, it's really going to be good and I think the future is really positive. But it's a very tricky, messy time. The dog's in the plant. Oi, truman, truman, truman, oi.
Speaker 1:What's he doing?
Speaker 2:He's dug up. I don't know. I think he's found a crystal in the plant. I don't know what he's doing.
Speaker 1:Anyway, sorry, sorry about that, that's all right, naughty truman, I was hoping my dog didn't start scratching crystals in all, my plants.
Speaker 1:Well, crystals help your plants grow I uh, yeah, I love that, um, and I just find it amazing that there are so that, like I've heard from so many different kind of directions, this same sort of feeling, and it is, yeah, really this feeling of, yeah, there's, there's stuff changing, and I guess one of the things that I want to do as well to share on the podcast is to help people understand that so they're ready, because, yeah, it could be pretty scary if you, if you just kind of like not up to date with that stuff, right, it's like all of the things that people I think they're trusting for a long time.
Speaker 2:Yes, can't necessarily be trusted anymore a lot of people are feeling, I think, think, insecure, scared, wobbled. There's no plan, there's no. You know, the old paradigm is not working. However, I do think and I just wanted to say this you know that some people like me are talking about these future things and some people and you're a great example of this are living them.
Speaker 2:You are living in the future. You're not talking about it because you made a choice quite a long time before. This was the the. You know, whether you're aware of it or not, you're feeling something that's, that's the pulse, and you're going with something that feels right for you and living into a future existence which will be more desirable as time goes on and that more and more people will want, and you chose it at a time when, more and more, most people were not going that direction so you're living into the future, which is we literally chose it like six months before before we yeah, um yeah we got out, went to the uk, did our three-month visit, moved out of the city and then, like shit, hit the fan.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great, absolutely yeah, no, it's amazing.
Speaker 2:You know you're living the future, you're living in this sort of if you were, the blueprint of the future of humanity. There you go, viewers.
Speaker 1:Nadine, it's a blueprint.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly what you're doing is the future of humanity, really A very large majority of people who are going to thrive. Survive is what we're all busy doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But you're thriving. That's the difference.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Yeah, that's a beautiful note to end on. I've absolutely loved catching up with you. Thank you so much for sharing all of the things with us.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Yes and hopefully it won't be too long before we talk again. Lots of love, that would be great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much, bye, bye.