MALE SPEAKER: Professor Gibney,
he's an expert on
human nutrition.
He served on several EU and
United Nations health
committees.
He's been a professor at Trinity
College and at UCD.
That's interesting politics,
both sides of the fence.
He's currently the Director
of the UCD
Institute of Food and Health.
And actually, one of his huge
accomplishments, probably his
biggest one, is his daughter,
Sinead, who's here in Dublin.
And so we kind of declared the
whole [INAUDIBLE] familial,
and Sinead has actually driven
the whole of our social aging
policy, which has been actually
a tremendous success.
Also then, just to declare my
interest in the whole area of
the food services business, I
actually-- if you all remember
from sandwich gate a
couple years ago--
I serve on the board
of Green Corps.
So I'm obviously deeply
interested in this area, and
have actually spent most of my
evenings in the last week on
board meetings related
to this.
Mike's book is called "Something
to Chew On." If you
had a chance to read it, you'll
know he has some pretty
controversial views.
If you haven't, I think what
you'll do is you'll hear,
during the course of
conversation, those
controversial views.
It might encourage you to go out
and actually get the book.
We probably have a couple
of copies here, as well.
So first of all, Mike, let's
see if you can convince us.
Mike Gibney, welcome
to Google.
[APPLAUSE]
PROFESSOR MIKE GIBNEY: Good
afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
It's a pleasure to be
here as part of the
Google Author scheme.
I'm here to talk about a book
I've written, and I'm also
going to mention a blog that
I operate, gibneyonfood.
I used to upload once a week,
but I found it too much.
So the most recent one I
uploaded was "Dietary
supplements--
useless or useful?" That
was this week.
So I have about 35,000
hits and about 200--
it's rising up to about
100 a day, 150 a day.
And I wrote both of these
because I'm sick and tired of
rubbish I read in the media,
sick and tired of people who
are being confused by quasi
experts in the media, in the
print media and in the
electronic media.
And very often, when I give
talks to the general public, I
try to leave as much time as
possible for questions, the
reason being that people rarely
get a chance to talk to
someone who is, technically
speaking, expert, and neutral,
and willing to say
it as it is.
Quite often, the people who
write books are writing from a
very narrow, sensationalist,
and poor
science-based point of view.
So that's my take.
So what I'm going to try and
do today is to say the book
covers a wide variety of things,
and I can't possibly
cover them all.
What I've tried to do is make
a list of seven myths.
And I'll go through these,
and if time allows,
I'll finish them all.
And if it doesn't, I'll
stop wherever I feel.
But I'll try to go for
about a half an hour.
The first one I want to look at
is whether or not obesity
is a uniquely modern event.
On the right-hand side of this
screen, there's a book there
called "The End of Overeating."
It's by David
Kessler, who is former head of
the FDA in the United States.
He's a pediatrician, or
was a pediatrician.
He wrote this in his book.
For thousands of years,
human weight
stayed remarkably constant.
Throughout adulthood we
basically consume no more than
the food we needed to burn.
People who are overweight stood
apart from the general
population.
Please remember that, that
they stood apart from the
general population.
Millions of calories passed
through their bodies, yet with
rare exceptions, our weight
neither rose nor fell.
Rare exceptions.
And everything changed
in the 1980s.
Now, if Kessler is correct,
then the solution to the
problem of obesity will
be around the 1980s.
Something happened in the 1960s
and '70s, or perhaps
into the '80s and maybe '90s,
but he's got a 40, 50, or even
a 60 year period to look
for the solution.
But if he's wrong, as I'm going
to show you, then he's
going to make a mess
of things.
I'll go back to Hippocrates.
He wrote, in relation to the
Scythian race, about their
children, that the male
children, until they were old
enough to ride, most of the time
were sitting in wagons,
and they were talking very
little since they were often
changing their place
of residence.
And the girls get amazingly
flabby and podgy.
But that's not a rare event.
Then one of the greatest writers
of Roman time, Lucius
Columella, he wrote that, "The
consequence is that ill health
attends so slothful a manner of
living; for the bodies of
our young men are so flabby and
enervated that death seems
likely to make no
change to them."
Then you go to the city
of Florence, the
city-state of Florence.
And this gentleman, Cornaro,
wrote this book, still
available on Amazon,
by the way.
He wrote it at the age of 94.
And it's pretty important
to read what he says.
"Gluttony kills every year as
great a number as would perish
during the time of the most
dreadful pestilence or by the
sword or the fire of many
wars." Rare event?
I don't think so.
And then finally, I'll take you
through to the 18th and
19th Century to Sir William Wadd
in London, who pointed
out that the increase of wealth
and refinement of
modern times, have tended to
banish plague and pestilence.
They have probably introduced
the increased frequency of
corpulence.
For every one fat person in
Spain or France, there are 100
in England.
Though that's still
the case, I think.
Apologies to my English
colleagues.
Now, this is a modern
analysis.
It's interesting to look back in
history, but we really need
to do some science here.
This is a study which has
looked at birth cohorts.
Now, birth cohorts are very
important because you take a
group of people born in a
certain period, and you follow
them throughout their lives.
And then you take another group
born 20 years later.
You follow them through
their lives.
So you take a group in 1880,
1900, 1920, '40, '60, and
follow them onwards.
When you put it all together,
you get a picture of the rate
at which obesity has grown.
In this particular study, you'll
see that from 1880
onwards to 1980, there has
been a linear rise in the
level of obesity.
It isn't something that has
happened at a flat rate, and
then suddenly appeared
in 1980.
And if you look at the rate of
change, you'll see that it
comes in waves.
It starts, it slows,
it rises again.
I call this the tsunami
of large.
Now, if you take a different
approach to this-- this is
started from the US military--
and they've looked
at four periods.
I've taken the 45-year-old
military personnel there.
They showed an increase of 3.4
units of body mass index.
The increase was 7% for the
first 30 years, 17% then for
the next half century.
The next one should
read 17 years.
Half of it took place in that
17 years after the war.
And then again, it slowed down
in the 1960s to 1990s to only
a quarter of it.
So again, you have this
undulation and growth.
It's best seen in some studies
in Denmark where they took
children in the 1930s.
They had seven, eight, nine,
10, 11-year-olds, and they
followed them on a six-monthly
basis.
As you can see, there's a slow
gradual rise, and then in the
1940s, there's a spurt, and then
it drops off again, and
then there's another
huge spurt.
And then if you take the Danish
military recruits, just
start at the end of the Second
World War, again you see the
same pattern--
a slow rise, a sudden
rise, a dip, and
then a very fast rise.
So basically speaking, the
authors of the paper I
referred to-- and many of them
I could have shown you, but
this was one I particularly
like--
they make two conclusions.
"Insofar as BMI values have been
increasing gradually over
a century, researchers
attempting to understand the
causes of the pandemic need to
reflect or focus on the 1980s
and thereafter to a much longer
run process of social,
technological, economic, and
cultural change." And then
they go on to say that "the
finding also implies that the
policies to attenuate or reverse
the trend would have
to reach deep into the social
fabric and take into
consideration that such
socio-economic forces
generally change at
glacial pace."
So Kessler has it wrong in
thinking that it all happened
in the 1980s.
When he looks around for a
solution, and he will identify
sugar sweetened beverages as one
of the causes, he'll have
gotten it wrong.
The problem is with obesity is
that I see there are two types
of people take a scientific
approach to obesity-- the
solutionists and the analysts.
I'm an analyst.
I like to find out why.
The solutionists have an idea
of what to do, and they
justify doing it, such
as taxing sugar.
Now, this is the second
myth, and it's about
the stigma of obesity.
I'll just go back and say that
I'm going to introduce you to
a number of impressions that
most of you people in this
room will have about
obese people.
Most of you will have these.
If you're really truthful
to yourself, you'll
admit yes, you have.
First of all, you'll believe
they're lazy.
Then you'll believe that
they're dishonest, that
they're untidy, untrustworthy,
unreliable, can't manage their
time, have poor self-control,
possibly low IQ, and low
self-esteem.
Now, that view is widely held
by professionals who look
after obese people.
It's held by obese people.
And sadly, it's held
by obese children.
The only thing that's true on
that is the very last one,
self-esteem.
Self-esteem doesn't happen
because you are born with bad
self-esteem.
It happens because you got
overweight or a little bit
fat, and you experience
all these prejudices.
And your self esteem suffers
because of them.
So if there's one thing I'd hope
that would happen after
this talk, the next time you see
someone that's overweight,
just be a little bit
sympathetic.
Just be a little bit
sympathetic.
So don't always imagine--
I'm going to show you a study
that was repeated twice--
and this was done
with children--
that shows you the scale
of the problem.
Boys were shown drawings of
boys, and girls were shown
drawings of girls.
And there were six types.
The first one was healthy,
nothing wrong
with them at all.
The next one was a
disfigured face.
The next one was on crutches
with a brace on one leg.
Then there was one with
a wheelchair--
one with no left hand.
Sorry--
one in a wheelchair covered
by a blanket, and
one that was obese.
The children were asked to rank
them, who they'd like to
be their friend most.
Five was the one you didn't
want to be friendly with.
One was you wanted to be
friends with them.
The results are staggering.
Nobody wanted to be friends
with the obese children.
They'd rather be friends with
people with all sorts of
physical impairments, but
not an obese child.
This is ingrained in children.
It comes from their parents,
and it's part of the way
society thinks.
So again, I say to you, the
one thing I want you to do
when you leave here is be a
little bit considerate.
Here are some people
that are not lazy.
They're not all of the things
you think about them, and
they're all fat and famous.
Some of them are very
rich and famous.
The third myth is that obesity
is uniquely caused by the
environment, and genes have
nothing to do with it.
I was explaining last night when
I was down in Cork that I
gave a talk, a lecture once.
I gave the opening talk to the
World Congress of Public
Health Nutrition.
They asked me to pick four
topics, any topic
I liked, hot topics.
And I picked four,
one of which was
genetics and obesity.
When I was finished talking,
there was a queue at the
microphone by eminent public
health nutritionists, each
vying to condemn me.
How could I possibly say this?
Genes have not changed
for centuries.
The environment has.
Therefore, it has to be the
environment, stupid.
It can't be the genes.
But I'll show you
that's not true.
These are two Maasai tribesmen
from Kenya.
They look after cattle,
and they're nomadic.
They walk long distances,
so they've
huge physical activity.
They eat berries
along the way.
They drink the milk.
Occasionally, they'll bleed the
cattle, and mix it with
the milk, and drink that.
They live in a non-obesogenic
environment.
It's impossible to get fat
as a Maasai warrior.
Impossible.
You spend so much energy walking
around after your
cattle and eating
so sparsely that
obesity just ain't possible.
This is a food emporium in some
shopping mall or other.
You'd be familiar with them in
airports and what have you.
And this is an obesogenic
environment.
This is cheap food.
This is tasty food.
This is abundant food.
It's immediate food.
It's every cuisine
food you like.
And this is an obesogenic
environment.
Now, if I was to take 1,000
Kenyan tribesman and bring
them into this obesogenic
environment, what would happen?
Well, I would predict some
would get fat very fast.
I would predict some would
get fat, but very slowly.
Some would get overweight very
fast, and some would get
overweight very slowly.
Some wouldn't gain
weight at all.
That is the difference.
The difference in those people
is due to genes.
Put them in the same obesogenic
environment.
How they respond to that
environment is genetically
determined.
So we live in an obesogenic
environment.
Those of us that gain weight
are gaining weight because
they have a genetic
predisposition to do so in an
obesogenic environment.
Take away the environment,
the genes don't matter.
Put the environment there, the
genes tell you who's going to
get top of the league, middle
of the league, or bottom of
the league.
So genes matter.
I'll show you some
data on this.
This is an old study carried out
in the 1970s and forgotten
because it didn't suit public
health nutrition.
It involved overfeeding twins,
identical twins.
And it also involved
underfeeding identical twins,
all carried out in clinical
conditions.
In other words, in a ward, where
they were supervised.
So if I take some
examples here--
let's take the overfeeding
one--
and we have a green
circle here.
That dot represents two twins,
two identical twins.
If you go down the line to the
change in body weight for twin
B, it's around about 11 kilos.
And if you go across to the
weight gain on twin A, it's
about 13 kilos.
So they've gained more or
less the same weight.
Whereas if you go down
to the red one, they
resisted weight gain.
Those two twins resisted weight
gain more or less to
within a kilo of one another.
And then if you go on to the
period where 1,000 calories
were taken away from them every
day, they lost weight.
But look at the ones in green.
They lost very little.
They resisted.
Both twins resisted.
In red, both twins showed
huge weight loss.
So again, you can see the
genetic component is
determining who responds
to the environment, the
obesogenic or the non-obesogenic
environment.
Now, the criticism of all of
that was it was carried out in
the 1970s when we didn't
really have the highly
obesogenic environment
we have today.
This lady, Jane Wardle, at the
University of London has done
some incredibly good work with
twins, identical and
non-identical.
And the thing about identical
and non-identical twins is
they have a mathematical model
which allows you to work out
what part of the trait
is heritable.
In the case of obesity, BMI, or
Body Mass Index, or waist
circumference, three quarters,
roughly speaking, is
accountable for it by
genetic variation.
That was exactly what they found
in the 1970s, as well.
About, you could say, of the
remainder, a little bit more
than half was in the non-shared
environment of the children.
So one child went off to play
hockey, another going to go
swimming, another going to
drama, another going to do
something else.
And the shared environment
was the whole.
Now, just to take this a little
bit further, this is a
longitudinal study
of 428 twins.
They were from 100 obese
families and 100 non-obese.
Both parents had to
be obese, or both
parents had to be slim.
They were followed from four to
11, which is a seven year
follow up, and they had an
81% retention, which
is very, very good.
This is obesity at age
four and age 11.
The gray bar represents the
children of slim parents.
There was no change in the
rate of obesity in those
children between the
age of four and 11.
The black bar represents
children both whose parents
were obese.
You can see that there
was a dramatic rise.
Even by age four, there was far
more obesity in those that
had obese parents, and by age
11, it was through the roof.
Of course, you might argue that
that's due to the home
environment.
But what I've shown you is that
when you study twins,
identical and non-identical
twins, and you're able to take
away the effect of the home
environment, the environment
comes out at less than 25%, the
genes accounting for 75%.
I just want to bring in social
class, because this is also
another myth, so to speak.
On the bottom, you see that
we've broken this up now into
two groups.
We still have the children who
were born of lean parents, and
over the seven year period, they
showed no weight gain.
Now, we've divided them into two
colors, blue and sort of
red, and they're different
social classes.
And social class makes
absolutely and utterly no
difference if you happen
to have two
parents that are slim.
But if you go to the top of
this where we have the
children whose parents were
overweight, then you see that
social class becomes
important.
So what you have here is the
same environment, but if you
have the genes to keep you slim,
you'll be slim in that
environment.
If you have the genes that make
you fat, you'll get fat
in that environment.
And that is the reality of it.
Once again, I say take away the
environment and you take
away the problem.
There's nothing to
do with genes.
But if anyone thinks they can
turn this city into a
non-obesogenic environment in a
decade, you're a better man
than I, Gunga Din.
To add to what I've been saying,
this is a recently
published study of a huge
number, 12,000 twin pairs from
birth to 19 years of age.
Basically speaking, the black
line represents the inherited
component of obesity.
And the bottom line represents
the environmental side.
At birth, the genetic
side is quite small.
But by six months,
it's dominant.
It drops at four or
five years of age.
I don't know why that is.
Maybe it's going to school.
It drops again at seven.
I don't know why.
But right through adolescence,
it's the dominant determinant
of weight in an obese
environment.
Once again, we have an
obese environment.
We have winners that win the top
of the league, the bottom
of the league, and the
middle of the league.
And that's determined
by genetics.
Your position on the league
table is determined by
genetics in an obesogenic
environment.
Many people think that if
you're talking about the
genetic control of obesity,
you're talking about metabolic
parameters.
You're talking about
how muscle, liver,
adipose tissue behave.
But in fact, in man, we have
such a complicated system of
selecting food, unlike rats,
because we've got a big
cortex, so we can like things
and dislike things.
It's quite likely that the
genetic variation applies to
behavior as much as it
does to metabolism.
Jane Wardle did this study of
nearly 4,000 or 5,000 twin
pairs, and she was looking at
neophobia, whether children
like new foods or don't
like new foods.
What she found was that 78% of
the variability was genetic.
This is beginning to open
up an explanation of--
why is genetics important?
Well, it's only important if it
influences something that
influences obesity.
She's shown now that neophobia
is strongly inherited, and not
necessarily taught.
So we're making progress
in that direction.
OK.
Moving away from obesity to
things to do with the food
chain, everything that's
synthetic is considered by
people your age, roughly
speaking, as being bad for us.
And everything that's natural
is considered
very good for us.
So let's take a look at that.
It was this chap by the name
of-- he was Swiss--
Philippus Theophrastus Aureolus
Bombastus von
Hohenheim And even if I had
his name, I'd change it.
But he changed it to Paracelsus,
which is equal to
or greater than Celsus, who was
a Roman physician at the
turn of the millennium, and
quite a famous person.
So Paracelsus gave us
this one statement.
"All subjects are poisons and
nothing is without poison,
only the dose permits
something not to be
poisonous." Swiss Alpine
air injected into your
veins will kill you.
Pure Kerry water taken wrongly
will kill you.
Everything is toxic.
Only the dose and the
circumstances make the
difference.
So the dose alone makes
the poison.
If you look at the human food
chain, we have food divided
nutrients and non-nutrients.
Nutrients are either added
or they're natural.
If they're added, they can be
intentionally added, or they
can be contaminants.
The naturals are what we
call phytochemicals.
And I want to talk about
the phytochemicals now.
Basically speaking, plants
have a lot of colors and
things like that, and smells,
and tastes, for their benefit,
not for ours.
So the fact that the coffee bean
is nice for us, it has
nothing to do with
the coffee bean.
The coffee bean is
designed for the
coffee bean's purposes.
They're not that
philanthropic.
This is a bird now, pollinating
a flower,
attracted to it by a scent.
The bees are humming around
the other one.
There's nothing on the third
flower because it's quite
toxic, and the birds and
bees don't go near it.
It does its own
cross-fertilization.
And then you have, on
the bottom left, two
little shoots appearing.
Did you ever wonder how a seed
knows when it's springtime?
How does it know that
it's springtime?
It detects temperature.
So there are compounds in the
seed designed for the seed to
detect temperature.
They detect water also.
And when there's enough water
and the temperature is right,
they can germinate.
But how do they know
which way to go?
Could they make a mistake
and go down the way?
They could easily.
So they have oxygen centers
which tell them where the
greatest gradient
of oxygen is.
So they have all these molecules
in them, helping
them to solve problems,
including the seedling.
I put the rabbit there
because plants can't
run away from you.
Plants have to stay there.
So simple things-- they sting
you or they have thorns.
But in addition to that, they
have many, many nasty
chemicals in them, which the
birds, and the bees, and the
sheep, and the dogs have learned
not to touch because
they're poisonous.
So the final reason why plants
have these beautiful colors
and so forth is that we can go
to the toilet and get rid of
metabolites we don't want.
They can't.
They have to accumulate them.
They just save them up.
And so we eat them, and that's
what makes plants so lovely.
The color, the taste, the smell,
the texture, the aroma,
all come from these compounds
that the plant has to
make its life easy.
The fact that we find it tasty
or good to look at is nothing
to do with us.
The plant is doing it
for its own benefit.
Now, if you look at these
phytochemicals, these are
three illegal and poisonous
activities from
phytochemicals, and these are
three which are legal, but
they're bioactive.
So that tobacco is bioactive,
coffee is bioactive.
This is a [INAUDIBLE]
painting of an onion peeler, who
cries instantly when cut
into the onions.
So plants have compounds in
them that do things to us.
The best example I can give
you is this Bulgarian
dissident, Georgi Markov.
Are there any Bulgarians here?
Remember this?
No?
OK.
He was a dissident, you see?
He was living in London,
and he was
murdered with an umbrella.
The umbrella had a secret tip
on it from the Bulgarian
secret service, and it contained
a compound called
ricin, which is derived
from castor beans.
That's how they managed
to kill him.
The photograph you see on the
top right-hand side is a group
of British police raiding an
Al Qaeda factory where they
were extracting ricin
from castor beans.
That led to all sorts of jokes
about ricin beans.
Now the point is that, of
course, castor beans, like all
beans, soaked for 20 minutes,
it all goes away.
You don't have a problem.
But the point is if I wanted to
put ricin into burgers, let
alone horse meat into burgers,
I wouldn't be allowed because
ricin is quite dangerous.
But Mother Nature doesn't have
to answer to anybody.
Mother Nature doesn't
have to do it.
The last one I'll show you
here is quite important.
This is the University of
California at Berkeley.
They have 590 chemicals, of
which 139 are natural and 451
are synthetic.
They use a thing called a
rat carcinogen model.
Now, in this model, you get as
much of the chemical into the
rat as you can.
You let the rat live until
it dies of old age.
And then you try to see, are
there any cancers around?
Now, it's not very pleasant
and it's not very nice.
But it saves lives because
we don't have to be
experimented on.
But basically speaking, what
they find here, of the natural
compounds, 50% do produce some
sort of cancer at some stage
or other in these rats.
And 61% of synthetic do.
Or 60% of synthetic do.
No difference between them.
So there's no inherent reason
why something that's synthetic
is bad, particularly given
that we regulate it.
And there's no inherent
reason why something
that's natural is good.
Because if you really like it,
I can give you a bowl of
hemlock after this dinner, or
inject you with some botulism,
both of which are perfectly
natural, and you won't see the
afternoon out.
Don't worry.
So natural is not necessarily
the best.
Now, I come to organic
farming.
The argument is that organic
agriculture produces safer,
more nutritious, and more
environmentally friendly foods.
Basically speaking, they say
they don't use pesticides.
You say, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
You cannot grow crops, even in
your back garden, without
using something to control
weeds and pests.
Everyone who grows cabbage
or lettuce knows that.
The slugs will have it if
you don't watch it.
So they use it.
They say, oh, yes, but
ours are natural, and
organic, and so forth.
So there's a growing interest in
examining pesticides from a
holistic, environmental point
of view, looking at a wide
variety of things.
At the bottom part of this
slide, the things that are
important are dermal toxicity,
toxicity to bees, fish, and
birds, run-off into the soil
and leaching potential, the
residue that remains in the
soil, and the half-life of the
surface of the plant.
Basically speaking, what
you have here are two
conventionals that score
over 30, and then
you've got four novels.
Two of them are synthetic,
and they range
between eight and 34.
And two are organic, and they
range between 17 and 30.
So if you are going to take
something that's going to kill
a slug or kill a plant, remember
it's a biocide, not
sort of water.
It's designed to kill.
So don't expect it to be way
down the grade here.
It's going to have effects on
birds and bees because that's
what it's supposed to do.
Now, we look at the
environmental impact, and it's
argued that organic agriculture
is much more
friendly to the environment.
In fact, when the British
government commissioned this
study, the conclusion
was as follows.
"There is no clear-cut answer
to the question.
Which trolley has a lower
environmental impact, the
organic one or the conventional
one?" Let me just
explain that.
In order to grow plants,
you need nitrogen.
And a conventional farmer
will use chemical
nitrogen from a plant.
In this case, there's
two options.
One is to grow a cover crop.
A cover crop is of a species
of plant that actually
extracts nitrogen
from the air.
Clover does it, fixes nitrogen
from the atmosphere.
Then when it's fully grown, you
plow it into the field.
But what that means is 50% of
your land is not used when
you're doing this.
That's inefficient.
That's not contributing
to the environment.
You then have to plow it in.
Plowing is one of the most
environmentally disastrous
things on the farm.
On the other hand, you can say,
ah, but we won't do that.
We'll just use manure.
Where do you get the manure?
From the dairy farmer.
Thank you.
You got to buy some of his
carbon footprint now because
you're taking his manure.
So when you look at the
complexity of organic farming,
it's not so straightforward
at all.
Finally, when it comes down to
nutrition, there's been many,
many reviews.
This is from the University
of London.
And basically their conclusion
is "that there is no evidence
to support the selection
of organically produced
foodstuffs to increase the
intake of specific nutrients
or nutritionally relevant
substances."
Basically speaking, a
carrot is a carrot.
It has the DNA to make
it a carrot.
It can't decide halfway through,
oh, I think I'll have
a little bit more protein,
or I think I'll
do something else.
It's hard work to be a carrot,
and it can do nothing else.
So it doesn't matter what
you put in the soil.
You can stop it growing by not
putting enough in, but if you
put organic in or inorganic in,
it will absorb the ions,
and it will never know
the difference.
I haven't got time to go into
the cooking side of things, so
I'm going to leave
that one out.
I don't think I'll have time
to go into genetically
modified foods in detail
here, but this is a
very emotive subject.
Basically speaking, there is
what I call the "agromantic"
side of plant breeding where
it's all very lovely, and
going out, and mixing with the
birds and bees, and so forth.
But this is worth reading
because this guy won the Nobel
Prize for this.
He was working with
Drosophila moths.
Basically speaking,
he used x-ray
radiation to zap the flies.
What it does is rattle their
genome to bits, and then it'll
all fall back together again,
causing mutations.
He was able to speed up breeding
of these flies by
tens of years because he could
play around with the genome in
a way that you couldn't do it.
So that was extended
to plants then.
Although this is in Japan, it's
no longer used, because
there are much smaller
versions of it now.
But basically speaking, what
happens is the plant is hit
with atomic radiation.
And it goes something
like this.
The radiation hits the
genome of the plant.
There's the healthy plants in
a circle around the genome.
Then the genome was wrecked.
The vast majority of
plants are useless.
But the one in the circle, the
one in the circle has some
trait that's good.
And they back breed that with
the original plant and hope to
achieve something.
And this is promoted by
the United Nations.
To speed through this,
examples--
all the rice you eat in the
United States is grown by
atomic radiation.
All the grapefruits you eat in
the United States is grown by
the radiation.
All the whiskey you drink in
Scotland and Ireland comes
from barley that was mutated.
The figure is about 200,000
varieties have been released
by the United Nations using
this technology.
If you compare that
to GM technology,
it is cut and paste.
So here you have, in the blue,
you've got a gene.
You've got an enzyme
that splices the
precise gene you want.
It then goes over the red gene
and the enzyme takes a part of
that out, puts the gene
in at another end, and
stitches it up again.
Highly, highly precision.
If you make a comparison between
trying to get the same
trait in a plant using atomic
radiation versus genetic
engineering, you find that you
have about 30 genes with
changed expression in genetic
engineering compared to 1,000
genes changed in atomic
mutation.
You can sell the atomic mutated
plants at your leisure.
No rules.
No regulations.
No nothing.
You cannot sell the GM crops.
Coming to the end of my talk
now, just to say that there
are two types of resistant crops
so that the herbicide
doesn't damage the crop.
Both of them have the resistant
gene inserted.
One is done by GM.
One is done by mutation.
One is very tightly regulated,
and the other is not
regulated at all.
In my view, if you're going to
regulate genetically modified
foods as we do, then you must
regulate all of the atomically
or chemically mutated foods,
as we don't but we should.
In my view, neither of them
need the attention they're
getting at the moment.
And I think that the day will
come when consumers will find
that it's not nearly as bad
as it is believed to be.
Now, this is basically the
last part where I talk.
Locally grown food is favored
for environmental reasons.
Here's two apples.
The first one is grown
in Ireland,
harvested 10 months ago.
It's on the shelf.
And right beside it is one grown
in New Zealand 10 days
ago, and it's on the shelf.
The one came from New Zealand
on a ship, and the one that
came from Ireland was kept
in pristine condition,
controlling temperature,
atmosphere, and various other
devices to keep it fresh.
Which one has the biggest
carbon footprint?
The one from Ireland,
of course.
Miles have of nothing to do
with carbon footprint,
absolutely nothing to do.
Here's Irish tomatoes grown
in a greenhouse.
That's the only way
we can grow them.
There's Spanish tomatoes
grown in the sunshine.
Those are going to have the
best carbon footprint.
OK.
We have to import them,
so they've got miles
associated with them.
Their environmental impact
is much less.
This is just to show you that
when people talk about local
food, and we should go for
local food, it's fine for
individuals to do it.
It's fine for restaurants
to do it.
It's not possible for
big cities to do it.
It's wrong to think that
you can grow everything
everywhere.
This is a plot of where soybeans
and wheat are grown
in the United States, and you
can see soybeans are all in
the mid to the East Coast.
That's because the soil and
climate favors them.
Nobody in the west of the United
States grows soybeans
because it just doesn't
suit them.
On the other hand, if you look
at wheat, you'll see that it's
tending to go from the Midwest
right across to the West.
And nothing on the East, because
the soil isn't suited.
If you look at wheat itself,
and you look at different
types of wheat, you'll find that
it's grown in different
parts of the United States.
This is the second to last
slide I'll show you.
If, for example, this city was
to decide, we're going to get
all our vegetable oil from
locally grown rapeseed oil, we
would need the entire County
Louth just to provide Dublin
with that oil.
I don't know what Cork,
Limerick, Waterford, and
others, and Belfast would do.
But basically we've got Louth.
Thank you very much.
What we do for the rest of
our foods, I don't know.
But it's very easy for
individuals to
go after local food.
It would be impossible for a
city like the size of Dublin,
or even Mexico-- take a really
big city-- or Beijing,
impossible for them to think
about local food.
You are going to require
a huge food chain.
You are going to work
trade and export.
And finally, this little fellow
was born yesterday,
exactly 24 hours ago, so
he's our new grandson.
[APPLAUSE]
So thank you.
Thank you very much.
I'm very happy to answer
questions, if there's any.
I know you've got to go
back to work, as well.
By the way, the boss is here.
SINEAD GIBNEY: First of
all, thanks very much,
Dad, for the talk.
I know that some people were
having difficulty seeing the
slides, so I'll make
sure that they're
available to everyone after.
We are recording this for
YouTube, so if you do have any
questions, just put you
hand up and I'll
bring you the mike.
AUDIENCE: Hello.
Thank you for the
presentation.
So far, I've got the question
that recently was subject to a
discussion between me and
a few other people.
Is it good, or bad, or
acceptable or neutral to eat
meat every day?
PROFESSOR MIKE GIBNEY: Well,
it's acceptable.
You can get away with it.
It's not a problem.
A lot of people don't
like fish.
My view would be that you
should be able to have a
little bit of variety.
So I would be going for poultry,
and I would be
looking for a little
bit of fish once a
week or twice a week.
And maybe some dinner with
no meat in it at all.
AUDIENCE: For the diversity
and enjoyment reasons,
naturally, you'd do that.
However, the question is, do you
have any doubts, or have
you come across any doubts in
your experience that would
support the health consequences
of either eating
meat every day, red meat
every day, or not?
PROFESSOR MIKE GIBNEY: There are
studies which suggest that
high intakes of red meat might
not be good for cancer of the
large bowel, but there's
a big botch with this.
It's not so much the
red meat as the
doneness of the red meat.
It's whether you mutilate your
red meat on your barbecue and
burn it to bits.
Because the things which are
carcinogenic, or potentially
carcinogenic, are not the
proteins in the meat, but the
way in which the proteins react
with the sugars to cause
the browning, and the darkening
browning, and so forth.
So the more sort of cooked it
is, the more likely it is to
be a problem.
I'm not convinced that the
data is terribly strong.
But the World Cancer Research
Fund would say that we should
reduce our intake of red
meat, especially
well-cooked red meat.
AUDIENCE: I was just wondering
when you said that basically
your genetics determine whether
you're going to be
obese or not, whether you're in
an obesogenic environment
or not, does that mean that you
kind of think people can't
make their own choice?
I mean, like they can make
choices, but is it kind of
predetermined by your genes
and your environment?
PROFESSOR MIKE GIBNEY: I mean
in a sense, the environment
will play a role, but the genes
will tell you which one
of us is going to be the weakest
and give into the next
serving of pudding.
The big advantage of going down
this road, even though we
can't change our genes, is that
if we can understand what
combinations of genes are
responsible for helping people
to get obese, then we have a
chance of going to people
early in life and saying, look,
you have a higher than
average chance of getting
obese for
the following reasons.
In your case, it might be that
you're going to be tempted to
eat a lot of food.
Others have different
metabolism.
But we'll begin to know why.
And, therefore, we'll begin to
target solutions to these
people earlier on.
And that's the big advantage.
Of course, it would be great
if we got rid of the
obesogenic environment, but it's
never going to happen.
So it's much better to accept
that this is the way we live,
good or bad, and to try and
understand how, by a knowledge
of a person's genomic makeup,
that we can help them
to deal with it.
And there is data coming out,
for example, that is
suggesting that certain genetic
makeups mean that the
type of diet you use to lose
weight is best determined by
your genes.
So we'll know what's best for
you when you go to lose
weight, as well.
AUDIENCE: If you can go back
to the carrot example, what
would be exactly, precisely
the difference between an
organic carrot and a
non-organic carrot?
Like I read over hear about
a lot of stuff about the
difference, but what is exactly
the difference?
PROFESSOR MIKE GIBNEY: About
50 pence a kilo.
And after that, nothing.
Nothing.
That's the thing.
I mean, it is just not possible
to make the carrot
anything other than
the carrot.
The mistake that the organic
movement have made is to try
and embellish their approach to
agriculture with advantages
that don't really apply.
You don't, for example,
hear vegetarians.
They just get on with their
lives, vegetarians.
And they buy vegetarian meals,
and they live a vegetarian
life, and they don't moan
and groan about it.
You will see the organic
movement not doing that for a
very simple reason.
Absolutely everyone in the
organic movement has a vested
interest in it.
They're either farmers, or they
own shops, or they have
processing units, or
what have you.
They are in the value of
organic, the business of
organic food, and they want to
pump up its value, and its
worthiness, and so forth.
So they will make out that
it's better for the
environment, better for
this, better for that.
But it's just not true.
The carrot is simply
the same carrot.
Because if you take the
transmission of zinc from soil
into a plant, there's nothing.
There's no border police in
the carrot saying, sorry.
You're organic zinc, and
you're inorganic zinc.
It's a zinc ion.
That's it.
Like there's no difference.
It's impossible to say there's
a difference between the two.
AUDIENCE: So build on
his question here.
It's basically one big marketing
scheme that is
misleading us, and why are we
paying extra for it globally?
PROFESSOR MIKE GIBNEY: Well,
the way I view this is that
people who buy organic food know
that they're buying into
a form of agriculture in which
it is laid down exactly what
can be done.
So this issue of the horse meat,
maybe if you had organic
burgers, I don't think
that could happen.
Because they have a far greater
stringency about it.
So what you're buying into
is a certainty about an
agricultural production
system.
Now, if that's all that you
do, that's terrific.
What I find is that people who
purchase organic food make
people who don't purchase
organic food feel guilty about
what they're doing to their
kids by not giving them
organic food.
That's when I step in.
Now, if they want to buy organic
food and say, look, I
just like the idea of organic
agriculture, I trust organic
food, I trust their production
system, terrific.
I have no problems with
that whatsoever.
Where I do have a problem
is when they start
to make other people--
"would you dream of giving
conventionally farmed carrots
to your baby" kind of thing.
AUDIENCE: There is a lot of
pressure on moms to breastfeed
now, and I was wondering if it's
true or if it's a myth
that the advantages of
breastfeeding are as many as
they are advertised when you
go to a baby center.
Everywhere, they
are everywhere.
PROFESSOR MIKE GIBNEY: It's
probably the most dangerous
topic in the world
to comment on.
But without doubt, without
doubt, breastfeeding has
enormous advantages, not just
biological advantages, but
psychological advantages,
as well.
In the developing world,
breastfeeding is far more important.
I mean, really, really, it
really has to be the case in
the developing world that
children are breastfed
exclusively for six months.
Has to be.
Now, here, in this part of the
world, the reality is that a
fraction of women cannot
produce enough milk.
And if you look at dairy cows,
and you look at the output of
dairy cows, it is distributed
exactly like any other
parameter in life.
It's bell-shaped.
Some are good.
Some of bad.
They breed up the ones that are
good and get rid of the
ones that are bad.
So it's exactly the
same in women.
Some of them will be excellent
lactators.
Some will not be.
Nothing you can do it.
The problem is that to make
women who can't breastfeed
feel guilty about using
a bottle is
shocking, in my view.
Now, there's another interesting
area about if
women have the right to choose
or to terminate a pregnancy,
say, in many countries, surely
they have a right to choose
not to breastfeed.
Now, the counterargument to that
is the child is born and
the child is entitled to the
best food, and therefore, the
mother should breastfeed.
There's deep philosophical
issues there.
But basically speaking, breast
is best, for sure.
In the developing countries,
it's absolutely essential.
In our part of the world where
people are busy working and so
forth, sometimes lactation
is not so easy.
In which case, formula feed
is perfectly acceptable.
And they should not be made
to feel guilty about it.
AUDIENCE: I just want to ask,
what are your views on diets?
Because now, people kind of
feel that they go on diet,
they lose weight
in two months.
And then they want to eat even
more and gain all of it back
plus extra.
This is first.
And second, if losing weight
can be linked to
psychological--
so you want to lose weight,
and you kind of imagine
yourself losing it.
And you kind of have bigger
progress than you
would go on any diet.
PROFESSOR MIKE GIBNEY: I'm not
too sure about the second part
of the question, but the first
part, you're absolutely right.
I mean, look at me.
I've been on more diets than
I care to talk about.
There is a wonderful statement
from the American Medical
Association's Council on
Scientific Affairs where they
talk about the five-year
cure rate for diseases.
Now basically, the five-year
cure rate for the worst cancer
is better than the five-year
cure rate for obesity.
You can take 100 people and
cure them of cancer.
Come back in five years, and
ask how many are free.
So if 20 are still free, your
five-year cure rate is 20%.
Obesity will be worse
than that.
It is a disastrously difficult
thing to get rid of it easily.
It's very difficult
to keep it off.
It's really, really hard.
It requires lifelong
dedication.
Take your foot of the tiller
for one minute, and whoop.
You'll be back.
So the advice is never
to gain weight.
My advice, then, to people who
are going to lose weight, is
don't lose weight until
you really,
really, really want to.
And know why you want
to lose weight.
So for example, if your blood
pressure is fine, if your
blood glucose is normal, if
all of the other signs are
perfect, ask yourself, well,
what am I doing it for?
I would strongly recommend
that nobody starts a diet
until they have built a little
bit of physical activity into
their lives.
Because that is the most
important thing, is to get
some level of physical activity,
walking for 40
minutes a day.
Once you got that in,
only go on a diet if
you really have to.
But be prepared for very
slow weight loss.
And you need to be at it all the
time, watching it all the
time, because it'll come
back unfortunately.
AUDIENCE: You mentioned
genetically modified seeds and
Roundup resistant seeds.
My understanding is that
Monsanto produced a lot of
these seeds, and they
also sell Roundup.
So they've invested
money both ways.
Do you think there are health
risks to eating food--
apparently, the corn and wheat
in the US is genetically
modified to be resistant
to Roundup--
health risks in eating that
corn as a result of poison
being sprayed?
PROFESSOR MIKE GIBNEY:
I can't see any--
there's no evidence that in the
United States or in South
America, where genetically
modified foods have either
been fed to animals or fed
directly to people, that
there's been any adverse
effect whatsoever.
And I'd go back to the point
that you have been eating
atomically mutated plants
all your life.
They are a blunderbuss compared
to the precision and
accuracy of genetically
engineered foods.
It's not always Monsanto.
It's not always big
corporations.
Many of the breakthroughs
have come from--
for example, the University of
Leeds have developed a potato.
There's a protein on the leaf
of the potato which weevils
don't like.
They get sick, and that goes
back to the point that plants
have to protect themselves.
The weevil doesn't like it.
Now, if you get the plant tuber,
the potato, none of
that protein is present,
so the weevil has a
field day on it.
So what they did at Leeds
University was, they took the
protein from the leaf.
They genetically engineered
it into the potato.
Now, the weevil won't
go near the potato.
Now, they can only take
that that far.
They can't take it
beyond that.
They need the Monsantos, or
someone else with the
resources, to make it happen.
It's the same with golden rice,
where they've introduced
the pre-vitamin A type beta
carotene into this rice, which
will now go on sale next
year in South Asia.
But for example, the Greenpeace
movement completely
wrecked the University
of Leeds plants.
They have to start doing their
work in safer places.
BASF Plant Science, one of the
biggest GM forces in the
world, have moved
out of Europe.
So a lot of the technology
will come from labs, and
they'll have to be taken by big
corporations because no
one else can do it.
I can't see any dangers
whatsoever in genetically
modified foods.
Every cheese that's on sale
in this country--
in the old days, they used to
take rennet from a calf's
stomach and use it to help
curdle the milk.
And because of the price of
beef, calves weren't being
killed young.
They were bringing
them [INAUDIBLE].
So they got a yeast.
They genetically engineered the
yeast to produce a protein
that did exactly what the
calf's stomach did.
So for the last 30 years, every
piece of cheese that you
ever ate in your life has been
curdled using genetically
modified proteins.
And you're not mooing,
are you?
So it's very emotional.
It's been made very emotional.
And it's quite interesting that
Greenpeace are rowing
back on this.
Greenpeace have begun to say
that it's not always bad.
You will find people saying that
they rubbish genetically
modified foods on the grounds
that it's not
going to feed the world.
Nobody said it was going
to feed the world.
It might contribute to
it, but it's not
going to feed the world.
It might help.
So I don't see any dangers
in it at all.
SINEAD GIBNEY: We're running out
of time, so I've got one
person with a question
here, and maybe just
one more after that.
AUDIENCE: Thanks a
lot for coming.
You gave the example of a tomato
from Ireland versus the
tomato from New Zealand.
Do you have any studies
that actually
show the carbon footprint?
Because I always find it hard
to argue when people say,
yeah, I only want local food.
And I say, oh, well,
at what price does
that local food come?
And then it's always the exact
argument that you made.
Yeah, it's shipped from the
other side of the world.
Like without the study behind
it, it's kind of hard to say
how little of an effect
it actually has
on the carbon footprint.
PROFESSOR MIKE GIBNEY: I mean,
there are plenty of studies
available in the scientific
literature on it.
Apples from New Zealand
was one case study.
Models have been done of
the food chain and
where the carbon is.
Basically speaking, local food
is fine for restaurateurs.
At that talk in Cork yesterday,
this lady was
saying that she lives out in the
country, and she gets all
her herbs from the side of
the road, and all that.
And I thought, what a privileged
woman you are.
I mean, I can't see everyone
walking around [INAUDIBLE]
here looking for herbs.
It's a selfish thing,
lucky thing.
Good for them.
But don't start standing up
there like a saint and telling
us that you're holy
and we're sinners.
You know?
I have great faith in
the food chain.
It goes wrong from
time to time.
[INAUDIBLE]
I have great faith in it.
Eating local is a nice
concept, but it's
not going to work.
Our exports would collapse
in this country.
9% of our GDP, 9% of our exports
come from agri-food.
So if we couldn't export, we'd
be dead in the water.
[INAUDIBLE]
Kenyan farmers couldn't sell
their flowers in Holland,
they'd [INAUDIBLE].
Trade is what made the world go
round since the [INAUDIBLE]
spice routes.
I probably haven't
answered your
question, but buy the book.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Just interesting to hear your
thoughts around nutrition
during pregnancy and how
that primes people
for later in life.
I was lucky enough to get your
free copy of your book.
I'm just reading the back,
and I couldn't wait
to hear that bit.
PROFESSOR MIKE GIBNEY: Well,
it is interesting.
Basically speaking, you inherit
your genes from your
mother and your father.
And they sit into the embryo,
and they nurse along.
And the genes are--
well, let me go back
a little bit.
In my right earlobe, I have
my entire genome.
And in my liver, I have
my entire genome.
But my liver doesn't hear
anything, and my earlobe
doesn't make anything.
The reason why they differ is
the things that the liver does
are switched off
in the earlobe.
And the things that the earlobe
does are switched off
in the liver.
So genes are switched
up, or switched
down, or switched off.
Now in pregnancy, the mother's
environment has a big say in
how the dimmer switch
is operated, whether
it goes up or down.
When the child is born then,
if they're born into an
environment that matches the
plan that the mother had for
them, they're fine.
If they don't, by the time they
get to 50 or 60, they
will begin to develop chronic
disease at a great rate.
So there's fabulous stuff which
goes back to, say the
Dutch famine during the Second
World War, where people
entered that famine pregnant,
got pregnant during it, or had
a baby during it, so [INAUDIBLE]
different
trimesters of pregnancy.
And looking at those people,
those survivors, 40, 50 years
later, you can see the point in
pregnancy where the damage
is done, where their genes were
altered in such a way to
expect a very, very low
level of food in
Holland at the time.
And they grow up into this
obesogenic environment, and
it's a mismatch.
A very hot topic, and I'll go
further than that to say that
in the period immediately
after birth--
the example I was always take
is, let's say, my grandson.
He's going to learn English.
He's going to learn to eat
with a knife and fork.
He's going to learn all the
cultural things we do.
A child born yesterday in
Taiwan is going to do
something completely
different.
So the humans are born with
a non-hardwired brain.
Our brain is plastic.
A colt is born with
a hardwired brain.
It gets up on its four
legs, and it trots
off with its mummy.
[INAUDIBLE]
has nothing to learn.
You can teach it a few tricks.
But humans have to have that
plastic brain in order to
absorb all the culture
they are born into.
What's referred to now,
particularly in the developing
world, is the first
1,000 days.
That covers conception right
through to two years of age.
If you get nutrition wrong
there, you have trouble in
later life.
And it's irreversible.
So for example, if you don't get
proper brain development
in that two-year period, because
the brain is still
growing, it will be
irreversible.
You'll have a low IQ
all your life.
If you don't get enough food to
build the body in those two
years, it will set your
height much lower than
your genetic potential.
So you'll be physically stunted,
and you won't have
the physical capacity
to do work.
So there's a recognition now,
a huge recognition that is
important, and the United
Nations have this protocol
scaling up nutrition.
And they focus on this
first 1,000 days.
Hillary Clinton is one of the
big champions of this, and our
own minister [INAUDIBLE].
It's a really absorbing area.
It's fascinating.
SINEAD GIBNEY: OK.
I'm afraid that's all
we have time for.
For those of you who were lucky
enough to get books,
Mike will happy to sign
them for you after.
For those of you who didn't,
you can buy them on Amazon,
New City Press.
Where else?
I don't know.
The Book Depository,
I think, as well.
Thank you.
It's great to see such a
wonderful turnout for one of
the authors.
And thank you, Dad,
for a great talk.
PROFESSOR MIKE GIBNEY:
Thank you.
SINEAD GIBNEY: That's great.
[APPLAUSE]
