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About the show
For centuries society has failed to appreciate the intimate connection between the food we eat and the overall quality of our lives. Even in modern times companies and governments have oversimplified dietary advice with messages that tell us how calorie counting and low-fat diets can improve our health. Meanwhile obesity and diabetes rates continue to rise.
That’s the argument of Tim Spector – scientific co-founder of Zoe, Professor of Epidemiology at Kings College London and among the top 100 most cited scientists in the world. According to Spector, how our body digests the food we eat dramatically depends on the makeup of our gut bacteria.
On October 19, he joins Intelligence Squared at Union Chapel for a live show that will reveal the science of the connection between gut health and human well-being. Spector will explain how the gut and the brain are connected, how the trillions of microbes in our intestine operate and why a balanced microbiome promotes heart, brain, and metabolic health, while imbalances can lead to weight gain, high blood sugar, diabetes, allergies, and autoimmune diseases.
Featuring
Professor Tim Spector
Professor Tim Spector is a medically qualified Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the TwinsUK Registry at King’s College London. His work focuses on improving health with cutting-edge research on the gut microbiome and personalised nutrition. He is the scientific co-founder of ZOE, the personalised nutrition company, which runs the world’s largest nutrition study, ZOE PREDICT.
Having published more than 900 research articles, he is ranked in the top 100 of the world’s most cited scientists by Google. He is the author of five popular science books, including The Diet Myth, Spoon Fed, and most recently Food for Life, a Sunday Times bestseller. He makes regular appearances on social and mainstream media.
He was awarded an OBE for this work during the pandemic to help progress our understanding of COVID-19. It has changed the way we do research forever and ZOE is proud to have kick-started community science as a way to improve population health.
See Professor Tim Spector tour dates
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on Monday 19 October 2026