1 00:00:04,030 --> 00:00:12,120 I'm Stanley Roszak Phillips, Uncrossed College, Oxford, and professor of Human Ecology at the University of Oxford School of Anthropology. 2 00:00:12,120 --> 00:00:17,070 My everyday research life at the University of Oxford is guided by two themes. 3 00:00:17,070 --> 00:00:21,200 The first of these is that of evolution and human diet and nutrition. 4 00:00:21,200 --> 00:00:29,190 Second of these is body fatness and obesity and how it's produced in human populations with this theme body faintness and obesity. 5 00:00:29,190 --> 00:00:33,750 I direct the unit for bio cultural variation and obesity, 6 00:00:33,750 --> 00:00:40,800 which concerns itself with social and societal aspects of food, diet, body size, body, fatness and nutritional state. 7 00:00:40,800 --> 00:00:48,520 We as a group have been going since 2007 and you can find us and catch up with our programme of research on w w w dot. 8 00:00:48,520 --> 00:00:54,570 Oxford Obesity dot org. And also with our podcasts on university books to podcasts. 9 00:00:54,570 --> 00:01:01,260 My work on Kurban 19 Lockdown is an ongoing element of a project that was running before Code 19. 10 00:01:01,260 --> 00:01:05,730 The pandemic has dominated headlines everywhere over the past 12 months, 11 00:01:05,730 --> 00:01:10,470 affecting the lives and activities of everybody across the four corners of the globe. 12 00:01:10,470 --> 00:01:18,660 Across the year, I've had podcast conversations with fellows who are at the frontline of coping 19 research in many different ways. 13 00:01:18,660 --> 00:01:23,090 I've spoken with Andrew Pollard, with Rana Mitter, with Michael Parker. 14 00:01:23,090 --> 00:01:28,380 Achilleas. Captain needs Dan Hicks. Matthew Snape and Julian Sabal Lesco. 15 00:01:28,380 --> 00:01:33,540 It's been a privilege to share their quest for knowledge about Koban 19 and its impacts. 16 00:01:33,540 --> 00:01:39,000 This particular podcast now is about my own involvement in Copan 19 research. 17 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:43,500 First, let me take you back to March 2020 at the University of Oxford. 18 00:01:43,500 --> 00:01:45,960 Hillary term was coming to a close. 19 00:01:45,960 --> 00:01:53,820 I recall giving my very last lecture of term on the very last day of term electron obesity appetite and eating in this lecture. 20 00:01:53,820 --> 00:02:00,180 I usually demonstrate a point about eating pleasure in the brain by offering chocolate to the students. 21 00:02:00,180 --> 00:02:03,270 Dark chocolate or milk? Chocolate. According to preference. 22 00:02:03,270 --> 00:02:09,000 Then asking them about their mental experience of consuming the small piece of chocolate that I'd just offered them. 23 00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:14,490 This time when I offered chocolate, there were absolutely no takers, none at all. 24 00:02:14,490 --> 00:02:18,480 Something had changed. Students were refusing free chocolate. 25 00:02:18,480 --> 00:02:25,060 A couple of weeks later, we went into lockdown, lockdown one, as it's now known, prior to convict 19. 26 00:02:25,060 --> 00:02:28,410 The research, my group with co researchers Caroline Potter, 27 00:02:28,410 --> 00:02:34,980 Karrine Ellie and Leavis Hall in an obit skirt and Sabine Parish was an understanding how the domestic 28 00:02:34,980 --> 00:02:40,560 environment mediated physical activity and eating in the production of overweight and obesity. 29 00:02:40,560 --> 00:02:45,030 This is an important and under researched aspect of the production of health and wellbeing, 30 00:02:45,030 --> 00:02:50,520 given that people spend a lot of time at home in the domestic space, especially across winter. 31 00:02:50,520 --> 00:02:57,060 This was work of policy relevance at the time, but it became even more so with the post lockdown in the UK. 32 00:02:57,060 --> 00:03:01,350 I know everybody has their own experience and locked down their own memories. 33 00:03:01,350 --> 00:03:07,350 The uncertainty is the anxiety, interpreting the rules, working out what you could and could not do, 34 00:03:07,350 --> 00:03:11,190 and the panic buying of food, storing up food from unknown future. 35 00:03:11,190 --> 00:03:15,690 This in itself was all very interesting and important from a research perspective. 36 00:03:15,690 --> 00:03:21,960 My decades of research on the evolutionary basis of overeating told me that this was to be expected. 37 00:03:21,960 --> 00:03:27,090 This is because the main way for all animal species to deal with uncertainty is to hoard food, 38 00:03:27,090 --> 00:03:33,240 either by eating as much as they can and storing fat on their body, or by keeping it in storage in one way or another. 39 00:03:33,240 --> 00:03:38,520 What was happening in the UK and in many other countries was a classic response to uncertainty. 40 00:03:38,520 --> 00:03:43,170 My family did it, too. We stored like everybody else. And then there was what, 41 00:03:43,170 --> 00:03:50,880 panic buying due to the food supply chain as unexpected patterns of food buying disrupted the Just-In-Time supply chain expert 42 00:03:50,880 --> 00:03:57,030 systems that are governed by purchasing patterns as well as the epicentre of the pandemic being and will hand in China, 43 00:03:57,030 --> 00:04:04,800 which itself is a key place in the global supply chain. For most things locked down in hand created food supply habit across the world. 44 00:04:04,800 --> 00:04:12,090 The research we did in the UK involved understanding the impact of Pope 19 Lockdown's on physical and mental health. 45 00:04:12,090 --> 00:04:13,020 Our existing work, 46 00:04:13,020 --> 00:04:21,780 prior to Copan 19 was in response to a policy relevant need to understand how the domestic sphere influences health and health behaviour. 47 00:04:21,780 --> 00:04:28,790 Then along came Copan 19, which made this type of research pressingly important, especially during the first lockdown. 48 00:04:28,790 --> 00:04:31,530 When people really didn't know what was happening, 49 00:04:31,530 --> 00:04:38,220 we wanted to determine what effects household isolation and social distancing would have on mental and physical health. 50 00:04:38,220 --> 00:04:44,190 The aim was to inform policy initiatives based on sound evidence of current and emerging patterns 51 00:04:44,190 --> 00:04:48,990 within household environments that would impact on the health of the population of the UK. 52 00:04:48,990 --> 00:04:55,560 We were well positioned, given our previous research, to modify our research protocols very quickly and effectively. 53 00:04:55,560 --> 00:05:03,510 The work we did. A novel survey carried out online was funded by the University of Oxford Social Science Traditions Cauvin, 19. 54 00:05:03,510 --> 00:05:07,860 Urgent response fund with the intention of undertaking it rapidly and conducting 55 00:05:07,860 --> 00:05:12,510 speedy analysis to write and submit to INSIGHT reports for the UK Parliament. 56 00:05:12,510 --> 00:05:19,170 From start to finish, we had first report out within eight weeks of the project being initiated. 57 00:05:19,170 --> 00:05:25,950 Dramatic progress in terms of doing a very rapid pace of survey work, including the analysis. 58 00:05:25,950 --> 00:05:32,160 Over a thousand people responded. Many responded to follow up research, which was undertaken at the height of lockdown. 59 00:05:32,160 --> 00:05:40,470 One found that dietary patterns suddenly shifted better for some worse than many in response to reduced access to usual food supplies. 60 00:05:40,470 --> 00:05:46,470 Physical activity levels also changed sharply, increasing for some, while dramatically reducing others. 61 00:05:46,470 --> 00:05:51,810 Remember early in lockdown, though, so many people on their bicycle cycling every once while there were many more 62 00:05:51,810 --> 00:05:56,490 people who were stuck at home not able to do anything or go out very much. 63 00:05:56,490 --> 00:06:03,120 There was also a stark rise in negative mental health, especially in suicidal tendencies and in disordered eating. 64 00:06:03,120 --> 00:06:08,160 Related to this was increased binge eating and consumption of processed snacks and of alcohol. 65 00:06:08,160 --> 00:06:12,840 Health outcomes were generally worse amongst those experiencing economic insecurity. 66 00:06:12,840 --> 00:06:19,320 And in young people, you had the worst mental health outcomes even after taking into account economic insecurity. 67 00:06:19,320 --> 00:06:21,450 Older people seemed to be more resilient. 68 00:06:21,450 --> 00:06:27,720 Something that we weren't expecting and something that we're trying to understand better with a more detailed analysis right now. 69 00:06:27,720 --> 00:06:34,170 Three national lockdowns have each dramatically shifted people's living and working routines, with many people working, 70 00:06:34,170 --> 00:06:40,290 learning or furloughed at home and with gyms, leisure facilities and non-essential retail outlets closed. 71 00:06:40,290 --> 00:06:46,110 There've been many huge changes in levels of physical activity and eating patterns, as well as in mental health. 72 00:06:46,110 --> 00:06:48,990 Most of the things that we observed were interrelated. 73 00:06:48,990 --> 00:06:55,590 Domestic space became very important and underwent upheaval as people struggled to adapt to full time work from home. 74 00:06:55,590 --> 00:06:58,290 People got bored. People got irritable, tired. 75 00:06:58,290 --> 00:07:04,320 Many snacked much more and developed an affinity for the very foods that can lead to obesity and increase fatness, 76 00:07:04,320 --> 00:07:08,790 but which tastes so good and so, so comforting in times of stress. 77 00:07:08,790 --> 00:07:15,270 In parallel with this, I ran a podcast series called Lockdown Food with a former St Cross student test bird. 78 00:07:15,270 --> 00:07:20,160 She went on to do a deep fill with me and she's since graduated in a lockdown food. 79 00:07:20,160 --> 00:07:26,370 We interviewed people both academic and non-academic, about their experiences with food under Pope 19. 80 00:07:26,370 --> 00:07:33,750 The interviews were recorded online and we could see how things were with food through the eyes of our interviewees in Denmark and Switzerland, 81 00:07:33,750 --> 00:07:38,070 in Spain, in the United States, in India, as well as in the UK. 82 00:07:38,070 --> 00:07:44,400 This comparison has given us a strong record of this time in history when so much went wrong with food. 83 00:07:44,400 --> 00:07:49,020 Although the surveys are finished, no more data being collected. The work goes on. 84 00:07:49,020 --> 00:07:53,220 We are continuing our analysis and right up for scientific publication, 85 00:07:53,220 --> 00:07:59,920 making sense of the complex and changing sets of relationships that have influenced health and health behaviours across the year or so. 86 00:07:59,920 --> 00:08:06,720 A pandemic beyond the immediately apparent. We have submitted to INSIGHT reports to the UK Parliament as we promised, 87 00:08:06,720 --> 00:08:11,880 and an evidence brief on childhood obesity has gone to deferent the UK government department. 88 00:08:11,880 --> 00:08:15,420 This was the UK. Post Brexit National Food Strategy, 89 00:08:15,420 --> 00:08:22,680 which incorporated obesity as a consideration late in the day when it was realised that obesity is a major contributor to COPD. 90 00:08:22,680 --> 00:08:29,970 19 deaths have also submitted evidence to a House of Lords enquiry into postcode 19 futures, which is now underway. 91 00:08:29,970 --> 00:08:34,470 And I'm involved in a UK Parliament policy work programme on childhood obesity. 92 00:08:34,470 --> 00:08:41,291 All told, it's been a unexpectedly busy year and there's plenty more to do.