Diet guru Michael Mosley has shared the perfect snack for losing weight - and it also boosts your brain. The doctor, who is famed for the 5:2 diet and the Fast 800 diet, revealed during a podcast one food time that will help you shed the pounds.
Speaking to BBC Sounds, Just One Thing, the diet king said eating nuts can help people looking to slim down. He said: "It is mid-afternoon and I am craving some chocolate or perhaps a biscuit, but instead I am going for a protein-packed snack that can protect my heart, may stave off cancer, and give my brain a boost.
"I am cracking out the nuts."
READ MORE: Dr Michael Mosley shares five tips to stop you feeling hungry all the time
He hailed nuts as "nutritional power-houses" and told listeners they contained lots of fibre and polyphenols. This is what feeds our gut bacteria and reduces inflammation. The health expert also recently revealed that having good gut health can slow, or even reverse, the ageing process.
Eating for your gut health, microbiome, is integral to ageing well and surviving well beyond the average lifespan, he claims.
Dr Mosley wrote in the Daily Mail: "We know that what, and how much, you eat play key roles in whether you stay healthy or not — but what seems to be equally important is the impact this food has on your gut microbiome, the mix of bacteria, viruses and fungi, which live in your intestines."
In a study, published earlier this month in the journal Nature Aging, scientists at Guangxi Academy of Sciences in China compared the microbiomes of 1,575 people, ranging in age from 20 to over 100.
Explaining the findings, Dr Mosley says: "They found that the healthy centenarians (those least troubled by age-related disease) had a very diverse mix of bugs in their guts, with particularly high levels of a bacterial species called Bacteroidetes. This bug has previously been linked to slimness, and is present in far smaller amounts in the guts of people who are overweight."
During the podcast, he also talked about the dangers of eating ultra-processed food - with chemical additives like emulsifiers and sweeteners. For research purposes, Dr Mosley changed his diet to snacking on highly processed foods including crisps.
He put on 2kg in two weeks and also saw an increase in his blood pressure and cholesterol.
