The 12 Books of Christmas | Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall & ZOE’s Dr Federica Amati on Eating 30 Plants A Week

Intelligence Squared

To celebrate 2024, we’re taking a look backwards, and diving into the standout thinkers who have taken to the Intelligence Squared stage in the past 12 months. You might still be on the hunt for that perfect gift for the avid reader in your life, or perhaps you’re after some food for thought over the festive period. Either way, this 12 episode mini series will highlight the books that shaped 2024. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 for more events that intrigue, fascinate and entertain.

In recent years the benefits of eating a diet rich in plants have increasingly been at the forefront of our conversations about food. You may have heard scientists like Tim Spector, the founder of ZOE, argue that a healthy diet should consist of 30 plants a week. This recommendation comes from a study led by Spector for the British and American Gut Project in 2019. It showed that people who ate more than 30 plants a week had the healthiest microbiomes and the best health outcomes, while those who didn’t had worse health outcomes.

That science has informed the cooking of chef and founder of River Cottage Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall ever since it was published. And in May 2024 he came to the Intelligence Squared stage where he was in conversation with ZOE’s Dr Federica Amati to argue that getting 30 different plants on our plate every week is easier than you might think. Together they addressed some of the big questions around plant-based eating: to what extent can eating plants really help us avoid disease? How realistic is it for the average person to get 30 different plants every week? And is there a risk of overstating what plants can do for our health?

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