1 00:00:01,020 --> 00:00:04,650 Could you just start by saying your name and what your current title is? 2 00:00:05,250 --> 00:00:14,220 My name is Stanley Wilson, professor of Human Ecology at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford. 3 00:00:15,030 --> 00:00:18,810 Lovely. And also a fellow of some cross currents. And I'm a Phillips and Ross College. 4 00:00:18,900 --> 00:00:26,790 Yeah. And I wanted to ask you to essentially tell me your life story, but in fairly short, short order, 5 00:00:27,030 --> 00:00:32,040 how did you first become interested in the kind of topics that you've been researching? 6 00:00:32,340 --> 00:00:37,230 And can you just give me the kind of headlines of your career steps up till 2020? 7 00:00:39,560 --> 00:00:50,209 Short story. I graduated in biochemistry back in the day and had progressively moved from 8 00:00:50,210 --> 00:00:55,580 biochemistry to nutrition to public health nutrition when it really wasn't a subject. 9 00:00:56,450 --> 00:00:59,270 Way back in the 1980s, I worked in Papua New Guinea. 10 00:01:00,200 --> 00:01:13,640 I was fascinated in this strange and remote place and worked on nutritional ecology there because it seemed that the only way of finding out 11 00:01:13,670 --> 00:01:22,160 why there were such high levels of undernutrition in the place where I was was to look at the practice of food getting in all its forms, 12 00:01:23,240 --> 00:01:32,990 its sociality, the practices themselves, and finding out that the story was actually more complex than I anticipated. 13 00:01:32,990 --> 00:01:35,030 So I worked on nutrition and infection. 14 00:01:36,080 --> 00:01:44,840 I graduated, got my first academic post at the University of Cambridge as a fledgling nutritional anthropologist when it didn't exist as a subject. 15 00:01:45,410 --> 00:01:50,540 They were looking for people and very few to to be found. 16 00:01:51,410 --> 00:01:57,620 There was one of the son, Strickland, who got the other job, which was at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 17 00:01:58,220 --> 00:02:03,950 Neither of us really knew what we were doing, and so we saw fit to write a book together. 18 00:02:04,040 --> 00:02:06,559 So that was our first book. And through writing, 19 00:02:06,560 --> 00:02:17,390 we got to learn what it was we really thought we were thinking about and developing in this field of subfield of nutritional anthropology. 20 00:02:17,910 --> 00:02:25,660 But you were particularly looking at public health through a nutritional lens and in an anthropological context. 21 00:02:26,420 --> 00:02:31,639 Well, it started off in a public health way, but very rapidly became anthropology. 22 00:02:31,640 --> 00:02:38,390 When I met some seminal figures who were out in the field in Papua New Guinea, I never studied with them, 23 00:02:38,390 --> 00:02:46,480 but they kind of became collaborators, co constructors of a way of thinking in the field. 24 00:02:46,490 --> 00:02:55,730 So I was moving towards anthropology. In fact, when I was writing up my doctoral thesis, which was based on largely based on work in Papua New Guinea, 25 00:02:55,790 --> 00:03:07,790 I my supervisor who was a nutritionist, said, If you keep going on like this, you, you should find a supervisor in anthropology. 26 00:03:07,940 --> 00:03:11,360 And I said, No, I'll stay with you. But then my first job was in anthropology. 27 00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:17,300 So funny thing was that somehow I became an anthropologist on the hoof. 28 00:03:17,540 --> 00:03:27,649 The obesity work really came in an unlikely way because I wasn't interested so much in the public health and the medical aspects of obesity. 29 00:03:27,650 --> 00:03:30,950 You don't acknowledge their importance, but that's not really what I do. 30 00:03:31,490 --> 00:03:42,709 I became interested when I went back over two decades later to the populations I'd worked with in the 1980s and found that there was diabetes, 31 00:03:42,710 --> 00:03:47,090 there was hypertension, undernutrition, much less of a problem. 32 00:03:47,090 --> 00:03:51,290 But then emerging overweight over nutrition in a rural place, 33 00:03:51,290 --> 00:03:59,540 a very difficult place where you might not expect to see people develop excess body fatness. 34 00:03:59,600 --> 00:04:06,079 So that was curious in a way. It wasn't the usual story of the people in my country, 35 00:04:06,080 --> 00:04:14,270 whether that country is the United States or the UK or Australia changing, and this has a significant impact on their health. 36 00:04:14,270 --> 00:04:17,780 It was more about, well, it shouldn't be happening. 37 00:04:17,780 --> 00:04:26,120 It seems to be a curious phenomenon and I really want to try to understand the pathway to this particular form of obesity, 38 00:04:26,120 --> 00:04:32,210 which then led me to think about different pathways to obesity, which is pretty much where I am now. 39 00:04:32,390 --> 00:04:38,600 Every country has a different trajectory, and that's what makes it interesting to study. 40 00:04:38,780 --> 00:04:46,160 It's also of huge importance, but it's interesting to study because you can then say, well, 41 00:04:46,670 --> 00:04:54,230 of all the different ways in which obesity could be produced, what are the particular pathways in this country? 42 00:04:54,470 --> 00:04:58,310 This country is different to Scotland, that's England, different to Scotland, 43 00:04:58,790 --> 00:05:03,949 Scotland is different to Italy, Italy is different to Japan where there's very little obesity. 44 00:05:03,950 --> 00:05:08,689 Even though I present there about Pacific Islands, obesity. 45 00:05:08,690 --> 00:05:13,670 I've also worked on the Cook Islands, which has now the highest level of obesity anywhere in the world. 46 00:05:14,240 --> 00:05:21,320 And at that time I presented the comparison slide for Japan and said the rates of obesity are 3% in Japan, 47 00:05:21,740 --> 00:05:27,440 and most of the discussion centred around why is there so much obesity in Japan. 48 00:05:27,440 --> 00:05:31,450 There shouldn't be any obesity in Japan at all, period. 49 00:05:31,460 --> 00:05:34,910 2% is tiny compared with the United States. Totally. 50 00:05:35,180 --> 00:05:38,210 Totally. So. Totally So. Very, very. 51 00:05:38,950 --> 00:05:45,940 Very small issue at all. But as a matter of national pride, too, to be thinking that there should be no obesity whatsoever. 52 00:05:46,690 --> 00:05:52,870 So what are the what are the. You talk about these pathways being different from country to country. 53 00:05:53,290 --> 00:05:57,309 What are the elements of those pathways that you're interested in as a politician? 54 00:05:57,310 --> 00:06:12,520 I worked for the foresight obesity think tank in the early 2000 2000, and this was the grouping that first published on obesity as complexity. 55 00:06:13,180 --> 00:06:22,240 It had been done before, but in a much more limited way. Well, a complex phenomenon is climate change, for example. 56 00:06:23,680 --> 00:06:26,950 Many things come together to create a perfect storm. 57 00:06:27,040 --> 00:06:34,150 And then when something moves from one state of reasonably steady state to another state, 58 00:06:34,360 --> 00:06:38,830 that's called a tipping, you tip into, you know, a another another state. 59 00:06:39,010 --> 00:06:43,570 Nobody sort to nobody thought of obesity at all. 60 00:06:43,780 --> 00:06:50,650 And it seemed to have seems to have emerged in the 1980s 1990s in the industrialised countries. 61 00:06:51,010 --> 00:06:57,060 More recent the nineties 2000 across across the global South. 62 00:06:57,070 --> 00:07:08,860 And in the early 2000 there were over 100 factors that contribute to obesity that were known, had been research had been studied, had been published. 63 00:07:09,640 --> 00:07:18,310 So it tells you immediately it's not if you do this then that it's the agglomeration of factors. 64 00:07:18,310 --> 00:07:28,150 And you know, we can make an analogy with some cancers, for example, where cancer accrues across a lifetime usually. 65 00:07:28,330 --> 00:07:33,459 And it's there are predisposing factors, there could be genetic factors. 66 00:07:33,460 --> 00:07:37,880 And then there are a number of triggers and there may be a singular trigger. 67 00:07:37,900 --> 00:07:43,600 Smoking is, as I understand it, to be a particular singular trigger for lung cancer, for example. 68 00:07:44,800 --> 00:07:49,000 But oftentimes there are multiple factors or multi hit factors. 69 00:07:49,000 --> 00:07:55,660 It's a multi-hit model. Similarly, for obesity, you could think about it as being a multi hit model, but rather than there being, 70 00:07:56,020 --> 00:08:00,730 let's say, ten or 20 known factors that could be those triggers, you have over 100. 71 00:08:01,540 --> 00:08:05,440 And it doesn't have to be all of them. It could be any five or six of them. 72 00:08:05,550 --> 00:08:10,540 Okay. You just pick a few as a sort of examples of those that tend to tend to come up. 73 00:08:11,080 --> 00:08:16,000 Well, I'm just trying to make the example a bit more concrete. 74 00:08:16,870 --> 00:08:31,180 Well, there is life course issues that if you're breastfed, you're protected against developing obesity and then many chronic diseases. 75 00:08:31,750 --> 00:08:37,150 If you are overfed in early childhood, that increases your increases your predisposition. 76 00:08:37,720 --> 00:08:44,110 If you're undernourished in utero, your predisposition to obesity is increased through epigenetics. 77 00:08:44,680 --> 00:08:54,910 And and then there are myriad behavioural factors like if your parents are physically active, if they pattern, 78 00:08:55,450 --> 00:09:00,910 you know, a way of life that involves physical activity or more like a pattern to your life around physical activity, 79 00:09:02,020 --> 00:09:11,470 physical activity is probably less important than food in relation to putting on excess weight, but it's still important because it patterns appetite, 80 00:09:11,560 --> 00:09:26,110 for example, and then a range of factors like inequality, social deprivation, economic, economic deprivation, poverty, child abuse. 81 00:09:26,230 --> 00:09:32,290 All of them are related in some way to behaviours that are associated with obesity. 82 00:09:32,530 --> 00:09:37,000 I mean, you graduated in psychology, so you'd understand that, you know, 83 00:09:37,060 --> 00:09:42,970 many of these psychological factors have many different correlates in other areas, including including eating. 84 00:09:43,270 --> 00:09:50,470 And if we look at obesity in relation to in relation to eating, many people comfort it. 85 00:09:51,190 --> 00:09:59,049 Many people eat for distraction. Many people eat when they're just trying to reduce the stress level. 86 00:09:59,050 --> 00:10:10,990 So I remember as a student, I could sit down and revise and I put a box of cookies, let's call them activities digestives and start to revise. 87 00:10:10,990 --> 00:10:18,190 And 2 hours later the packet was gone. Similarly, in recent times, I would, you know, if I'm driving in a distance, 88 00:10:18,190 --> 00:10:27,850 I would put food next to me and similarly I'd find a whole box of something not very healthy could be consumed without even realising. 89 00:10:27,880 --> 00:10:29,530 Now I still have that behaviour, 90 00:10:29,530 --> 00:10:37,810 but I've simply replaced bad food with fruit and so I just end up eating a lot of stuff that is probably healthy for me. 91 00:10:38,080 --> 00:10:47,870 So there's. All kinds of things that serve to promote obesity comfort, because ultra processed foods, 92 00:10:47,870 --> 00:10:55,969 foods high in sugar, high and fat salt, very ultra palatable foods are extraordinarily comforting. 93 00:10:55,970 --> 00:10:59,710 And they're also very cheap and very, very affordable. 94 00:10:59,750 --> 00:11:01,250 Very, very affordable. 95 00:11:01,700 --> 00:11:08,790 And many stores in the United States, you go to a drugstore in the United States and say, well, what can you buy that you might call food? 96 00:11:08,810 --> 00:11:13,640 Well, potato chips, crisps, all kinds of sweets. 97 00:11:15,440 --> 00:11:22,460 Healthy food. Well, it's rather limited. And yet these are the local corner stores that the people have available to them. 98 00:11:22,700 --> 00:11:27,110 In the U.K., the small shops are awash in sugar. 99 00:11:27,740 --> 00:11:31,340 Awash in sugar. Walk down an island, a supermarket. 100 00:11:31,340 --> 00:11:38,660 You'll see how much sugar and refined carbohydrates rest or masquerading as different kinds of foods that are put together in different ways. 101 00:11:38,690 --> 00:11:45,499 So we have a so-called obesogenic environment that we live in, and that provides another context. 102 00:11:45,500 --> 00:11:51,710 We might have predispositions, might have been, you know, not breast fed, might have been born at low birth weight. 103 00:11:52,010 --> 00:11:56,270 Much of we live in a deprived household. 104 00:11:57,140 --> 00:12:00,770 The food that people can afford is ultra processed food. 105 00:12:00,770 --> 00:12:08,420 And so this becomes the typical diet that then becomes reinforced, you know, across time and across generations, if that's helpful. 106 00:12:08,450 --> 00:12:13,170 Yes, that's extremely helpful. And let's just talk a little bit about methodology, though. 107 00:12:14,740 --> 00:12:19,219 I mean, a vast majority of the interviews I've been doing have been medical science departments. 108 00:12:19,220 --> 00:12:24,140 And, you know, people read labs and do things with pipettes. How does an anthropologist collect data? 109 00:12:25,130 --> 00:12:30,200 Well, I like to think that I and the people I work with practice mixed methods. 110 00:12:30,230 --> 00:12:36,110 I just try to be savvy in both qualitative and quantitative methods. 111 00:12:36,110 --> 00:12:44,210 And that is, we don't necessarily have to know how to use the quantitative methods, but know how to talk to somebody who makes numbers thing. 112 00:12:44,900 --> 00:12:50,960 And so being able to interpret those numbers and to be able to understand what those numbers are saying. 113 00:12:51,050 --> 00:12:54,950 And even there you see out of the numbers have to come a narrative. 114 00:12:55,190 --> 00:12:59,570 So we're thinking about those narratives that emerge out of out of those those numbers. 115 00:13:00,110 --> 00:13:04,920 And the second part of that are narratives themselves, the stories that people tell. 116 00:13:04,940 --> 00:13:09,370 We have storytelling brands. Everything that we tell in life is a story. 117 00:13:09,380 --> 00:13:10,760 I'm telling a story right now. 118 00:13:10,760 --> 00:13:18,530 I'm being encouraged to tell a story right now, which, if you got me to do this tomorrow, might go in a different direction. 119 00:13:18,800 --> 00:13:21,710 But I'm here now and telling my story. 120 00:13:22,790 --> 00:13:31,220 So understanding narratives and, you know, always in relation to what it is you want to know in relation to a pandemic it was shifting towards. 121 00:13:31,430 --> 00:13:35,170 So we didn't quite got there yet. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yeah. 122 00:13:35,180 --> 00:13:45,589 Well, in relation to narratives, tell us something about the world view of a group of people that tell us something about how people understand a 123 00:13:45,590 --> 00:13:52,610 problem and you become very good at asking people how they see something rather than having an answer yourself. 124 00:13:52,910 --> 00:13:59,809 It's actually a very good managerial tool as well, because often times people have the answers within themselves. 125 00:13:59,810 --> 00:14:04,070 So quantitative. I mean, I used to be good at quantitative methods. 126 00:14:04,070 --> 00:14:11,780 Now I just try to find the best quants people I can and qualitative understanding the narratives. 127 00:14:12,230 --> 00:14:21,260 We have something that I've helped develop called cultural consensus modelling, and that is using a quantitative method to come to the narratives. 128 00:14:21,410 --> 00:14:28,850 So for example, if I ask you the question how many Santa Claus is out there in the world, 129 00:14:30,110 --> 00:14:40,790 actually that's an ambiguous question because this obviously, if I ask you if I ask you the a question, is that thing out there a tree? 130 00:14:41,490 --> 00:14:43,010 He probably would say, yes, yes. 131 00:14:43,160 --> 00:14:52,130 Okay, now I don't need to talk to you, to Georgina's to know that that's a tree is common knowledge that that thing out there is a tree. 132 00:14:52,640 --> 00:14:56,270 So I just need a sample of one. Oh, a better question. 133 00:14:56,390 --> 00:15:00,410 Actually, a better question is who is the Prime Minister? But that's ambiguous. 134 00:15:00,410 --> 00:15:04,400 Too difficult. That's impossible that I can't answer that question. 135 00:15:05,230 --> 00:15:13,340 Yeah, but, you know, usually if I ask the question, who is the Prime minister, most people would come up with the same answer. 136 00:15:13,340 --> 00:15:14,450 So you just need a sample of one. 137 00:15:14,690 --> 00:15:23,660 If something is ambiguous or could have multiple answers, then you ask more people and then you start to say, Well, what is the consensus answer? 138 00:15:23,670 --> 00:15:27,290 What is the consensus view around around this particular issue? 139 00:15:27,680 --> 00:15:31,790 So similarly with narratives, we see how themes emerge. 140 00:15:31,790 --> 00:15:38,720 And usually, you know, in quantitative methods you have power analysis to get an idea of how many people you should. 141 00:15:38,770 --> 00:15:45,340 See for to get a statistically significant effect in qualitative methods. 142 00:15:45,850 --> 00:15:50,620 Apologies in qualitative methods. I'd make the comparison with doing a literature search. 143 00:15:51,010 --> 00:15:56,550 For example, if I want to know something about epigenetics and obesity, I start reading the literature. 144 00:15:56,560 --> 00:16:01,000 I know nothing, but I'm intelligent. I can read the literature, I go read the literature. 145 00:16:01,390 --> 00:16:08,290 And when I get to the point where a kind of citation loop starts to emerge where people are citing each other, 146 00:16:08,800 --> 00:16:15,340 I feel that I've actually surrounded the literature. Similarly with with a narrative analysis. 147 00:16:15,340 --> 00:16:23,320 I ask you a certain number of questions about doing podcasts, for example, and I'll go to the next podcast, 148 00:16:23,650 --> 00:16:31,330 and I last same types of questions again, and I'll get similar answers, but I get some some difference there. 149 00:16:31,660 --> 00:16:39,069 And after I've talked to a dozen podcasters, I might say, Well, the next person I'm going to talk to is going to come out with these three things. 150 00:16:39,070 --> 00:16:41,320 There may be other things, but they will be in common. 151 00:16:41,320 --> 00:16:47,650 And then I'll know that I've kind of surrounded I have the consensus around this particular issue. 152 00:16:48,190 --> 00:16:54,490 So that's how it goes. But you can't always achieve saturation, as you know, as you might call it. 153 00:16:55,030 --> 00:16:58,749 You can't always achieve that level. You can you can do your very best. 154 00:16:58,750 --> 00:17:07,780 And then having done your very best to disclose all your failings in your publications as a good scientist should be very interesting. 155 00:17:07,780 --> 00:17:12,010 Oh, that's wonderful background. Thank you. So I'm asking everybody this. 156 00:17:12,040 --> 00:17:22,020 Can you remember when you first heard that COVID was a thing, that there was something going on in China that looked as if it might be serious and. 157 00:17:27,190 --> 00:17:31,510 I would say it was bubbling around in the media. 158 00:17:32,020 --> 00:17:39,340 I had just come back from Slovenia. I'm a winter swimmer, so I've just come back from the winter swimming championships in Slovenia, 159 00:17:40,060 --> 00:17:45,790 which were not actually that far away from the from the spreading event of COVID 19. 160 00:17:45,790 --> 00:17:50,200 We didn't know that at the time. I didn't develop COVID 19 by February, was it? 161 00:17:50,260 --> 00:17:51,310 Yeah. Yes. Yeah. 162 00:17:51,820 --> 00:18:06,219 And I was down at Days Loch in Oxfordshire, um, down there with them clubs actually going for a swim, would you believe, with a group of people. 163 00:18:06,220 --> 00:18:11,830 And we were crossing one of those country turnstiles, you know, gates where people, you know, come and go. 164 00:18:11,830 --> 00:18:15,040 The gate opens half and people go into gate. It's called the kissing gate. 165 00:18:15,070 --> 00:18:18,940 What are they called a kissing gate? Kissing gate? Yes. Well, I didn't kiss anybody. 166 00:18:19,180 --> 00:18:28,149 And you know what? You know what? You I knew it was probably good enough to kiss anybody at that time, but people were avoiding the kissing gate. 167 00:18:28,150 --> 00:18:38,049 People were suddenly hugely distanced. And and and that was the first that I noticed within a few days we were all doing the doing the COVID 168 00:18:38,050 --> 00:18:42,580 dance on the streets where you were kind of separating yourself from other people crossing the road. 169 00:18:42,580 --> 00:18:51,610 And you could see how people's trajectories were changing and and sometimes not even saying hello because your friend could be your enemy. 170 00:18:51,910 --> 00:18:59,950 And so this kind of hyper sensitivity, this alertness to what was around you and then during the week, 171 00:18:59,950 --> 00:19:05,649 I think later I may be conflating weeks because, of course, you know, like everybody else, I'm trying to forget the pandemic. 172 00:19:05,650 --> 00:19:15,580 Now, the it was the last week of term and a few days later, the university closed down. 173 00:19:15,610 --> 00:19:21,009 The following week. We were told that morning on I believe it was the Tuesday. 174 00:19:21,010 --> 00:19:26,469 I don't say me if I've got this wrong, but it was, you know, in that morning we were told, 175 00:19:26,470 --> 00:19:33,580 grab everything that you need because at 4:00 the department is closed, closed, closed with a capital C closed. 176 00:19:34,120 --> 00:19:41,200 And so, you know, was stopping off with everything I was giving my last lecture of term and it was on eating and obesity. 177 00:19:41,650 --> 00:19:47,860 And what I usually do in this lecture is I hand around chocolate because I get 178 00:19:47,860 --> 00:19:52,899 people to put some chocolate in their mouth and I ask them to think about it. 179 00:19:52,900 --> 00:19:57,490 And I illustrate feedforward mechanisms and feedback mechanism. 180 00:19:57,490 --> 00:20:02,799 So I mentioned chocolate and feedforward mechanisms, neuro feedforward mechanisms. 181 00:20:02,800 --> 00:20:07,540 So, you know, already people are already eating their chocolate in their brain. 182 00:20:07,540 --> 00:20:15,130 They have a sense of what this chocolate will be. And then when the chocolate comes, I get them to describe this particular taste. 183 00:20:15,520 --> 00:20:18,639 And then having described that to other people, if then they say, 184 00:20:18,640 --> 00:20:23,680 I want to eat some chocolate because what they've described is suddenly making them want chocolate. 185 00:20:23,680 --> 00:20:32,350 So going through all of those mechanisms and that because I would go then onto how, you know, major merchants of burgers, 186 00:20:32,350 --> 00:20:43,180 for example, strategise all of these strategies, all of these all of these these approaches behaviours, if you will. 187 00:20:43,570 --> 00:20:48,190 And nobody took chocolate, nobody. Okay. 188 00:20:48,340 --> 00:20:52,930 Zero. That never happened before. Never. Never in my life. 189 00:20:53,110 --> 00:20:58,080 That was a marker. You know, some place full of students refuses to eat chocolate. 190 00:20:58,090 --> 00:21:01,780 That means something's happening on this planet. So that was my kind of. 191 00:21:01,780 --> 00:21:09,069 Okay. And, um. And, uh, you know, I'm still not certain whether I should have given that lecture or not. 192 00:21:09,070 --> 00:21:13,460 But you're there. It's the last lecture term. You want to finish things off and all the rest of it. 193 00:21:13,480 --> 00:21:22,540 It was, you know, just. Just before the pandemonium set in. And at what point did you start to think that that was a research question? 194 00:21:23,030 --> 00:21:26,890 Now, with with lockdown going on, there was something interesting to explore. 195 00:21:27,280 --> 00:21:37,140 The moment lockdown hit. Because I have this group of beautiful people I work with and I'll name them Caroline Potter. 196 00:21:37,150 --> 00:21:42,030 I've been working with her for well over a decade Sabine Parrish, Corinne, 197 00:21:42,040 --> 00:21:48,339 Ellie and a Leavis, Pauline and of it's girl who are part of my research group, 198 00:21:48,340 --> 00:21:55,270 the Unit for Bio Cultural Variation and Obesity, which is studying these modern non-medical aspects of obesity. 199 00:21:55,660 --> 00:22:03,610 And we had just been we just finished the analysis of a study on physical activity in domestic space. 200 00:22:04,270 --> 00:22:08,679 The big question there was how far should public health go? 201 00:22:08,680 --> 00:22:16,570 Where is the public and public health? Should public health actually be in the domestic space with lockdown, 202 00:22:17,770 --> 00:22:22,900 public health knocking down the front door and went straight into the lounge room. 203 00:22:23,590 --> 00:22:27,999 So we said, okay, we've got this amazing team of people. 204 00:22:28,000 --> 00:22:32,950 We've just done a study of physical activity in the domestic space and in Oregon, 205 00:22:33,700 --> 00:22:40,630 and we're using quantitative and qualitative analysis, using the methods. 206 00:22:41,260 --> 00:22:44,920 And then we we said, well, we can we can do something. 207 00:22:44,950 --> 00:22:52,750 So the Social Sciences Division had a emergency response fund from the SCC, 208 00:22:53,140 --> 00:23:03,700 and we put in for this money and we were already placed to do this work because we had a methodology, we had a question, 209 00:23:04,990 --> 00:23:14,530 we had access to the knowledge exchange unit at the UK Parliament and we felt that a number 210 00:23:14,530 --> 00:23:21,370 of pieces were in place to make it work and we got the money and then we were running. 211 00:23:22,390 --> 00:23:28,150 So what was the design of the of the study? It was quite straightforwardly an electronic questionnaire survey. 212 00:23:29,710 --> 00:23:34,150 We put it together from, you know, existing questionnaire surveys. 213 00:23:34,840 --> 00:23:43,480 We validated it with a small number of individuals across the university, and then we put it out using a, you know, 214 00:23:43,510 --> 00:23:55,570 standard platform for questionnaire surveys advertised by the University of Oxford and with the aim of reaching a thousand people 215 00:23:56,230 --> 00:24:05,650 because there were two things the work needs to be done quickly if it was going to be useful and we could have the best survey ever. 216 00:24:05,650 --> 00:24:16,629 But usually this kind of survey takes a year, maybe longer. And we did the survey work in June and July of 2020 and we were reporting on it. 217 00:24:16,630 --> 00:24:25,990 By the end of July. We had things to say that were useful to UK gov and that was the most important thing. 218 00:24:26,230 --> 00:24:28,360 So we have in the platform Sorry to interrupt, 219 00:24:28,360 --> 00:24:34,899 but the platform had already done the work of establishing that your sample of a thousand people was reasonably representative. 220 00:24:34,900 --> 00:24:38,710 Yeah, well the representativeness is tricky. It's always going to be tricky. 221 00:24:39,370 --> 00:24:47,299 I don't think our sample was representative because of course you you get mostly people who have the time to do this. 222 00:24:47,300 --> 00:24:53,740 And of course it's a lockdown. Everybody has the time. But there were some people in really desperate straits and I don't think we reached them. 223 00:24:54,280 --> 00:24:56,860 We reached, I think, predominantly middle class people, 224 00:24:57,340 --> 00:25:04,870 and we had an indicative sample that suggested there were issues going on even among the middle classes. 225 00:25:04,870 --> 00:25:08,920 And therefore, whatever really was going on, there was going to be a lot worse. 226 00:25:09,550 --> 00:25:13,270 So you can't reach everybody. And nor did we have the time to be able to do that. 227 00:25:13,270 --> 00:25:17,200 As I say, it was a bit like an exit poll for for an election. 228 00:25:17,200 --> 00:25:21,939 You can't have better than that. But, you know, it's good enough to be able to say, look, 229 00:25:21,940 --> 00:25:34,990 these seem to be the issues and it seemed from working with government in the UK, but also government in Denmark, 230 00:25:36,190 --> 00:25:39,940 that politicians like to have some sense of what the issues are, 231 00:25:39,940 --> 00:25:46,840 even if they're not really nailed down in terms of in terms of, you know, statistical significance. 232 00:25:46,920 --> 00:25:51,510 Invalidity and so on. Either she needs to be good enough. 233 00:25:52,470 --> 00:26:00,120 And, you know, as I've said, you know, as an anthropologist, you say, well, you know, we know that all of these things are socially constructed. 234 00:26:00,120 --> 00:26:03,089 There's no perfect survey, there's no perfect time. 235 00:26:03,090 --> 00:26:12,000 So we could give ourselves a year to get everything that we want to do a very elegant analysis of what happened across the pandemic. 236 00:26:12,450 --> 00:26:19,010 But we've been reporting it in the Journal of History, and that's not what we wanted to do, and that's not what we were charged. 237 00:26:19,140 --> 00:26:24,870 We were charged to come up with some views on what was happening right now. 238 00:26:25,830 --> 00:26:32,340 So what were the questions that the key questions that you were asking and the key questions were in relation to physical and mental health, 239 00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:40,310 physical and mental health, because it was the way that the government framed the issue. 240 00:26:40,320 --> 00:26:46,570 They were interested in the relationship between the two. So we've very much framed things in those those contexts. 241 00:26:46,590 --> 00:26:52,190 So compared to Pre-lockdown experience, what happened in terms of your mental health, 242 00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:59,610 So anxiety, poor sleep, persistent sadness, binge eating, thoughts of suicide, changes in diet. 243 00:27:00,060 --> 00:27:05,820 Some people ate extraordinarily well, some people did not Quite the opposite. 244 00:27:05,820 --> 00:27:13,860 And even in this middle class sample of a thousand or so people, mostly in the south of England, we got this U-shaped relationship. 245 00:27:15,150 --> 00:27:27,220 You know, if you were in a nice house in West Oxfordshire and had enough yard back yard and had enough space, it could be good. 246 00:27:27,270 --> 00:27:33,720 And, you know, honestly, you know, looking back on it, I think I had a pretty good pandemic. 247 00:27:34,740 --> 00:27:40,709 I had purpose, I had an income, the children came home, 248 00:27:40,710 --> 00:27:47,000 they had their own stories to tell and they were actually having a much worse time of it then than then than we were. 249 00:27:47,010 --> 00:27:48,540 And that was another issue that came out. 250 00:27:49,050 --> 00:27:56,520 The people that seem to suffer most in mental health were young, younger people, young adults than older than older adults, 251 00:27:57,300 --> 00:28:03,990 possibly because younger adults are in a state of insecurity in general life anyway, 252 00:28:04,110 --> 00:28:10,919 that we are in a set of conditions now where young people don't get contracts for life. 253 00:28:10,920 --> 00:28:14,909 People are on short contracts. A lot of people were furloughed, furloughed. 254 00:28:14,910 --> 00:28:17,910 They didn't know. A lot of people lost their jobs. They didn't know what was going to happen. 255 00:28:17,910 --> 00:28:28,400 My son, he had gone to do VSO in Tanzania, had gone for two weeks and was straight back and said, Well, now what do I do? 256 00:28:28,410 --> 00:28:32,220 Well, actually things have turned out pretty quite decently for him. 257 00:28:32,940 --> 00:28:38,129 He took a few risks during not in terms of health, but in terms of finding a job and so on. 258 00:28:38,130 --> 00:28:42,750 And and and things have turned up. There's so much insecurity at that time. 259 00:28:43,140 --> 00:28:47,700 So some people we didn't find there were other people. 260 00:28:47,700 --> 00:28:53,640 What was telling was that I'm. A member of a war. 261 00:28:53,690 --> 00:28:55,360 At the time it was an online choir. 262 00:28:56,020 --> 00:29:05,290 So Saturday mornings we would sit and sing together online and it could be a cacophony, but at least it was the, you know, the usual people. 263 00:29:05,620 --> 00:29:16,090 And, you know, there were people who were in a high rise somewhere in Peckham, for example, and they really couldn't get out, couldn't do stuff. 264 00:29:16,300 --> 00:29:20,350 And, you know, intelligent people, desperate, not able to do anything. 265 00:29:20,710 --> 00:29:29,620 West Oxfordshire one of the wise things I think that came out of the lockdown advice, 266 00:29:29,620 --> 00:29:35,890 although it differed and was so strange at times and tipped backwards and forwards, 267 00:29:36,460 --> 00:29:42,850 one good piece was the one time for physical activity every day because you could interpret it how you want. 268 00:29:45,130 --> 00:29:52,660 What did I do? What do we do as a family? I would cycle five kilometres to a lake swim and then cycle back again. 269 00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:55,930 One piece of activity. So I didn't stop, did it? 270 00:29:55,930 --> 00:30:00,969 All in one go. And I met other people who are doing the same thing in West Oxfordshire. 271 00:30:00,970 --> 00:30:10,690 There are no cars on the road. People on bicycles were happy, They were smiling, they, they, they'd taken the roads and were able to, 272 00:30:11,080 --> 00:30:14,979 you know, express themselves on bicycles and, and get their physical activity. 273 00:30:14,980 --> 00:30:18,210 But other people really did not have that. 274 00:30:18,220 --> 00:30:27,840 So there were two populations really, I think, in terms of physical health and of course eating badly increase in body weight. 275 00:30:27,850 --> 00:30:34,809 It seemed there were two possibilities. There were either angels or devils or there were people who practised angelic behaviour 276 00:30:34,810 --> 00:30:39,580 during the day and devilish behaviour after 6:00 when the gin bottle came out. 277 00:30:40,390 --> 00:30:44,260 And so both of those things seemed to be going on at the centre at the same time. 278 00:30:44,980 --> 00:30:57,070 So it's utility I think was to be able to give timely information that government 279 00:30:57,190 --> 00:31:00,729 might or might not choose to use depending on what the priorities are. 280 00:31:00,730 --> 00:31:08,889 Not the kind of scientist that thinks that what I say or do is the most important thing on the planet. 281 00:31:08,890 --> 00:31:15,610 It isn't the most important thing on the planet. Politicians have to think on their feet and decide what's important and make it at a given time. 282 00:31:15,610 --> 00:31:27,110 But to be able to offer insights into what is going on to help correct decision making. 283 00:31:27,180 --> 00:31:32,170 Of course, I can't speak to how politicians make their decisions, 284 00:31:32,590 --> 00:31:39,549 but they can at least try to be the best social scientist I can to be able to give 285 00:31:39,550 --> 00:31:45,250 the best kind of information that might be acted upon if it's deemed appropriate. 286 00:31:46,210 --> 00:31:53,230 So what I mean was, was that what did you make recommendations for advice that might be given to people 287 00:31:53,230 --> 00:31:58,210 who were in lockdown to support their mental health or their physical health? 288 00:31:59,290 --> 00:32:07,569 Well, the initial insight report, so two of them was simply reporting on what had happened, 289 00:32:07,570 --> 00:32:11,830 which was negative mental health since the start of lockdown measures. 290 00:32:12,370 --> 00:32:24,430 I mean, that can be acted on, say, well, if lockdown is harming people, then we should be thinking about minimising lockdown in any way. 291 00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:39,339 So the balancing act between holding back the pandemic versus locking people down is walking a tightrope because governments just have to think, 292 00:32:39,340 --> 00:32:47,500 well, there is more than one outcome and there's also what people think is an important outcome as well for politician politicians. 293 00:32:48,730 --> 00:33:02,830 Contrast that with a friend of mine, John Speakman, who's a one of the top obesity geneticists on the planet, who works in Shenzen in China, 294 00:33:03,580 --> 00:33:13,360 and he'd been there across and across most of the pandemic where they have just locked people down and sometimes just told a very short notice that, 295 00:33:13,360 --> 00:33:19,160 okay, you're going to be in your apartment. People just took it and they went and locked themselves down. 296 00:33:19,180 --> 00:33:24,430 And of course, more recently, there's been a revolt in China because people have had enough. 297 00:33:24,580 --> 00:33:27,490 It's just gone on such a very long time. Absolutely. 298 00:33:28,060 --> 00:33:38,170 And so that kind of zero-covid approach in China might have seemed appropriate in the early days when China was doing all the right things, 299 00:33:38,290 --> 00:33:41,610 early interventions in a draconian manner. 300 00:33:41,620 --> 00:33:47,169 I have to say it wouldn't happen like that in the UK because people would be too outspoken. 301 00:33:47,170 --> 00:33:54,810 People would probably break lockdown and. Not take part in it and rebel against it. 302 00:33:56,130 --> 00:34:05,400 One of the early reports from UK govt in the first couple of weeks from lockdown 303 00:34:05,400 --> 00:34:14,250 was stated quite clearly that the police would not be able to enforce a lockdown. 304 00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:17,110 That it's unenforceable. 305 00:34:17,110 --> 00:34:27,160 Therefore, we rely heavily on the public doing their duty, that there will be social and moral pressure would enforce the lockdown. 306 00:34:28,420 --> 00:34:33,670 And that actually worked very, very effectively. Yes, very, very effectively. 307 00:34:34,210 --> 00:34:38,020 And, you know, every country is different. 308 00:34:38,020 --> 00:34:42,729 And that seemed to be the right thing that upfront they declared we cannot enforce. 309 00:34:42,730 --> 00:34:48,160 This meant that we have to find a different way of soft policing the pandemic. 310 00:34:48,160 --> 00:34:53,950 Now, if there's going to be one particular outcome from this pandemic, it's in relation to policing, oddly enough. 311 00:34:53,950 --> 00:34:59,620 How should something be policed? And there's an awful lot of consensus policing happens in the UK. 312 00:34:59,620 --> 00:35:06,370 And I think I may be wrong, I don't know. But I think the opportunities for consensus policing have only increased. 313 00:35:07,180 --> 00:35:14,410 And, you know, it's a good thing for civil society, I believe, to to have that decreased physical activity. 314 00:35:14,530 --> 00:35:21,870 Well, that came out early on. And of course, these recommendations for, you know, getting, you know, one piece of physical activity, 315 00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:30,640 whatever you deem that to be helpful, because, you know, my idea of physical activity will be very different to yours, Georgina. 316 00:35:32,260 --> 00:35:38,620 You do what will make you feel better and get out and do what will make you feel better. 317 00:35:38,920 --> 00:35:42,249 So it allows that individualism of choice, 318 00:35:42,250 --> 00:35:50,270 that opportunity to choose how you're going to express your physical activity and then, of course, increase binge eating. 319 00:35:50,290 --> 00:35:53,740 Consumption of processed snacks and increased consumption of alcohol. 320 00:35:54,520 --> 00:36:02,860 There was a comparison made between the mass shopping at the usual mass shopping event in the UK, 321 00:36:02,860 --> 00:36:08,889 which is Christmas time with stockpiling or mass shopping during the pandemic. 322 00:36:08,890 --> 00:36:15,340 So we did some very nice work on on stockpiling. 323 00:36:15,490 --> 00:36:22,500 There's nobody said there was stockpiling. It was always somebody else. And so we we we've got some very good things included in your survey. 324 00:36:22,510 --> 00:36:26,620 Was it the question? Not in the survey, but it's now we're now writing this up for publication. 325 00:36:26,650 --> 00:36:33,530 All right. Yeah. So now we are we're in the stage of our work where we're considering what we have done and to build, 326 00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:38,770 say, well, lessons learned, lessons for the future. What are the things that we need to do? 327 00:36:39,070 --> 00:36:47,500 Alcohol followed later was a Christmas alcohol bongs all upfront alcohol and ice cream all followed after, 328 00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:56,800 you know, stocking up with the you know, stocking up for the siege, dried pasta and tomatoes, toilet paper. 329 00:36:57,610 --> 00:37:06,759 Yeah, all of those things. But also that poor eating and reduced physical activity contributed to the negative mental health in the pandemic, 330 00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:14,170 that it was not just poor eating, reduced physical activity was everything in totality, everything working together. 331 00:37:14,300 --> 00:37:19,030 Did you collect figures on body weight? Tricky to do. 332 00:37:19,030 --> 00:37:28,060 We really, really couldn't. Couldn't segregate the population that well to be able to say, well, it's in relation to body weight. 333 00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:32,950 In fact for the for the insight reports we produced two insight reports. 334 00:37:32,950 --> 00:37:46,590 I don't think it was helpful. But what did happen going into going into June was that after the prime minister of the time developed COVID 19, 335 00:37:46,600 --> 00:38:00,910 I was told very clearly that his personal body mass index would have contributed significantly to his extreme state in intensive care close to death, 336 00:38:02,260 --> 00:38:09,640 he suddenly changed his mind on the National Food Strategy. 337 00:38:10,660 --> 00:38:20,830 The National Food Strategy was something that was being developed in relation to the pendant to Brexit, and that it was a re-examination of, 338 00:38:21,070 --> 00:38:28,720 you know, how we could increase localisation of the food system and how we could become more independent of Europe in related commerce. 339 00:38:29,290 --> 00:38:43,480 And so not a year previously, the Cabinet Office declared that obesity was not going to be in the National Food Strategy is too much nanny state ism. 340 00:38:46,150 --> 00:38:54,190 The moment the Prime Minister was out of hospital, suddenly obesity was back in the National Food Strategy. 341 00:38:54,190 --> 00:39:01,509 So we, myself included, were then racing to bring obesity into the National Food Strategy. 342 00:39:01,510 --> 00:39:04,629 So it became a part a bit into the part. We had to then deal with. 343 00:39:04,630 --> 00:39:10,570 The Brexit breakfast of Part A was about what happened during the pandemic and its relationships to talk to obesity. 344 00:39:11,110 --> 00:39:14,790 So there was, you know, the ill health. 345 00:39:15,480 --> 00:39:21,780 Of lockdown, eating the wrong things, people putting, putting on weight and then developing the disease, 346 00:39:21,780 --> 00:39:28,530 and then the likelihood of of developing a severe form of COVID 19. 347 00:39:29,310 --> 00:39:37,260 Because obesity is an inflammatory state and what the virus did was promote inflammation. 348 00:39:37,260 --> 00:39:45,959 And so you've got this this hyper and I can't even remember what the term is, but it's definitely a term for the for the, 349 00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:52,260 you know, met inflammation that happened with with people who developed severe, severe COVID. 350 00:39:52,290 --> 00:40:00,060 And so, you know, there was a they called a cytokine storm, all of the proteins that were associated with, you know, 351 00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:05,909 getting the the immune system up and running, charging ahead and damaging tissue in many, 352 00:40:05,910 --> 00:40:08,700 many parts of the body, including the heart, including the lungs. 353 00:40:08,700 --> 00:40:17,430 And so respiratory infections because, you know, the respiratory distress, because it was attacking the tissues of the body. 354 00:40:17,670 --> 00:40:25,770 So and obesity was was part of that. Again, not on the medical side of this, but we could see the importance of this and to see how it fed into that. 355 00:40:26,490 --> 00:40:36,060 Um, the economic insecurity was certainly an issue that came out with a subsequent follow up report. 356 00:40:37,770 --> 00:40:41,450 And then when we took into account economic insecurity. Sorry to interrupt. 357 00:40:41,460 --> 00:40:44,670 So you went did you go back to the same people again? Yes, we did. 358 00:40:44,940 --> 00:40:48,840 Yes, we did. Yes, we did. Um, that's a good question. 359 00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:53,700 Um, I think it was I think it was in the second half towards the 2nd of July. 360 00:40:53,790 --> 00:40:59,910 Right. Yeah. As I say, memory gets gets hazier, especially when stuff you really don't want to be thinking about anymore. 361 00:40:59,980 --> 00:41:03,700 I want to be moving on, but, um, I'm. 362 00:41:03,830 --> 00:41:10,560 I'm proud and happy to have done the work, but I feel that, you know, we do now need to be moving, moving into the future. 363 00:41:11,940 --> 00:41:19,170 But when we took into account economic insecurity, the young people still had worse mental health health outcomes even when we control for that. 364 00:41:19,530 --> 00:41:23,790 So it's something that was much more of a much more of a universal thing. 365 00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:29,870 And we had lots of narratives that we we could just put a few of these into the report and the stuff that we are, 366 00:41:30,360 --> 00:41:40,100 you know, putting into the papers now. You know, here's one woman in the South-East, 67 years of age, comfort age to block out the black thoughts. 367 00:41:40,110 --> 00:41:45,600 I come today to stop my brain. Mental health, which has always been my gremlin, reared its head. 368 00:41:45,930 --> 00:41:49,170 No controlling, eating, exercise or life. 369 00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:56,190 Those with. That's just one of many, many, many similar kinds of stories. 370 00:41:56,970 --> 00:42:02,070 Um, increased lethargy, a return to depression that had been under control. 371 00:42:02,220 --> 00:42:09,270 Forgetfulness, irregular sleep, massive anxiety, amplified bad habits, amplified addictions. 372 00:42:10,290 --> 00:42:15,900 That's the man. And that was just so telling story after story after story. 373 00:42:16,290 --> 00:42:25,650 And of course, because we had a narrative section to to to the to the questionnaire, we just said just, you know, say what you feel you need to say. 374 00:42:26,430 --> 00:42:30,030 So and then we find those sections were very fully filled out. 375 00:42:30,360 --> 00:42:33,030 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. People were happy to talk. 376 00:42:33,770 --> 00:42:43,680 In fact, I don't believe that people had very many places they could talk in the early in the early pandemic because you had to put on a good face. 377 00:42:44,550 --> 00:42:48,150 And so publicly, you know, you have to put on a good face. 378 00:42:48,150 --> 00:42:55,080 You have to be positive. You have to you know, this country, I believe I've never been in this country when there was a war on. 379 00:42:55,080 --> 00:43:01,649 But we went on to a war, world war, wartime footing where people are, you know, making do and mend. 380 00:43:01,650 --> 00:43:07,440 And they start to say, well, you know, we have to, you know, dig for victory, all those metaphors and so on. 381 00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:14,460 It had that kind of feel to it, clapping for the food, for the health workers, all that sort of stuff. 382 00:43:14,840 --> 00:43:19,950 You know, when people went back home, then they were there with themselves and their thoughts. 383 00:43:19,950 --> 00:43:24,150 And, you know, it wasn't there wasn't a good picture. 384 00:43:26,340 --> 00:43:31,730 Hmm. Um, so what have you moved onto? 385 00:43:31,750 --> 00:43:38,140 I mean, has. I know you say you want to get that work, but has it informed the choices you've made about what to do next? 386 00:43:38,650 --> 00:43:49,180 Well, um, I was asked to give evidence to a House of Lords Committee on post-COVID futures, 387 00:43:49,180 --> 00:43:55,270 and I said, Well, we have to look to multilevel approaches to to overweight and obesity. 388 00:43:55,960 --> 00:43:59,500 We have to move beyond silver bullet responses. 389 00:43:59,500 --> 00:44:08,140 And we some of my group we published in The Lancet on, you know, silver bullet won't do it for the pandemic. 390 00:44:08,860 --> 00:44:11,470 We need a vaccine. Of course we do. But that's not the end of it. 391 00:44:13,450 --> 00:44:24,999 I was I wasn't astonished, but actually appalled by the vaccine deniers that that emerged as as the vaccine was being being rolled out, 392 00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:30,520 that it showed a kind of fission in society that. 393 00:44:34,110 --> 00:44:46,200 Some of the fissures that showed insecurity. Inequality was one of these lightning bolt events that really showed the weakness in society. 394 00:44:47,040 --> 00:44:51,870 And those strengths I mean, the strengths were the things that were was celebrated. 395 00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:55,800 But, you know, there are a number of things that show, you know, we really can do better. 396 00:44:55,800 --> 00:45:03,420 And I think economic insecurity is a major is a major issue for everybody, but especially for the younger people. 397 00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:09,510 And I'm a big fan of the Nordic welfare state, 398 00:45:09,510 --> 00:45:14,910 so I've just come back from Copenhagen where somehow they seem to do all the right things and have a strong economy. 399 00:45:15,630 --> 00:45:25,170 And so why can't we be that kind of neo liberal society that has a strong welfare state, you know, 400 00:45:25,170 --> 00:45:35,790 child centred policies focusing on the things that make people happy, which is actually mostly other people and family money matters? 401 00:45:35,790 --> 00:45:41,880 Of course it does, but it's not the thing I feel we should move away from fetishising money. 402 00:45:42,720 --> 00:45:48,540 It's useful, but it's a tool as an instrument and this operates in relation to obesity. 403 00:45:48,540 --> 00:45:56,249 But I've been working with colleagues in Sweden and Denmark on insecurity and childhood obesity, 404 00:45:56,250 --> 00:46:07,170 and we've developed a new model that shows all the trigger points for the development of childhood obesity, 405 00:46:07,170 --> 00:46:19,780 in which insecurities major So that's been that's been the biggest thing that's that's come out very, very recently carry on work with on obesity. 406 00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:24,450 I'm currently writing a popular book on understanding obesity. 407 00:46:24,870 --> 00:46:30,630 And if you'd have asked me before the pandemic if that would have been a thing for me, probably not. 408 00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:44,550 But actually writing something that can help to explain complexity and why you are not to blame for your fatness is a very useful thing at this stage. 409 00:46:45,030 --> 00:46:50,550 And I think that, you know, I'm I've been told by the publishers just to write what I know, don't think too much. 410 00:46:51,470 --> 00:46:56,790 The risk as an academic is always to overthink things, so simplify things down. 411 00:46:57,240 --> 00:47:01,799 And at the media level, there's always this difficulty in balancing, 412 00:47:01,800 --> 00:47:08,670 not blaming the person for their overweight while still saying it would be better if you were a bit thinner. 413 00:47:09,930 --> 00:47:15,510 Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's that's tricky because people know that they could be a bit thinner. 414 00:47:16,050 --> 00:47:24,570 You're not telling them anything they don't know. And you know when in some places they talk about the war on obesity. 415 00:47:24,570 --> 00:47:29,490 Well, think about if it's a civil war, it's a war on obese people, 416 00:47:29,850 --> 00:47:42,180 and therefore it's against promoting the health and wellbeing and goodness of people who carry excess weight. 417 00:47:42,390 --> 00:47:49,950 You know, it's actually very difficult unless you've got the genes to avoid putting on weight, it's very difficult to keep the weight down. 418 00:47:50,820 --> 00:47:59,310 People who have control of their lives are better able to do that than people who don't do very, very, very simple, very straightforward podcasts. 419 00:47:59,390 --> 00:48:10,290 I did podcasts with some Crosse college people who were involved in some aspect of work against the pandemic, 420 00:48:11,190 --> 00:48:17,870 a number of them, including now Sir Andrew Pollard and police. 421 00:48:17,910 --> 00:48:27,930 And they got to the case and Mike Parker, who's on stage to name but three, Rana Mittal, talked about. 422 00:48:28,050 --> 00:48:32,730 Is that something you just do because of your interest in storytelling? 423 00:48:33,300 --> 00:48:37,980 I mean, this is something you've chosen to do that you do these short podcasts for. 424 00:48:38,130 --> 00:48:43,350 Yeah, well, with my with my obesity and you know, 425 00:48:43,350 --> 00:48:49,919 we've been doing podcasts since 2007 is over 180 that are up on the university 426 00:48:49,920 --> 00:49:00,360 website and and and even more on on on Spotify so or newer ones or are on Spotify. 427 00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:04,139 So there's pretty much a a taste for that and we've been working with that. 428 00:49:04,140 --> 00:49:11,760 So I'm very I like podcasting as a medium. We also did with a former student of mine a series of podcasts called Lockdown Food. 429 00:49:12,210 --> 00:49:16,560 Oh yes. I had a note to ask you about, You know, what was so what, what what was that about? 430 00:49:16,710 --> 00:49:26,850 Oh, well, ordinary people aren't experts. As to Gonzalez, Paddy talked about sugar and how, you know, so easy to overeat on sugar. 431 00:49:26,850 --> 00:49:32,670 She does her research on sugar trials, Yo, you see sort of media scientist in Cambridge. 432 00:49:33,420 --> 00:49:38,639 Talked about eating during the pandemic and his approach to that. 433 00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:48,810 Also, somebody who runs a small distillery in New England who suddenly moved his gin to hand wash sanitiser. 434 00:49:50,400 --> 00:50:00,540 People in the food industry who were suddenly furloughed and not involved in in food service, 435 00:50:00,540 --> 00:50:06,540 the shift of food service provision from the foodservice area to everyday consumption. 436 00:50:06,540 --> 00:50:11,309 So online shopping became a thing and so bigger thing than it ever had been before. 437 00:50:11,310 --> 00:50:16,049 But people weren't just buying from supermarkets, they were buying from, you know, if you could afford it, 438 00:50:16,050 --> 00:50:22,800 you could buy from top end suppliers who would be supplying some of the top restaurants. 439 00:50:23,220 --> 00:50:26,670 I have to confess, I did that and so did Georgio. 440 00:50:28,020 --> 00:50:33,240 But that kind of thing is also has long term implications because people are shifting how they're doing the shopping, 441 00:50:35,220 --> 00:50:39,560 the emergence of smaller shops, of greengrocers as well. 442 00:50:39,570 --> 00:50:45,000 Okay, A middle class phenomenon is not cheap, but it signals a purpose, 443 00:50:45,420 --> 00:50:51,150 a new purpose, which is to return to a sane food system where we know what we eat. 444 00:50:51,660 --> 00:50:56,880 Those are all good things, and I think some of that has stuck. We question what we're eating more. 445 00:50:57,270 --> 00:51:05,250 I think everybody everybody's questioning even people who are, you know, overeating on the wrong kinds of ultra processed foods. 446 00:51:05,490 --> 00:51:08,250 They know what they're doing. They know what's happening. 447 00:51:08,580 --> 00:51:15,060 And actually, I think we're getting closer to a to a to a food system that might actually do us good. 448 00:51:16,710 --> 00:51:21,300 We might get there a bit quicker if we didn't have a cost of living crisis at the same time. 449 00:51:21,510 --> 00:51:26,219 Well, you can't control for that. And the thing is that the crisis there will be more and more. 450 00:51:26,220 --> 00:51:35,910 We did a talk on on, you know, on the pandemic and we said, well, it's the four horsemen of the apocalypse. 451 00:51:36,630 --> 00:51:43,740 Okay, so what if we had okay, the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are death, famine, war and plague. 452 00:51:44,320 --> 00:51:53,219 Okay. Just when we thought it was safe, the pandemic well is over. 453 00:51:53,220 --> 00:51:56,790 But the disease is kind of normalised in many ways. 454 00:51:57,420 --> 00:52:00,720 But there will be more of these episodes where we get used to these shocks. 455 00:52:01,080 --> 00:52:05,130 Yes, indeed. So that I mean, that was I think it was going to be. My next question is how? 456 00:52:05,340 --> 00:52:11,610 To what extent do you think the country is better prepared for the next one when it comes along? 457 00:52:11,610 --> 00:52:18,180 Because it will come? Everybody says yes, it will come. Likely a five years might be in 15 years might be 50, but the next one will come along. 458 00:52:18,510 --> 00:52:22,770 Have we learnt enough from this one to be more honest? You? Yes, please. 459 00:52:24,390 --> 00:52:35,070 On December the 15th, 2022, that we were very well prepared for a pandemic in the early 2000. 460 00:52:36,690 --> 00:52:48,909 The system for reporting. Potential pandemics was systematically dissolved, maybe not even systematically, 461 00:52:48,910 --> 00:53:01,420 but funding was withdrawn and it became seemingly less important because, you know, other things seem to be more important right now. 462 00:53:01,430 --> 00:53:08,860 I think this country's very vulnerable because these systems of reporting that there's been a lot of lip service. 463 00:53:08,860 --> 00:53:14,500 But I think there's been also talk about the UK. An awful lot of political turmoil. 464 00:53:15,190 --> 00:53:19,930 And I think the political infighting that's been happening hasn't served the country very well. 465 00:53:22,420 --> 00:53:31,360 They want to be political. But I think while the politicians are trying to work out who their leader is, not much else can really be resolved. 466 00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:35,469 Some things can be. But this is an important thing that needs leadership. 467 00:53:35,470 --> 00:53:45,370 And hopefully we have a leader now, and the others, in my view, seem to be a little bit wanting. 468 00:53:46,420 --> 00:53:50,860 It's not for me to criticise. Being a politician is one of the toughest jobs on the planet, 469 00:53:50,860 --> 00:54:01,570 but it's a time for ramping up these things and seeing what what are the things that that need to be thought about, 470 00:54:01,580 --> 00:54:07,660 what needs to be resolved, what systems need to be put in place with a war? 471 00:54:07,690 --> 00:54:25,410 Who can tell? I think one of the important things that I feel ought to be put in place is a move away from just in time ism. 472 00:54:26,100 --> 00:54:32,100 You know that we have systems where production systems with things get there just in time, 473 00:54:32,100 --> 00:54:35,940 including the supermarket shelves, especially the supermarket shelves. 474 00:54:36,510 --> 00:54:43,050 And with a global supply chain that can work beautifully or it can just collapse like it did during the pandemic. 475 00:54:44,430 --> 00:54:51,570 I've spoken to supermarket leaders in this country and in other countries where they are 476 00:54:52,500 --> 00:55:00,120 talking about how to reduce the supply chain and to improve health in that supply chain. 477 00:55:00,210 --> 00:55:07,020 So that means lots of localism. So the localism of having the corner store is great. 478 00:55:07,020 --> 00:55:09,090 It's fantastic. I love the corner store. 479 00:55:09,990 --> 00:55:23,640 But having the major supermarkets also thinking about how that can be done and making it good for business is, is is, I think, hugely important. 480 00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:28,920 Moving away from just in time as some also means a bit more of a Victorian overengineered ring. 481 00:55:29,700 --> 00:55:36,989 In my view, we're still living off the legacy of Victorian times of, you know, having good building infrastructure, 482 00:55:36,990 --> 00:55:43,330 having good roads, overengineered and so many things that actually we've been living off the capital for a long time. 483 00:55:43,920 --> 00:55:52,559 And honestly, I saw broken pipe yesterday and water pipe on the Banbury Road the other day and I thought, 484 00:55:52,560 --> 00:55:58,980 well, goodness me, you know, this system of water delivery is is failing us. 485 00:55:59,130 --> 00:56:05,760 So the complete disaster in Sheffield the other week when the water goes into the gas system. 486 00:56:06,730 --> 00:56:16,530 So yes, yes. Yeah. Well, you know, I wish the politicians and the policymakers and the public service to support all this 487 00:56:16,530 --> 00:56:23,219 the very best in making this work as these this is a time for difficult decisions. 488 00:56:23,220 --> 00:56:27,090 And I think people are probably prepared for it. 489 00:56:30,240 --> 00:56:34,440 But, you know, we need the leadership to be able to and clear vision, 490 00:56:34,440 --> 00:56:38,820 to be able to take us forward and to say the one thing that I can do is supply evidence. 491 00:56:39,550 --> 00:56:49,200 One thing that I can do and understanding obesity, thinking about multi-level approaches to it, 492 00:56:50,100 --> 00:56:56,249 structuring the issue in a way that multiple levels of intervention can be put in place. 493 00:56:56,250 --> 00:56:59,100 I think that's where I would place myself now. 494 00:56:59,110 --> 00:57:06,650 I was at a meeting of the Royal Society just a few weeks ago, turned out into something, turned into something of a consensus meeting. 495 00:57:06,670 --> 00:57:07,920 Causes of obesity. 496 00:57:08,220 --> 00:57:17,790 Privileged to be one of the 20 or so that gave a presentation and it felt very much that we are moving towards that kind of, you know, d. 497 00:57:18,630 --> 00:57:24,600 D blaming the individual. It's very easy politically to say it's individual responsibility. 498 00:57:24,930 --> 00:57:32,580 You don't have to do anything. He just said, Well, it's individual responsibility. Let's look at the systems, who's producing ultra processed foods? 499 00:57:33,300 --> 00:57:37,590 Why have we moved to invent those one people? And how on earth did we get here? 500 00:57:38,910 --> 00:57:48,570 By Kevin Hall in the United States, world expert in obesity physiology. 501 00:57:49,140 --> 00:57:58,320 How on earth did we get here? Well, step by step, I mean, the road to [INAUDIBLE] is paved with bad intentions as well as good intentions. 502 00:57:58,740 --> 00:58:00,810 But we have to pick where we put our feet. 503 00:58:03,030 --> 00:58:09,060 And I mean, this is again, this is a more philosophical question, but do you think sorry if you've got it is impossible. 504 00:58:09,450 --> 00:58:18,450 Do you need to be somewhere else? Do you think there's an increasing recognition that medical approaches are not enough? 505 00:58:18,570 --> 00:58:27,210 That doesn't need to be a much wider multidisciplinary approach to tackling public health generally in obesity in particular. 506 00:58:29,620 --> 00:58:37,570 Well, I think medical approaches are important. And one day there might be a silver bullet for obesity. 507 00:58:38,590 --> 00:58:44,979 But we've seen with the COVID 19 vaccine, the rollout rollout of the vaccine is hugely important. 508 00:58:44,980 --> 00:58:47,530 But it also there are also social implications. 509 00:58:48,850 --> 00:58:54,520 There are people who will be vaccine deniers and there will be people who will do not want to take the medication. 510 00:58:56,530 --> 00:58:58,660 And you can't assume that it will fix everything. 511 00:58:58,690 --> 00:59:07,180 So new technologies offer new possibilities, but we have to think about the context in which those technologies emerge. 512 00:59:07,840 --> 00:59:15,700 So if obesity medication, if obesity medication is developed, who's producing it? 513 00:59:16,370 --> 00:59:20,980 It will be, you know, pharma, probably that's okay. 514 00:59:21,940 --> 00:59:28,030 But then it depends which pharma, who and where. And then it depends which medical system is it feeding into? 515 00:59:28,270 --> 00:59:35,079 Is it going to be into a national health service or is it going to be into a free market? 516 00:59:35,080 --> 00:59:42,129 Free for all Those social contexts are not sort of casual social context. 517 00:59:42,130 --> 00:59:50,170 They all have a history and therefore there is scope for deep analysis of what will happen. 518 00:59:50,170 --> 00:59:59,500 If you if you have a particular kind of intervention, then you have the the markets that respond to a new form of medication. 519 01:00:01,360 --> 01:00:11,260 You know, the vaccine has done wonders for pharmaceutical companies generally, and they're positioning on the markets. 520 01:00:11,620 --> 01:00:15,130 But, you know, there's also the possibility of cheating, 521 01:00:15,820 --> 01:00:31,030 like I can't remember in California the over claiming for one Start-Up and now the the CEO of of that company is I don't know if she's 522 01:00:31,030 --> 01:00:38,260 in prison you might well end up in prison because she's defrauded an awful lot of money and she's given false promises for for, 523 01:00:38,290 --> 01:00:43,610 you know, a device that should be able to diagnose all chronic diseases. 524 01:00:43,630 --> 01:00:45,850 Of course, you know, we want those good news stories. 525 01:00:46,240 --> 01:00:58,240 But, you know, if you're open to liking those stories, if you're open to wanting to have have those sort of silver bullet solutions, 526 01:00:58,600 --> 01:01:01,300 then you might not look too carefully at the small print. 527 01:01:02,050 --> 01:01:14,140 So, you know, in that context, I think the regulators are huge and important that the regulation of anything is properly scrutinised. 528 01:01:14,860 --> 01:01:17,649 And I think also related to that. I mean, 529 01:01:17,650 --> 01:01:28,930 I'm reinventing a world in some ways that the data that is used to validate a new form of medication ought to be somehow public to scrutinised, 530 01:01:28,930 --> 01:01:33,969 you should be available publicly and that would also create new problems because you might say vaccine deniers. 531 01:01:33,970 --> 01:01:38,080 We can go and look at this evidence and say, actually I can interpret this completely differently. 532 01:01:38,620 --> 01:01:43,179 So every step of this is not failsafe problems. 533 01:01:43,180 --> 01:01:49,090 We're into a world where, you know, huge amounts of data is being gathered. 534 01:01:49,390 --> 01:02:00,340 Data is the new gold and. And, of course, you know, the systems that data's used in or are varied and the social implications are a large. 535 01:02:00,350 --> 01:02:10,870 So I don't see an end to the utility of medical anthropology, shall we say, For example, you know something we do very well here at the university. 536 01:02:10,900 --> 01:02:18,610 Yeah, exactly. I think what I was driving at was that the balance between investment in medicalised 537 01:02:18,610 --> 01:02:24,070 approaches and the investment in more socially oriented approaches to to health, 538 01:02:25,180 --> 01:02:34,089 it is is seems to me to be somewhat out of whack at the moment and addressing issues such as inequality and even 539 01:02:34,090 --> 01:02:39,940 things like provision of childcare and children's centres and so on could have a huge impact on public health. 540 01:02:43,360 --> 01:02:48,370 Social approaches to medicine work very well when there's a social approach to society at large. 541 01:02:50,140 --> 01:02:55,620 So social approaches work incredibly well in Denmark, incredibly, you know, 542 01:02:55,630 --> 01:03:01,900 during the during the pandemic, there was a kind of shopping blaming in Copenhagen. 543 01:03:02,350 --> 01:03:07,960 So somebody would go into a into a into a store and buy a two packs of pasta. 544 01:03:08,380 --> 01:03:11,620 And somebody behind him would say, do you really need that second package? 545 01:03:12,490 --> 01:03:17,860 There was no hoarding in Denmark because it was against the common good. 546 01:03:19,180 --> 01:03:28,720 So thinking about what is that common good, I do think, well, if we are giving something up for ourselves, who are we? 547 01:03:28,740 --> 01:03:41,300 Giving it two or four. And I think in the UK there needs to be a strong focus on thinking about what society is. 548 01:03:41,310 --> 01:03:45,770 What kind of society do we want? What kind of communities do we want? 549 01:03:45,780 --> 01:03:49,319 Because these are all under challenge and under question. 550 01:03:49,320 --> 01:03:56,670 Because, you know, especially we have the Internet, we have mobile devices, which means that sociality isn't necessarily local. 551 01:03:57,000 --> 01:04:05,070 We might live in a house where we don't know our neighbours, but we know thousands of people on our different social media sites. 552 01:04:07,110 --> 01:04:13,440 We might even be sitting around the same dinner table checking our phone, therefore being here, but not really being here. 553 01:04:14,850 --> 01:04:23,010 There's no answers to these things, but the question is what kind of sociality would allow a social solution to something? 554 01:04:23,980 --> 01:04:31,050 So I think during the pandemic, lots of people came together and that was beautiful to see. 555 01:04:32,400 --> 01:04:37,559 And the positives of it were were that actually people do value social fabric. 556 01:04:37,560 --> 01:04:47,430 People do value other people. People do value being able to be happy by giving to other people. 557 01:04:48,420 --> 01:04:53,240 And how do you promote that when there's no longer a crisis? 558 01:04:53,250 --> 01:04:59,160 Do we have to go back to business as usual, which is me, me, me, or can we rethink how we do things? 559 01:05:00,580 --> 01:05:02,340 I think there's a lot of that going on anyway.