Ultra-Processed Food Is Poison – Kate Save Tells Us Why

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (00:02)

Kate, power of women, who comes to mind when I say that?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (00:07)

Actually my parents, and this might sound odd, but I think my dad played such an important role in my sister and I’s life growing up that he empowered us and Mum had to fight for her power so it both of them.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (00:22)

Very good. I don’t often have a guy or dad present it for Power of Women, so I love that.

 

and we’re a storytelling platform that showcases and celebrates the strength, resilience and achievements of women from all walks of life. So today we’re going to interrogate, we really what we eat?

 

And it’s one of those phrases that we have heard so many times that it’s almost lost its edge. But my guest today is going to give its edge. She’s a clinician, an entrepreneur, Shark Tank contestant and founder of Be Fit Food. And she spent 20 years on the front line of what happens when people eat what the food industry actually tells us is food. And a trigger warning because we are going to poke

 

just a few beers throughout the conversation. Joining me in the wonderful chocolate studios in South Melbourne, KATE Save, welcome to the Power Of Women.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (01:37)

Thank you for having me, Di.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (01:40)

Kate, I know there’ll be listeners who will know your name from Shark Tank or they’ve been purchasing your fabulous product on the shelves or been in a clinical setting with you, but I want to understand who you were before all of that. Who’s the young woman who said food and wellbeing was going to be where you put your focus?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (02:04)

Well, it was the person who has never believed that food had the power to heal rather than just make people sick. And in this day and age, I think as well, food is blamed for a lot of sickness, but the food that we’re blaming isn’t really food.

 

But for me, my journey was ⁓ starting as a young child who had tummy aches all the time and my parents were told that it was what I was eating that was making me sick. But my parents knew that I ate really well and that was highly unlikely and they were told perhaps it was dairy and I was lactose intolerant. So we never had dairy. I didn’t even really try dairy until

 

I found out that when yogurt was popular in my teen years that it was lower lactose because of the way that it’s made and that was sort of my first real exposure to dairy so I knew it wasn’t food.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (03:00)

That was the starting point. Yeah. Did you get to the bottom of what it was?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (03:04)

Well, it took 19 years and just before my 20th birthday I had an MRI after 18 years of investigation and they said you’ve got a tumour in your bile duct and you need emergency surgery. ⁓ wow. Yeah.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (03:20)

Wow, and did that resolve it?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (03:23)

Well, mostly it caused other issues. So a lot of my anatomy was removed and rejoined and the body doesn’t like that. Fit’s not built like that. ⁓ hence my further interest in nutrition and not being medicated for the things that didn’t go so well for the surgery and finding a way to help the body adapt and take control again.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (03:49)

of personal experience. Yeah. So you trained as a dietitian and exercise physiologist, but you went further than that. You were running clinics in private hospitals and managing complex patients. I mean, I could say your own story was one of the most complex patients, but is there, without naming names, ⁓ a patient that comes to mind that set you on the

 

that became Be Fit Food.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (04:22)

Really the biggest instigator was working at a bariatric surgery clinic and not one particular patient but 100 % of the patients that had got into the situation where they didn’t think their weight was reversible by any other means other than the surgery and yes for some people metabolically things can go down that path so far that

 

no matter what they do without other interventions, it’s a really hard, long path and some people would say you can’t do it and then there are definitely outliers where people have done it without surgery and medication but for me, I just knew we were setting them up for failure by not teaching them how to eat and starting their whole weight loss journey with synthetic bars and shakes to get them to lose weight before the surgery which shrunk the liver.

 

that permitted the surgeon to actually operate at a lower risk. So I wanted to create a whole food version that would shrink the liver and allow the surgery to go ahead, but also teach the person in that two to six weeks before surgery how to eat. So once they’d had the surgery.

 

That was embedded for the rest of their life rather than this taste for chocolate shakes and synthetic bars, which after around two years we would find when people started regaining weight, they thought the way to lose weight was mere replacement shakes.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (05:54)

is the weight loss drug industry doing exactly the same thing in saying, we’re not going to train you, how do we, we’re just going to give you the quick fix with no education behind a long term process to sustainable, better fuel in our system.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (06:17)

So this is such a multifaceted question because if you go to a well-resourced GP clinic where they involve a multidisciplinary team where they might have dietitians, exercise physiologists, psychologists, then they may be capable of putting someone on the weight loss medication.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (06:21)

one of the bears.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (06:43)

and seeing it through with the support of all the other health professionals, whether they’re on that medication for life, which is what is recommended by the drug companies because all of the way to dates have shown that when you go off the drug, you do regain the weight. So the idea is you go on it and you stay on it. However, well, I don’t even know if that would be

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (06:53)

Fit is.

 

Isn’t that clever?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (07:09)

I mean, they’re looking at other drugs now that will sort of help with the maintenance post that drug. But ⁓ I don’t even know if that’s what they intended because realistically, it becomes a problem for them. because then all of a sudden, people are saying the drug doesn’t work. Well, it does whilst you’re using it and you’re compliant and you’re eating the right way and your mindset.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (07:24)

So

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (07:36)

is in the right place and your sweet cravings are gone, but they show even on the drug. So you get this huge drop in your sweet cravings at the start and then like in the first six months and at 12 months you don’t have the cravings, it’s coming back a little bit, but by two years it’s really sort of worn off. So if people haven’t learned how to have a healthier lifestyle in that two years, then they’ve become reliant on the drug and that’s tough.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (08:05)

Fit is and they haven’t learned how to fight that craving themselves. I know in giving up sugar myself in in 2023 there are still the odd occasion where it’s like, but I know how to fight it through mindset but I wouldn’t if I thought I’m just relying on the drug to do the work for me.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (08:18)

Yes.

 

So true, and if you didn’t have 30 to 50 kilos to lose as well, it’s just you’re not reliant on looking at the scales for change for positive reinforcement. Your positive reinforcement is that you had less sugar. Whereas a lot of the time, the less sugar is tied to the number on the scales. And if the number of the scales isn’t moving, then the less sugar becomes… Yeah, yeah.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (08:48)

a irrelevant.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (08:51)

People are tying their health to the weight on the scales, which is not accurate because that’s whole of gravity on earth. Fit’s got nothing to do with our body composition. obesity was previously the category, was categorized by BMI, but that’s no longer the case either. ⁓ Obesity is now a multifactorial health condition, which is now classified by the metabolic health conditions.

 

that are associated and body composition instead of BMI because it’s about how much of your weight is lean body mass and how much of it is actually fat mass. And is that fat mass the hazardous fat mass, not the stuff that sits under the skin, but is it the visceral fat that’s causing chronic disease? And what I thought was really interesting is if people go for liposuction, have all their fat cells pulled out,

 

if they go for a health test to check their risk of diabetes and things that no, doesn’t change. So just removing fat cells is not the problem. The problem is actually in the whole system, the functioning of the system. we’re not one particular cell, so you can’t just pull a part out and think that’s going to fix the problems where we’re so much more complex and obesity is so much more complex.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (09:51)

What change?

 

BMI have any relevance at all as a measure in this DNA?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (10:19)

If you don’t have access to any other tools, I would still say over BMI, I would use waist circumference because it’s actually the waist that’s around your middle that is going to dictate your risk of chronic disease more so than your BMI. BMI is a population-based number, so it’s something that you can use as a bit of an average, but people aren’t averages, they’re individuals. So until you know…

 

what their lean body mass is and you really want to understand their lifestyle as well because there could be people out there that have got a reasonable lean body mass and a reasonable weight but if they have a terrible lifestyle because they’re highly stressed, they’re not eating a nutritious diet, it’s more of a starvation diet and if they’re not doing the work in terms of the physical activity and even cardiovascular health so they could be doing strength without anything else for

 

other parts of the body. ⁓ Fit still doesn’t mean you’re healthy and people try and oversimplify it.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (11:22)

I was fit, I was a size 10, I ate healthily except for my sugar addiction and when I gave up sugar I have lost 16 centimetres off my waist. I was visually a lean-ish looking person, but it 16 centimetres. there ⁓

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (11:40)

Wow

 

Yeah, that’s incredible. That’s really incredible and that was probably insulin resistant. So insulin is a fat storage hormone that would have been directing weight towards the middle and no doubt you were going through female changes.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (12:05)

Absolutely.

 

I was coming out the back end of menopause. I was 60 when I gave up. 59. So yeah. I had no idea there was that level of fat even sitting on my body.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (12:09)

Rise.

 

Yeah.

 

That’s incredible that such a, you know, one shift in your behaviour could give that change. I think if there’s one takeaway for people as well is just pick something you can stick to. Fit doesn’t matter what you do. If you’re consistent and you stick to it, you will see improvement.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (12:36)

There you go. So what’s your relationship like with food, Kate? Do you have moments like any of us where you want to splurge or treat yourself?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (12:48)

I must say I enjoy food freedom, but I have my own little nuances in my head that give me that food freedom. For example, a lot of people say it’s the 80-20 rule. And for me, I think it’s more of a 90-10. And that’s only because if I had more time in my day, I would exercise more, and then it could be 80-20. But if I eat bad food 20 % of the time, and I don’t have hours to exercise.

 

it’s not going to work for me. So 90-10 means I eat well because I enjoy good food most of the time but then I can have whatever I want in that 10 % and you never pay the price for that because you do enough to stay healthy that your body will actually become metabolically flexible and it will burn more calories when you’re eating more calories.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (13:37)

And I mean, before we started recording today, you said you’ve had two days of ridiculously early, early flights. so you’ve learned to manage your regime to fit that, and that is such a discipline.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (13:52)

Prioritising food when you are busy is so important if it’s the only thing you do. I mean of course if you can do walking meetings and all those sorts of things but if you’re physically tired to a desk or on a plane and it’s just not possible then when you have an opportunity to eat and that will come up at some point in the day whether it’s something you’re buying.

 

Prioritize, like think about what is going to nourish me and that’s it’s so important we are.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (14:25)

do

 

do when you travel? Do you take food with you so that you’ve got the right food at your disposal at whatever time? Or how do do it?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (14:34)

would take emergency snacks in my bag, so I would always have, whether it’s in my car or in my briefcase, I’ve got raw nuts in there. if I’m starving, I’m going to eat that. And that just, I know it ties me over until I can get something to eat. I have tins of tuna in my car, in my bag that I carry around that if I’m absolutely stuck, there’s something to eat. I’m never going to grab a Mars bar or a packet of chips. I just wouldn’t do that.

 

Whereas if I was at a party and I wanted some chips, I’d have some chips. if I’m… Yeah, that’s right. If I go to the cinema with my kids, I’ll get a choc top. But I’m not going to eat that because I’m hungry. I’m going to eat that because I want to have a treat. So then when I’m travelling, it doesn’t matter what restaurant pretty much you put me in except fast food, I will find something really nutritious. I had a… ⁓

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (15:08)

There’s your 10%.

 

right thing to

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (15:32)

I’d never really had one before, a ramen bowl last night. They’re fabulous. Yeah, a seafood one and I asked for no noodles. I just thought I don’t need the noodles, why I’ve got late nights, lots of work, little exercise, but give me all the seafood, all the veggies, delicious filling.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (15:50)

There’s

 

the informed decision making rather than just letting the circumstances dictate. Yeah. Yeah. Fit’s so doable.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (15:58)

Fit is, yeah, and it’s one little change. And I think the most important thing when you’re eating out is whatever is in that meal, could even be, you know, salmon and greens, but it’s got a big hollandaise sauce or something. Just ask for on the side.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (16:10)

side or…

 

yep, perfect. So you launched B-Fit Food in 2015. What was the core premise behind the proposition of the brand?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (16:25)

So initially it was actually called bariatric essentials and it was this replacement for meal replacements. wanted to have whole food for people to eat instead of meal replacements but what it became was so much more than that.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (16:40)

Do that as a brand name, Riznick,

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (16:43)

horrible

 

because if you got a box turned up at work and it said bariatric on it, people are like…

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (16:49)

What’s wrong with you?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (16:51)

So then we quickly sort of moved to just BE and then we went, what does that even mean? So then it went to be fit food. Yeah. And I didn’t like health as a word, health food. I just think health food has so much health washing around it. Whereas fit to me means if you are fit, you are probably interested.

 

in your health as well. Fit’s not just one thing. Fit’s not thin, it’s not skinny, it’s fit.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (17:23)

And you’ve got a ⁓ clinician background, not a food manufacturing background. So what was the journey like to actually being somebody who recommended to actually producing?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (17:37)

I never wanted to manufacture the food, but it got to the point where my customers or clients were bringing in so many bags of labels and packets with them at every consult. Can I eat this? Can I eat this? And I’m like, I’ve given you a meal plan. You need to cook it yourself, but I don’t have time. And then,

 

I recognise the issue wasn’t that they didn’t know what to do and it was they physically didn’t have the time and they might once a week or twice a week but they didn’t seven times a week, three times a day. And if you muck that up more than, you know, one day a week, there goes your day. Yeah. So that was the real reason behind it and what we noticed when people were using it before surgery, they were getting so confident with the amount of weight that they were losing that they thought,

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (18:10)

You’ve already said you’re 10%.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (18:24)

Do I need the surgery? Can I do this on my own? And some people went ahead with the surgery and others didn’t. They were empowered that they finally had control of the health and they were so confused as to why nobody had told them this is what you need to eat to lose weight. This is it.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (18:45)

Isn’t that fascinating that, and your word says it all, that they need to be told. They haven’t got the curiosity to go and find that themselves. Hence why businesses like yours need to exist because a lot of people don’t have the curiosity that leads them there. Naturally, it needs to be presented or packaged.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (19:07)

Yeah, and the number of people that would say to me, if you just prepped my food for me or, you know, stood in front of my fridge or locked up the pantry, I’d be able to stick to it. And you hear that enough and you think, I’m just going to drop this food at your door. As long as you promise me you’ll eat nothing else, I can guarantee you 100 % this will work.

 

And that’s what it became for us. Fit’s not something people stay on for life. They use it every season. They use it after Christmas, before a big holiday, before their birthday. Maybe they’ve got their daughter’s wedding or they use it to feel good about themselves. And once they feel good, all of their other choices are in the right direction.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (19:52)

Fit does.

 

Yeah, absolutely is. I say I gave up sugar. As a result of that, you give up and change a whole lot of other things around it. But it’s the impetus that leads to the broader change.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (20:06)

What was the sugar decision around?

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (20:08)

Well, my sugar decision was literally one of these moments. I was launching another business with a couple of friends, had gone into a studio, sat in front of the studio, they did a take and I looked at the monitor and I went, I look like this balloon face. I wasn’t overweight, but sugar had created a sugar bloat.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (20:10)

can’t.

 

Shit.

 

Thanks

 

Okay.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (20:37)

And even if, and you could, and I could see it extreme in some days and not in others depending on how much sugar I’d had. But my sugar consumption was high. Fit was, it was in muffins, it was in chocolate and grazing at my desk late at night. So it was actually, I didn’t like what I saw down the monitor, which then was like, well, just a second, if I can see it, it’s got to be everywhere.

 

And that was the tipping point. So it was vanity in some respects, but the roll-on effect of wellbeing and the feeling after the event of taking it out is just, I mean, I could sit here and talk to you for hours about that.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (21:09)

X

 

That’s interesting. The number one thing that we saw with our customers, so they would come in our physical store when we used to have one, but we don’t now. We’re online in chemists’ warehouse and supermarkets. But they’d come in and say, I going to like it? What’s it to be like, et cetera? And we’d say, look, it’s meat and vegetables, herbs and spices. You’ll get used to the flavor because if you don’t like that, you need to learn because your brain’s been tricked by all the processing you’re eating. And then they’d come back in a week and they’d said,

 

you won’t believe it and I’d be like what do you mean? Well you told me the food was going to be awful and I’m like I didn’t tell you that. I just said you’d need to have a healthy palate to like the food and they’re like well the food’s great but you won’t understand how I feel and they’re no no it’s not the weight loss it’s not the weight loss and I’m like I know but how I feel and they go I’ve never slept so well I’ve got so much energy.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (22:14)

My bones don’t ache, I’ve got no inflammation.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (22:17)

Yeah. And

 

it’s, so it’s got nothing to do with the weight loss.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (22:20)

No, the weight loss is the incidental thing that happens.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (22:24)

Yeah and it really the weight gain is just the end result of not looking after yourself. That’s right. Or it’s not really it’s the environment that you’re in so you may be doing your best that you can in that environment but that environment won’t allow you to be your best health.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (22:43)

Yeah, and aren’t supermarkets, with the exception of your product, full of things that are actually pushing against that.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (22:53)

Ultra-processed foods are literally poison. They really are.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (23:00)

that thought, we’ll come back to that because that’s something I just want to do bit of a deeper dive. Could we talk about Shark Tank for a moment? First of all, whose idea was it to go on the show? Did you pursue it or did they approach you?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (23:09)

Yes.

 

I got into a cash flow debacle and I’d put my life savings into this business and I had a business partner at the time who was earning significantly more than me and he wasn’t working in the business so he had an income.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (23:22)

Don’t we all in business?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (23:38)

And I didn’t because I was working in the business and not taking a salary. And when your savings are gone and you’re working for nothing and you’ve got all the energy to give but no money, you’ve got to find a way to raise some money without, you know, losing all of your equity in the business. I auditioned and I got through to the first round, but then my business partner said it would be career suicide to go ahead with it and that I wasn’t to do it because it would reflect poorly on both of us. So I withdrew.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (24:08)

I’m hearing a lot of self-interest here.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (24:11)

Yeah, and look, if anyone’s watched Shark Tank out there, they can tear you and your business apart. So I understood I just was going to do it anyway. I waited a year and I reapplied and I got through and I said to my business partner, you don’t need to come. And he said, great, I’ve been advised.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (24:14)

Fit might have been good advice.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (24:37)

definitely do not go on TV. And I was like, okay.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (24:42)

You’ve got a face for television, maybe he didn’t.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (24:46)

Well yeah, that was a whole other story. You think you’re walking in there for a one minute pitch and over two hours of interrogation later I’m still being asked questions. There’s no breaks. There’s no can I have a glass of water? Can I go to the toilet? None of that. You just need to hold it all together.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (25:00)

Fit’s in here.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (25:08)

And I ended up bringing my business partner out for proof of life just so I could take a breath out the back for 10 seconds and come in. we got the deal done on air. However, off air was a very different story.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (25:25)

So did you end up with an investor in the end?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (25:28)

I did, but it was nine months of, it was a couple of months of due diligence and it was a flat out no. And then it was nine months of turning up anyway and showing how quickly we were progressing, the lives we were changing and what the future could hold.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (25:46)

You

 

up in a real life pitch outside of Shakti to get the investment.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (25:49)

Yeah, that’s

 

right. And when it finally went to air, it was about a month later that we actually got the investment and that was 11 months after it was filmed. wow. So I thought when we filmed it, walked out with the cheque and we didn’t.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (26:07)

⁓

 

So did it deliver what it promised or it was just a different process?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (26:12)

No, quite different. So apparently in the, with the original Sharks, it was something like a hundred episodes and roughly half got deals on air, but only a handful actually got physical investment. Got it. So, and I understand from the investors point of view, maybe there were people that were making up numbers or things didn’t stack up. Yeah.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (26:35)

They

 

obviously have to do DD after the event. That makes sense.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (26:39)

Yeah. But it isn’t presented that way.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (26:42)

No, well that doesn’t make for good television. But since then you’ve been Telstra Business of the Year 2018, again in 2022. Does that herald the moments you’re most proud of or are there other moments?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (26:58)

They are definitely the moments I’m most proud of because they were about celebrating the team. A business is a handful of people working towards a common goal. So a business doesn’t exist without people, maybe AI businesses and a few other things, but someone really needs to be the lifeblood. And that was the team. watching them, you we got a limousine that was a crown and it was nice.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (27:24)

and you celebrate it.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (27:26)

Yeah, we really celebrated and the finals are up in Sydney and I took my sister and my mum and my husband and the team and we had an amazing time and they are definitely the highlight.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (27:38)

Fantastic. Well I’m talking with Kate Save, CEO and founder of Be Fit Food and coming up we are going to interrogate whether you really are what you eat.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (27:51)

If you’re

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (27:51)

Loving the Power of Women podcasts, be sure to jump onto our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button to ensure you never miss an episode. Kate, I want to pivot now because I think one of the most important conversations and whilst we’ve talked about the business, what I really want to talk about is people’s relationship now with food. You’ve spent 20 years and have an enormous amount of clinical data as a result of that.

 

and you’ve built a business responding to a need, I might call it a crisis in reality. Let’s name the crisis, how bad is it?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (28:32)

Fit’s insurmountable at the moment. There is no end to it in sight because the solutions that are being presented are really treatment, not prevention. And that’s the scary thing that you’re waiting until people have fallen off the cliff to try and revive their bodies rather than… it’s the best way. Yeah. And that’s scary because…

 

All it takes really is for our healthcare system to do a bit of a flip and actually focus on health, not sick care. it was said, and I think it was actually by one of the previous health ministers, that if the current 5 % of the Australian health budget was doubled to 10%, then there would be a long-term reduction in the overall burden of

 

the sick care costs, that’s all it would take. So it’s not huge shifts in funding that will do this, but that’s not on the agenda at the moment. I wish it was, but if it’s that simple, we’ve got to find a way to plug it in because without a doubt, every single day, I mean, it was just physical health issues. Now it’s mental health issues.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (29:50)

So we truly have a sick care system, not a health care system.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (29:53)

And one of the most interesting studies looked at mental health conditions, so managing major depression and anxiety, either with counselling or with a Mediterranean diet. So with counselling you got 7 % remission in major depression and anxiety. With a Mediterranean diet it was around 32 or 34 % remission, like almost five times the remission rate.

 

There are mental health care plans funding the counselling but there’s no mental health care funding for the food or the dietitians or that sort

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (30:31)

Plenty of funding going to organisations that are producing what we’re going to talk about next, which is ultra-processed And therein lies the conundrum. So we hear about ultra-processed food, but I’m sure the majority of population don’t truly understand what it is and as such don’t understand when or in what food products they’re eating.

 

ultra-processed food. Can you break it down for us? What is it?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (31:04)

I think in the most simplest terms, they are foods that you couldn’t make yourself at home. Try and make a Twisty. Try and make a Sarkatar. Try and make a Coca Cola. are things that you can’t make yourself. That if you pick up that packet, they’re not ingredients you would have in your cupboard.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (31:27)

And there’s the other point, they’re things in packets and boxes largely.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (31:31)

Yes, that are not actually always made of food.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (31:35)

And really sitting in a fridge because they’ve got life span.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (31:40)

scary about it too is it’s not always the things that are on the packet that are causing the harm, it’s the things that are not even on the packet that that food has been processed or the way it’s been processed that is going to damage our health or already damaging our health. Fit’s actually what’s not in the food that is more harmful to us than what is.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (32:02)

in the food. Isn’t that interesting? So do you know from all of the data you’ve collected what percentage of the average diet is ultra processed food?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (32:15)

In Australia it’s believed to be around 40 percent but in America it’s up to 70 percent. Wow. So we follow American trends and with how time poor people are I can see that it will be increasingly

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (32:32)

and we’re being gradually on an upward curve.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (32:34)

Absolutely and if you look at new products in the supermarket they’re not new fruit and vegetables. No. You know we didn’t bring a new livestock cattle range or something like that. We are creating what I would call man-made food and people will say but aren’t these protein bars good for me or these protein shakes or these ⁓ things that are actually man-made food that going back

 

know decades ago, we didn’t, that stuff wasn’t even dreamt of and so people go no this is good for me and they’ll tell me a hundred reasons why these foods are good for them and I said go and look at the populations around the world that are living beyond a hundred without chronic health disease, without diabetes, cancer.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (33:22)

and see what they’re reaching.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (33:24)

They don’t even know these things exist. So that is not the solution to health. So I don’t care what miracle product we’re going to put in something to stimulate natural GLP-1. If it’s not a whole food and you’re actually extracting one ingredient from a whole food and thinking that’s going to fix your health, that’s not right. Our body is so complex and so is obesity as a condition that we need a food matrix, not single

 

Mmm. Things were pulled from all different pill packets and…

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (33:57)

And I’m guessing that also played into why you wanted to be called fit, not health, due to the food brand name. I can see why.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (34:05)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, you need to actually, if you want to be healthy, it’s a healthy mindset. Fit’s not one healthy food or it’s not food restriction or it’s not ⁓ walking every day on its own. If you genuinely want to be fit, then you need to do all of the things that make you healthy. And I think another funny analogy of this is when you read a packet of something and you see that it’s got X amount of carbs, protein, fat,

 

calories you read the label and you go this is good isn’t it because people do that to me every single day. I’m like have you read the ingredients list and they’re like what do you mean I’m just I’m just asking you about the carbs and fat and the calories I’m like that almost doesn’t really exist because those numbers on that packet do not reflect what that does in your body. I’ll give you an example of that if you’ve got a handful of nuts and then you’ve got those same nuts you put them through a machine you turn them into peanut butter

 

They might have the same amount of calories. They’re exactly the same food. They’re both 100 grams of nuts effectively. When you eat the 100 grams of nuts, you will only absorb around 70 to 75 % of the calories. When you eat the peanut butter, you will absorb probably close to 100 % of the calories. Wow. And that’s what I mean about it. Fit’s the things that are not on the label as well as what’s missing that is the problem. Fit’s how we are processing the food.

 

So yes, clean labeling is important, but think about what happened to that food. that’s where the secret to whole food is the structure that is keeping it together. Fit’s, you know, apples and apple juice. People go, well, it can’t be that bad. For me, it’s a hundred percent pure apple. I’m like, that apple juice, I think would have more fructose and sugar than Coca-Cola. Like you could not drink anything worse.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (36:03)

Fit reminds me of a podcast episode I did last year with with Alison Cork out of the UK and I think it really comes down to the point of if you pick up the apple there’s no label on it. If you pick up the bottle of juice it requires a hell of a lot of labeling to to qualify what’s what’s in it so. And it’s what you want to eat. ⁓

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (36:16)

Yes.

 

If you were to make your own

 

juice, it’s never going to look like the one in the container. No, it doesn’t. Why? Why? And especially weeks later, it’s not that colour, it’s not that smell, that taste. The enzymes have killed it because the food was alive and now the food is dead.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (36:43)

Yeah, there you go. The food is dead. That’s a pretty, pretty blunt point. So we get into this conversation of the body positivity movement, says we shouldn’t talk about obesity, yet we’ve got obesity as a disease state and chronic illness. Where do you sit on the tension of should we or shouldn’t we talk about our weight?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (37:07)

I think we should be talking about our composition because you can be healthy at any size if you have, you tell me about your lifestyle and everything you eat and then I will be able to tell you and give me your body composition tests as well. Yes. Fit is not your pull of gravity on earth and that is what people are trying to relate it to.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (37:24)

to my waistline discussion.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (37:35)

I can be healthy at this week. Well, tell me how much sleep did you get? How many steps a day did you strength train and how many vegetables? Did you have your 30 different plant-based foods this week? Did you have your protein at every meal? Did you have some healthy fats? Did you avoid ultra-processed And usually what I’m hearing is most people are, they’re fasting for a long time because they’ve heard fasting is good for them. And some people might want to fast and I’m not…

 

against fasting but if you are fasting for half the day and then having a ultra-processed protein bar and then having an energy drink and then going to the gym and during the day maybe having some coffees to get you through to control your calories and to get thin that is not getting healthy.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (38:24)

That’s I used to do and it so does not work. can so relate to that. So being the Power of Women podcast, in your clinical experience, how different is the discussion you have with women versus the discussion you’re having with men?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (38:43)

Fit is chalk and cheese. Fit really is chalk and cheese because I don’t want to over generalise but most men can be quite black and white when it comes to food and their lifestyle choices and their time commitments and if they say I want to lose 10 kilos and I want to do it ⁓ in six weeks, can you help me?

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (38:56)

You’re not over-generated.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (39:12)

I’ll say yes, they’ll say just write down here exactly what I need to do and they will stick to that. They will, if I tell them sleep between this time and this time, eat exactly this and train exactly this much, they won’t let anything get their way. they will get the result.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (39:26)

characters than us women?

 

Because they’re doers

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (39:32)

their

 

body also reacts in a more predictable way. ⁓ Whereas a female might do exactly the same thing as a male counterpart and we see this with beef-fed food when they’re on a controlled diet. The male and female do exactly the same thing, eat exactly the same thing, the males get better results than the females.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (39:53)

In the end does it even out or?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (39:55)

Fit does because if you have an ⁓ on or off yes or no mindset, that switch is going to flick at some point. So that moderation is kind of the key but having those moments where you reset, so I would say at least once a year, everybody should do a little reset, even if it’s just a week. Reset for a week. We do it with all our tech.

 

We so do, don’t we? like that reset for a week could be as simple as no alcohol, no processed food, more vegetables every meal or something like that. Yeah, and then one of those things that you’ve done you don’t bring back and that’s how you get improvement. And another thing with women that I think, this is men and women, but particularly women, whatever you’re doing now,

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (40:30)

Drink more water.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (40:47)

you will, let’s say you’re running at a particular pace in life, right? Yep. And you’re eating particular food, you’ve got your exercise regime, next year you’ll have to run a little bit faster to actually keep up with that. And the year after that, the decade after that, you need to get faster and faster. But as you’re aging,

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (41:04)

That’s you going the other direction

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (41:06)

harder and harder and this is where the weight gain in women really creeps up. So then you actually need to

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (41:11)

Good analogy, yeah.

 

We’re

 

physically getting slower and what we say, I’m still doing the same things as what I was doing, but in actual fact you’re not because the energy spent is not the same.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (41:26)

Yeah and if you are doing the same things that’s not enough because as we age we’ve got this progressive loss of muscle mass just because of the change in hormones, the change in ⁓ everything, particularly in a female if you’re losing estrogen as well. So we need to find ways to get stronger as we age and that will sort of counteract or offset so we don’t need to keep turning up the pace to just stay where we are.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (41:52)

complex. The human body is complex, but you have pointed it out so clearly and articulately. I can’t end the conversation without some really strong takeaway points, if I could, for the listeners, Kate. So if we got every Australian woman to do three things differently, and I’m not talking about a 12-week program or signing up to anything, but making three

 

changes in their lives today for the betterment of their wellbeing. What would they be?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (42:28)

removing as many ultra processed foods as they can. There may be something like a plant based milk could technically be called ultra processed. So there may be a couple of exceptions to that, but try and remove as many as you can. The second one would be as you age, be more mindful of your carbohydrate intake because we become more carbohydrate intolerant as we age because our muscle mass actually helps to

 

pull the glucose out of the bloodstream. So the third one would be strength-train to try and maintain as much muscle as you can whilst you’re moderating your carbohydrate and being conscious of protein. So that one-to-one carb-to-protein ratio is a really good rule that if you’re having 20 grams of carbs, have 20 grams of protein or more. And if you can have 30 grams of protein with 15 grams of carbs, even better. That’s right.

 

Yeah. And not all carbs are bad because vegetables and fruit are carbs, if it’s ultra-processed we’ve already wiped out those carbs.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (43:33)

And if you want a simple example, it’s what you did with your ramen. You had the ramen, took out the carb content being the noodles, lost nothing in so doing and had an appropriate meal to the time of day and the energy you’d expended.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (43:52)

And I didn’t notice, like anyone else in the rest of the restaurant, if they were served that meal without the noodles, by the time you get through, I had the seafood one, the seafood and veggies, you don’t get much of the soup there and whatever. Most people are not finishing the noodles. And if you have that discipline to stop halfway with the noodles, good on you. But if you have that discipline, you’re probably not.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (44:02)

You struggling to even eat noodles?

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (44:16)

listening right now taking notes going what should I do because they are the people that actually don’t look at things like weight loss medications or weight loss surgery because they have discipline. If you have that discipline this is not you ⁓ but for people that don’t have the discipline that are thinking of trying those things don’t order the noodles with the ramen and then you didn’t have to exert the discipline you just ate the food and

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (44:40)

of you. And therein lies the reality. We can’t put discipline into a tablet or into an injection, but we can put it into the mindset of the choices that we make.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (44:57)

Absolutely.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (44:58)

Brilliant.

 

Kate, thank you so much. could talk about health and wellbeing, the sick care versus health care, the damage we do with the foods that are pushed at us on every TV screen and in supermarket aisles until I’m another 20 years older. There’s just so much in it that’s important, but this is a super, super important episode.

 

I made significant life changes on top of what was already a reasonably healthy lifestyle. 60 or at 59 and the changes have been mind blowing and to the point, and I think I might have shared this with you before, the addiction of the benefits of how much better I feel.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (45:36)

Yes,

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (45:56)

supersedes the feeling of what picking up a chocolate or something as a short term fix would be any day. if you haven’t made the start or you do it together, get together with a group of friends and make a pact and say, let’s try this for a period of time and try and move the needle because we’re living longer but we’re not living better. And it’s within

 

your grasp to take the decisions to change that paradigm.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (46:29)

I’ve got just one little idea for people that are listening that are maybe chocoholic self-declared and they think I can’t live without chocolate I could give up all other sugar you physically can train yourself to go from your milk chocolate to a mildly dark chocolate to a little bit darker and a little bit darker and darker and the flavor that becomes addictive there is that cocoa bitterness which

 

If people go, I hate dark chocolate. Well, did you like red wine growing up? Probably not. Did you like, some people might have liked olives or strong flavours or bitter things.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (47:04)

is also

 

Train yourself through the sweetness to actually getting out of it and enjoy the bitter.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (47:16)

And then you’ll find that you actually can’t go back once you’ve done it and you’ve got all those different grades, know, you’re 40%, 60, 70, 80, 85.

 

DI GILLETT – Power Of Women [HOST] (47:27)

That

 

full-blown milk chocolate to cold turkey. Now not everybody can do that, I appreciate, but that is such a fabulous idea to wean yourself off it. Brilliant, you heard it here. Until next time.

 

KATE SAVE – Be Fit Food [Guest] (47:31)

Yeah.