The Big Middle

You're going to adore these two delightful founders of a very cool startup that features delectable world cuisine, social inclusion, and age and cultural diversity. Yuru Guo and Frankie Docker were Durham University students when they launched Hey! Food is Ready two years ago. They batted back ageist remarks about their ambitious plans - Yuru was 23, Frankie 19 - and got busy building an online platform that's thriving in the hyper-competitive world of corporate events catering. Their USP? Home cooks from across the world - immigrants, refugees, retirees and carers among them - making food magic to liven up lunch tables and party trays usually laden with soggy sausage rolls and beige sandwiches. What's more, their startup is a social enterprise. The platform opens the door to carefully vetted, certified home cooks to make some good money from their skills. And event participants often get to meet the cooks as they savour their creations. They've got more than 60 cooks on their books now from 40 countries, including Iraq, Egypt, Ukraine, Lebanon, Thailand, Greece, Portugal and South Korea. Yuru and Frankie won grants from Durham University and the Inclusive Innovation Award from the government's innovation arm Innovate UK. That distinction includes a £50,000 grant to develop inclusive innovations within their business. They'll be looking for investment soon in keeping with the maxim Yuru learned from her father: "Always dream big and make it happen".LinksHey! Food is ReadyRecent writeup in Portfolio NorthYuru on LinkedinFrankie on LinkedinFollow The Big MiddleWebsite I Twitter I  Instagram I YouTubeHosted + produced by Susan FloryMusic: “Beautiful Day” by Sahin KocSupport The Big Middle     

Can you harm yourself by eating too much spinach? Should those baby leaves we know and love as a "superfood" come with a health warning? And what about almonds? Both are super-high in oxalates.  If you’re not already rolling your eyes and saying Nooooo Susan, I’ve maxed out on worrying about what to eat when, this fascinating conversation will make you think again.Sally Norton is a nutritionist and public health leader from Richmond, Virginia raising awareness about oxalates,chemical toxins found in many plants. She suffered decades of ill health before discovering they were the cause of her misery. Why focus on oxalates when all plant toxins - lectins, phytates, tannins, glycosylates and goitrogens - can damage our gut and immune system? "What makes oxalates special is they're nearly impossible to remove from foods. They accumulate in the body and create long-term damage. They're tiny and get everywhere, messing up cells by stealing essential minerals and electrolytes and causing both physical damage and oxidative stress in cells and their mitochondria. The preparation methods used to disarm many of those other compounds, such as fermentation and high-heat cooking, don't adequately lower the toxic actions of oxalates. " "Remember too that the affected cells include our immune system, nerves and brain, glands and critical organs. By the time we reach 40, we all have some degree of a toxic load of oxalate compromising our glands, bones, brain, etcetera. They cause us to miss out on our potential for enjoying our lives, beyond our youth."Toxic Superfoods, Sally's new book on oxalates, is out this month. Enjoy learning all about oxalates. No more heaving plates of spinach for me - just a handful or two! LinksSally's websiteSally's book Toxic SuperfoodsSally on Twitter and on InstagramFollow The Big MiddleWebsite I Twitter I  Instagram I YouTubeHosted + produced by Susan FloryMusic: “Beautiful Day” by Sahin KocSupport The Big Middle  

NEW EPI of The Big Middle drops tomorrow

How to keep your skin at its healthy best on this episode of The Big Middle, the podcast exploring longer, healthy midlife by design, learning from the sharpest thinkers around. Regulars will know and adore the sharp thinker I’ve invited back on the show. It’s Dr Fayne Frey, crusading age-positive dermatologist and skin cancer specialist - my guiding light as you may have heard last week through my encounter with a malignant melanoma. Episode 49 is when you'll hear her style herself as "the ultimate wrinkle defender". Dr Frey's book The Skincare Hoax rocketed to the top of various Amazon sales charts even before it was out. In it she lays out how our sexist, ageist and lookist culture fabricates insecurities the skincare industry exploits. “Kindness matters. Health matters. Accomplishments matter. None of those things come in a tube or bottle.” And remember, she says, your top layer of skin is 20 layers of dead cells. No lotion or potion with a dollop of this vitamin or that mineral can penetrate it to do anything more than moisturise it and plump it up, temporarily. Tune in to hear her shoot down the cultural norms, marketing buzzwords and predatory industry practises that abound in the glossies and on social media. And if you're addicted to an intricate skincare routine of 10 steps and as many expensive products, you'll be fascinated by Fayne's pared down route to her healthy, glowing skin. Enjoy! Links Buy The Skincare HoaxDiscover Dr Frey's product selector tool  on her website FryFace.comRead her blog here Fayne on Twitter Follow The Big MiddleWebsite I Twitter I  Instagram I YouTubeHosted + produced by Susan FloryMusic: “Beautiful Day” by Sahin KocSupport The Big Middle  

A skin cancer update for you now if you’re a regular listener or viewer of The Big Middle - a mix of the personal and the general. Eighteen months after the first of two operations to cut out a malignant melanoma, I’m happy to report the scar on my outer calf has smoothed out impressively; it’s kinda bumpy-wavy now, nicely faded. I thought it would never settle down. It resembled a shark bite for the first six months after the surgeries. I still can’t quite believe the dark brown splotch that suddenly appeared turned out to be malignant. I can’t rave enough about the first-class treatment I got from the UK’s National Health Service, the NHS. I’ve edited together the two skin cancer podcasts I put out last April - in the thick of the pandemic when I wasn’t sure what that thing was on my leg. And a couple of weeks ago I had a new patch of strange checked by a lovely skin cancer nurse. Not to worry, she said, but good I’ve seen it. Whew. So please heed the advice you'll hear in this podcast, even if you haven’t been baking on beaches and been that bit careless about sunscreen. LinksHow do I know if I have skin cancer? – Dr Frey writing for thedoctorweighsin.comMelanoma: What you need to know about diagnosis and treatment – Dr Frey’s article on thedoctorweighsin.comDr Frey’s skincare education website FryFace.com – check out the Product Selector toolFayne on TwitterFollow The Big MiddleWebsite I Twitter I  Instagram I YouTubeHosted + produced by Susan FloryMusic: “Beautiful Day” by Sahin KocSupport The Big Middle

It’s playtime on The Big Middle. I'm celebrating the oft-forgotten fun side of living as older by staying switched-on and active. This is a very particular celebration; we’re meeting five of the 26 winners of a big-money design competition here in the UK. Fun factors into all their design projects. The competition winners are sharing a £20 million pot of government money for design innovations to help us all as we age. All projects are either on the market or close to it and all have potential to scale. Competition leader Julia Glenn of Innovate UK, an arm of UK Research and Innovation,  is along to tell us more about how the winners were chosen and what's next for them. Who won for what: Lily Chow - Holly Health is partnering with charity Age UK's branches in the London boroughs of Lewisham and Southwark to develop a digital coaching service. It will improve the physical and mental health of older adults to slow the onset of chronic conditions.Clara Sbraccia - KYMIRA through MISFIT is making a new smart garment bio-monitoring service to help Ida Sports create appropriate sports footwear to help women of all ages, and specifically older women, participate safely and more confidently in sports.Afroditi Konidari - Tendertec’s FitBees, a service led by women, is integrating home sensors with smart garments to monitor people's activity. This is linked to a programme of community fitness for older adults, including those living with carers. Howard Blackburn - Yorkshire company Innerva is making power-assisted exercise machines more user-friendly for older people and the machines more readily available throughout the community. Ben Wilkins - Good Boost Wellbeing is transforming leisure centres into community musculoskeletal treatment hubs with artificial intelligence (AI) and gamified exercise monitoring in gyms and pools. Using gamification extends the service to more people by including those who are less mobile. Full scroll of winners here.Enjoy! Links UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)Holly HealthKymiraTendertec's FitbeesGood Boost WellbeingUKRI on TwitterHolly Health on TwitterKymira on Twitter Innerva on TwitterGood Boost Wellbeing on TwitterFollow The Big MiddleWebsite I Twitter I  Instagram I YouTubeHosted + produced by Susan FloryMusic: “Beautiful Day” by Sahin KocSupport The Big Middle    

I'm back with another fascinating guest in my ongoing quest to better understand how our food system became so badly broken and our nutrition beliefs so skewed. Animal foods are demonised. Biologically-dead, factory-made fare that’s poisoning our bodies - and draining health care budgets - is being promoted in the guise of planetary preservation. Where’s the truth? How do we get to solutions? How do we make the right healthy and ethical choices? My guest is long-time vegetarian Nicolette Hahn Niman, an environmental activist lawyer-turned-beef farmer who’s been touring her latest book, the second edition of Defending Beef, across the UK from her ranch north of San Francisco. We get into everything about the practise of regenerative farming, the environmental and health benefits of raising and eating grass-fed beef, and, in an interview first for Nicolette, discuss menopause and the challenges it brings to staying healthy and strong. Most of us need to take stock of our food choices and lifestyles at midlife, especially now that we're ageing differently. I know you'll find this as fascinating as I did. I reverted to being an omnivore after years of vegetarianism so we talk plenty about what needs to change to make the lives of animals raised for food a whole lot less miserable.  Nicolette joins other #RealFood advocates in saying "It's not the cow, it's the how."LinksBuy Nicolette's book Defending Beef Find her on Facebook And on Twitter Follow The Big MiddleWebsite I Twitter I  Instagram I YouTubeHosted + produced by Susan FloryMusic: “Beautiful Day” by Sahin KocSupport The Big Middle   

...on moves to treat animals raised for food more humanely. First, sugared insects:

Much of the world - rich north and poor south - is drowning in an ocean of hyperpalatable, addictive fakery masquerading as food. Much of that fakery has fed our disconnect with natural food production cycles and practices. And it’s left most of us in a food muddle - moral, environmental, nutritional.  We latch on to our dietary tribe with conviction but what if our beliefs are based on a limited understanding of the evolution of global food production? And no understanding of how powerful multinationals control every aspect of it.James Connolly is our guide to how we became the unwitting victims of a food system captured by big corporations driven by profit, not public health. "You’re taken out of the equation. The consumer has no real choices. They walk through the supermarket and think they’re getting a variety of products but really it’s wholly owned by about 13 multinational corporations that  control about 90% of our system."He views the American capitalist system as “socialism for the rich” and farmers as “modern-day heroes in a feudal state, they have no control over their land, it’s owned by the bank”.James questions how it has come to be that all so-called solutions to global warming take industrial capitalism as a given and nature must conform to it."Monoculture seems to be the biggest problem we have whether it's chickens, almonds or avocado farms... When you build a system based on that, you in essence have to destroy everything in that environment to grow the food. You have to bring in enormous amounts of resources, water...You build a system that has no resiliency other than excising this stuff from all different parts of the planet.."James is a chef and Real Food advocate who transformed the food systems of inner-city schools in New York with his non-profit The Bubble Foundation. At no extra cost to the city's food budget, kids sat at round dining tables and helped themselves to nutrient-rich dishes cooked on site. He co-produced the documentary Sacred Cow, directed by Diana Rodgers, financed the marketing of Michael Moore's provocative Where to Invade Next (a must watch), and is producing Death in the Garden, a documentary promising a sober look at industrial civilisation, our "misguided attempts to resolve climate change", and how life always involves death. James is a voracious reader with an historian's head for facts and stories. You'll love this episode and want to read every one of his  desert island book picks. It was tough, but he managed to confine himself to just the five I asked for. LinksSacred Cow Death in the GardenThat Climate One podcast on Cowspiracy featuring Nicolette Hahn Niman, vegetarian cattle rancher, author of Defending Beef -Video highlights of Climate One debate about Cowspiracy docJames’ Top 5 reads:Ishmael by Danial QuinnIf They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways by Daniel QuinnThe Wizard and the Prophet by Charles MannShibumi by TrevanianThe Tragedy of American Science by Clifford D ConnorJames is also an artist! Discover his work hereJames on Twitter James on InstagramFollow The Big MiddleWebsite I Twitter I  Instagram I YouTubeHosted + produced by Susan FloryMusic: “Beautiful Day” by Sahin KocSupport The Big Middle  

COMING UP: The producer of the documentaries Sacred Cow and Death in the Garden (in production) on how our current food fights pull focus away from what's really wrecking our planet.