Transcript Disclaimer – Please note that the following transcript has been machine generated by an AI software and therefore may include errors or omissions.

Robin Daly
Hello and welcome to the Yes To Life show . I’m Robin Daly, your host for the show and founder of the UK charity Yes To Life, that advocates for the adoption of integrated medicine for cancer care, an approach that aims to more effectively meet the many needs of those with cancer. Today I’m going to be speaking to a cancer clinician, Dr Shireen Kassam Dr. Kassam is a hematologist who, unusually, is passionately committed to dietary issues and is working to bring changes to our NHS. Shireen, a big welcome to the Yes To Life show.

Dr Shireen Kassam
Thanks Robin, great to be back again.

Robin Daly
So for listeners who don’t know you, I think we need a little intro. You’re here today with two hats. So the first one is your oncology hat. You’re a hematologist. Where do you explain the important role that you play in cancer care?

Dr Shireen Kassam
Thank you. I’ve been at King’s College Hospital as a consultant hematologist and her hematology is quite a broad specialty now. So my areas of expertise are looking after people with lymphoma and also histiocytic disorders and I also have a role in the laboratory as well.

Robin Daly
Right, okay, very good. And the second one is an ardent advocate of plant-based diets. So can you tell us how you came to take up this particular role and the reasons for your passionate endorsement of this particular form of nutrition?

Dr Shireen Kassam
Thank you. So yes, outside of my NHS role, I have founded and run an organization called Plant Based Health Professionals UK, and we provide education and advocacy around healthy plant based diets, and lifestyle medicine for improving health preventing chronic disease. And of course, there are co-benefits for planetary health as well. I adopted a plant based diet, probably 11 years ago now, and that led me to discover the benefits and for the reasons I just mentioned and I realized that actually within my NHS role, nobody was really talking about the impact of nutrition on health. We certainly weren’t being taught that in medical school or postgraduate education. I wanted to bring that missing piece to the UK education system. So we started off mainly by providing educational resources and teaching on plant based nutrition. And this last year we’ve expanded our offering to include all pillars of lifestyle medicine. And I’m sure your audience already know a lot about lifestyle medicine, but we can put a ton into that separately. So yes, that’s a little bit about what I do.

Robin Daly
certainly nutrition needs to get into health care, that’s for sure, so great stuff, yeah. Okay, so you won’t need me to tell you, the subject of diets with or without meat ignites some pretty fervent passions, you could even say it’s a kind of polarising issue, so why do you think it is?

Dr Shireen Kassam
that’s an interesting question. And I think our dietary choices do become quite emotional. And we sort of defend our position, don’t we? Because it’s sort of tied up so much in our culture, our tradition. It’s something we all do, it’s relevant to all of us, you know, you know, at least, or on average, three times a day. so everyone has a view, which is different from most aspects of medicine, you know, if I talk to somebody about profuse large B-cell lymphoma, most people wouldn’t have a view on the best treatments would they? And so I think that’s one of the reasons. secondly, you know, for reasons that are related to sort of corporate interests and finance, you know, the media have done a great job at causing sort of misinformation or disinformation, or, you know, supporting that polarisation, because it sells stories, it sells newspapers, and it gets us to watch programs. if you create this narrative that actually we don’t know what the right way of eating is, and some people might do this, some people might do that. And the media is full of sort of anecdotes that lead people down that are varying paths. But I mean, just to say, I think, you know, the science and evidence around nutrition and health is really solid. It’s really sound. For decades, we’ve known that a healthy diet is one that’s composed predominantly around fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds. And what you do around the edges comes down to personal choice. So I accept that people may want to consume meat, fish, eggs and dairy, but that doesn’t take away from the foods that are most associated with best health. the other thing we can all agree on is that our consumption of ultra processed foods is far too high. So we should be minimising ultra processed foods as well. And yes, I advocate for 100% plant based diet, partly because that has the core benefits for the planet and the animals we share this planet with. But I fully accept that we can achieve best health with different types of diets, as long as they’re centred around the foods we noted to promote good health.

Robin Daly
Right, you’re right, the kind of reasonable view doesn’t sell newspapers, so it’s a shame, isn’t it? That’s one of the bad aspects of media, is that it actually seeks to polarise things, and yeah, it’s a shame. Okay, well thanks very much for that. So I want to spend the rest of the show talking about some of the initiatives you’ve been involved in recently, indeed are involved in. You’re very proactive in regards to plant-based heating, and the first initiative I’d like to hear more about is the paper that you and two colleagues published recently describing a research project around dietary habits and health outcomes. Now it’s described as a cross-sectional survey. Well first of all, what does that mean? then can you tell us about the details of the study, starting with who took part in it?

Dr Shireen Kassam
thank you. So this is one of our first bits of sort of original research led by our research assistant Isabel Fadler and supported by our statistician Alex Bauer. And it’s a survey of our members, so Plant Based Health Professionals is a membership organisation. We’ve had members since 2019 and most of our members are interested in if not fully committed to consuming a healthy plant-based diet. they’ve come to it for different reasons. And so we thought it was a good opportunity to formally survey our members to figure out, well, why is it that they’re consuming a plant-based diet? What has it done to them, their health and is it sustainable? And the other unique aspect of this group is that we’re predominantly health professionals. the survey was over 50% health professionals, which as we know, most health professionals are not terribly interested in a particular nutrition approach or certainly not based on diets. And as you say, cross-sectional just means we did the survey at one time point. So it can’t tell you anything about what took place before or what might happen in the future. that has pros and cons to that sort of methodology. But as you might imagine, that was the easiest way that we could survey our members. And we have around 1,000 members, but for this survey around 315 people responded to the survey, which isn’t about either the third response rate, you know what it’s like. half of the participants are health professional, the other halves are just people who are following a plant-based diet. And we divided people into those who describe their diet as vegan. And we know that doesn’t necessarily tell you what somebody is eating, it tells you what somebody is not eating. the other half sort of described themselves as consuming a whole food plant-based diet, meaning they were centering their diet around minimally processed healthy plant foods. we asked them what they were eating, what their health was like, whether after adopting a plant-based diet, they saw any health benefits or detriments, and how long they’ve been following this diet and whether they thought it was sustainable. interestingly, overall, on average, people have been following this way of plant-based eating for around five years with our longest participants out to the 20 years and our oldest participant, 82 years old. And so it does show that, you know, for a most invasive group of people, this is a sustainable way of eating. Around a third of participants had noted health benefits, the most common one, weight loss, intentional weight loss. And the median BMI in our group was around 22, which you can imagine is much lower in a sort of a healthier body mass index than the general UK population. And around 15% of people had managed to come off medications.

Dr Shireen Kassam
these were medications that had been previously prescribed for type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and cholesterol. And so it’s just a nice sort of review of what we already know in that when you sort of adopt a diet that’s mainly plant-based, you can support a healthier weight, you can manage your cholesterol and blood pressure and glucose regulation much better. it just shows that we can do it in sort of free living people. They’re not people who’ve had diet prescribed to them. In addition, there were some interesting findings that people that had benefits for conditions such as arthritis and migraine control. And so it opened up some additional areas where the research community might want to conduct some more studies.

Robin Daly
I assume that because these are kind of nutrition interested folks who would take on a thing like this, that you can assume that the consumption of ultra-processed foods was virtually nil.

Dr Shireen Kassam
Yes, that’s interesting. And the point I should have mentioned in that we did ask people exactly what they were eating and ask them to report if they were consuming the newer sort of plant based meat alternatives and more processed and of course, you know, general sort of snack foods and things. regardless of how people describe their diet, you know, vegan or healthy plant based, there was very minimal consumption of ultra processed foods with other indicators suggesting that their diet was of a high quality with, you know, obviously most people eating more than five portions of fruits and vegetables and mainly beans and legumes and as sources of protein.

Robin Daly
this is one of the issues to do with giving out meat, is they’ve gone to vast lengths to scientifically produce things that are a bit like meat, and I mean, you know, when it comes to ultra-processed, probably they’re some of the worst, aren’t they? And they had gone to a healthy banner, unfortunately, which is, of course, very misleading.

Dr Shireen Kassam
Well, I think, I think it depends because it’s such a broad category now. They’re sort of plant-based meat alternatives. It can be anything from tofu, tempeh, corn products to your veggie burger. So then things like Beyond Meat and, you know, Impossible Burgers and all the other sort of newer products. So I think it depends, but also there have been head-to-head studies looking at the newer non-meat alternatives and comparing them to their meat-based counterpart. actually, there appears to be some benefit over the traditional meat counterpart, which is classified as sort of unprocessed because these plant-based meat alternatives, regardless of, you know, the precise nature of their nutrients, they tend to be high in fiber and lower in saturated fat. And two of the components that, you know, are an issue in our current diet. So actually, there’s benefits for weight management, lowering cholesterol. The main downside of a lot of these products and that I hope is addressed by the industry soon is the high levels of salt. But you may get that from, you know, other meat-based products and people don’t pick into account that when they cook meat, they tend to add salt and that’s not taken into account necessarily. But yeah, I agree. I don’t think there’s any need for them. They may have a role for people eating out socially or in restaurants. But I think for me, the downside of these alternatives, they sort of normalize meat as a source of protein. It’s like, well, if we shouldn’t be eating meat, then let’s find something that’s an alternative. To me, it’s beans and pulses. tofu and things like that, that should be our go-to alternative. looking at the kind of, you asked them in detail about what they’re eating. So in the range of eating habits, what was there at either end of the spectrum, so to speak?

Dr Shireen Kassam
No, well, as you might imagine, because they’re a self-selected health motivated group, actually, the diets were pretty uniform and met sort of healthy eating guidelines. As I say, everyone was eating a variety of fruits, vegetables, cold grains, beans, nuts and seeds, very little consumption of free sugars, refined grains, and, you know, obviously, getting their protein sources from things like beans and tofu and pulses. So it was pretty uniform, yeah.

Robin Daly
Right, okay, well very interesting. So the next thing I’d like to hear a bit more about is the partnership you created with the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine. What’s the plan there?

Dr Shireen Kassam
Yep, so, as I mentioned in my intro, so we have expanded our educational offering to encompass all pillars of lifestyle medicine, nutrition is key obviously, but we know that physical activities, stress management, the storage of sleep, avoiding toxins and maintaining healthy relationships or part of lifestyle medicine is so important for primarily health and wellness, and both physical and mental health. most of my team are also qualified in lifestyle medicine and I and others incorporate this into our everyday practice. so we had the opportunity, we were approached by the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine, who are the sort of founding organisation of the global qualification in the discipline, and whether we would partner with them to administer the exam here in the UK, and so that gives the opportunity for UK health professionals and those on mainland Europe to receive the educational offering and set the examination to gain the formal global certification in the subject. So it’s just the first step of starting to incorporate lifestyle medicine into our clinical care, which I know you understand is so key to trying to improve health outcomes, not only for people living with cancer, but for preventing many of the chronic conditions that people with cancer also have.

Robin Daly
Absolutely very important. Okay, so, um, this is uh training course. So who’s who’s eligible first of all?

Dr Shireen Kassam
good question. So it’s anyone with a medical doctorate, but also any health professional who’s got a master’s degree or above qualification. So a range of allied health professionals, as long as you’ve got a master’s degree or above. So it’s really trying to sort of capture that postgraduate group of people who are within clinical practice who then want to enhance their skills. it involves doing CPD, both sort of staff learning and in-person conferences, of which we’ve got our conference on Monday, actually. So it’ll already have taken place by the time this show is aired. And then sitting an exam on the 29th of November. So we’ve closed for this year, the recruitment, but we will be opening soon for candidates to sign up for 2025.

Robin Daly
Right, and so the whole course is of how many months?

Dr Shireen Kassam
So I think the minimum you can spend on it is three months, but most people signed up back in sort of February, March time. So it’s a good six months sort of then study, and we’re then culminating in an exam in December, and then going forward those past will have to show evidence of maintaining their skill set and that’s formally administered by the International Board of Livestar Medicine with continued CCD education.

Robin Daly
I see. Great, great. Okay, and how much interest is that?

Dr Shireen Kassam
obviously, we’ve all been undertaking this exam already. But we’ve got about 30 size people signed up for our UK offering this time. And so it’s a good start for us. And yeah, and we’ll hope to expand that.

Robin Daly
absolutely. And from what walks of healthcare are these people coming? All or?

Dr Shireen Kassam
actually, mostly doctors, but probably Aranda said, so about 10 to 12 people are sort of dieticians, physios, and that sort of professional background.

Robin Daly
Well, I hope this makes a distinct dent in the thinking behind healthcare because it is extremely important. Okay, so the other initiative I want to talk about is a biggie. It’s in that kind of war zone that you’re not the first bold adventure to try and make an inroad into the thorny issue of hospital food. Now, most listeners to this show will be aware that good food and restful sleep are two of the pillars of recovery for sick people. So the fact that both are pretty much absent from hospitals doesn’t make a lot of sense. So, as part of your campaign for plant-centric eating, you set up Plants First Healthcare, a campaign to persuade NHS Trust to adopt a plant-based by default meal service. I see you’ve already got some big names behind your campaign sharing, many top professionals, and also the likes of George Monbiot and Professor Tim Spector. So, I want to learn more about what you’re planning. Firstly, who is Plants First Healthcare?

Dr Shireen Kassam
Yep, thank you. So our campaign that’s called Plaid First Healthcare is a combination of a coalition between a number of organisations who are really increasingly concerned around the impacts of our food system, not only on our health, but of course, the health of the planet. I think the healthcare profession really are extremely concerned on how the climate crisis and the ecological crisis is affecting our health and will affect our health more so in the coming years. We’re already seeing the negative effects of extreme weather, food insecurity, migration, and that’s only going to get worse and disrupt healthcare around the world. the UK is not going to be spared in that respect. And one key aspect of sort of a lower carbon planet friendly approach is to shift our diets away from the destructive sort of animal agriculture towards one that prioritises plant based foods and meals in all aspects of life. I think we’ll all agree that healthcare and hospitals should be, you know, showcasing and role modelling the way that we would like broader society and communities to be eating. So really, that’s the foundation of the campaign to improve health and sustainability of the food being served. this is nothing new, it’s already embedded in the sort of national food guidelines in terms of what food should be served in healthcare. It’s just the on the ground experience, as you rightly say, is very…

Robin Daly
Not quite the same.

Dr Shireen Kassam
very different. And it’s uphill battle just for me at King’s College Hospital to make any inroads into changing the kind of food provision, you know, you walk into the staff panteen and every morning there’s, you know, a full breakfast counter of bacon and sausages and lunchtime is chicks with fried chicken. And, you know, I’m told, well, that’s what people want to eat. And that’s what sells. if when they sort of change it to something healthier, you know, they’re taking their income till the day goes down. So it’s a really complicated topic. But really, we need to see change. And as I’d say, we have a coalition of health and climate activists who want to see plant-based meals at the first and foremost offering on menus for those reasons related to health and sustainability. Now, this doesn’t mean we’re removing anything from menus. It’s really around using evidence-based behavioral strategies to support people to make the healthier, the more sustainable choice. So a really bold standard example is that this type of plants first or plant-based meals by default approach has already been implemented in New York City hospitals. So 11 digital hospitals started this initiative back in 2019. And now for the last two years or more, they have really embraced this approach whereby if you’re in hospital, the first and second meal offering to you will be a fully plant-based meal. If you don’t want either of those, then you’ll be offered other items from their menu. so you can choose to add animals or dairy or egg to your meal, which you wish. But after two years, more than 50% of diners have stuck with that plant-based meal. There’s greater than 90% satisfaction and they’ve reduced their carbon emissions from food service by 36%. So pretty remarkable results. And this has been a partnership between obviously the New York City Borough Office. So the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, is a real proponent of lifestyle medicine and particularly plant-based nutrition, having been able to reverse his own type 2 diabetes and lack of his mother’s using a plant-based lifestyle. But also the catering company, Sudekso, and they’ve been working with an organisation called Greener by Default. the reason I mentioned that is that Greener by Default basically supports institutional dining operations to really prioritise plant-based meals. And we’re now working with them directly. They’ve appointed a UK healthcare manager and there’s already one pilot taking place in a staff canteen at the Royal National Orthopedic Hospital. what we want, so we’re already doing work in the background, but when we launched this campaign on World Food Day on October the 16th, we want to raise awareness that this offering is available, that we’re working with Greener by Default, people can team up with them. so free support menu change, designing as canteens, you know, to really prioritise healthier, more sustainable plant-based meals. And we really have got great support for this.

Dr Shireen Kassam
So for example, the UK Health Alliance for Climate Change that represents more than a million healthcare professionals through their membership organisations. And we’ve got the BDA Sustainable Diets Group, the BDA Renal Group. You know, we’ve got my professional society, the British Society of Hematology, and you’ll see on the website more than 22 organisations, over a thousand health professionals with, as you rightly states, and real notables on the signatory. So we really want to show that there is need and desire to change. And then we’ve got a way that people can put this into action. So individuals within their hospital space, or even, you know, the Royal Colleges, you know, any pacing operation, conferences, we really should be prioritising plant-based meals as the default option.

Robin Daly
Interesting. So, kind of there’s two aspects, if you like, of food that’s being served is like, well, what it is, and you’ve been talking about that, and then there’s the other areas, kind of the quality of what’s being served, and both are of concern in our NHS. Do you think that your campaign is likely to affect the quality of the food that’s served in any way?

Dr Shireen Kassam
Well, we really hope that it will improve quality because it will be promoting a fibre-rich, plant-based diet when we know that, in general, public are not consuming enough of fruits and vegetables, only 28% of adults consume fibre, more portions of fruits and vegetables a day, and the average amount of fibre is 18 grams per day when we know the minimum we should be aiming for is 30 grams. So we’re hoping by prioritising plants on the plate, we will be able to be supporting people to eat a fibre-rich, nutrient-dense diet. And yes, this doesn’t take away from the fact that menus will still have to meet the national guidance on nutrition and hydration and meeting nutrient requirements, which we know is entirely possible with a well-planned, plant-based diet. So already done in 11 city hospitals in New York, they meet requirements for protein and iron and calcium and all the things that you would expect hospital menus to meet. But that’s very regulated and there’s no reason why we can’t be continuing to meet those. What this is going to do is support people to make a better choice by prioritising these items on the menu by letting them know why they should be choosing them and by making sure that the messaging on menus and the way we display them meets our requirements for health and sustainability.

Robin Daly
It seems like one of the big issues we always hear around NHS food is the kind of budget. I mean, they cost nothing, do they? NHS meals were. It’s shocking when you hear how little is spent on them. Given that, as we understand, food is this very important aspect of health, it’s, you know, in a hospital, it makes, say, zero sense to allocate so little. Do you think that your campaign might persuade our system to apportion some more budget towards food and make it more important?

Dr Shireen Kassam
that’s a difficult question. I think there is no slack in the budget in the NHS, you know, sadly, I’m working with a trust that probably one of the most in debt in the whole country, 80 million, and this is no secret. I don’t think more money is going to be forthcoming, but I think the good news is that one of the statistics I haven’t shared with you so far is that in the New York City hospitals, they’ve saved 59 cents per meal by using this approach. Yeah, it is actually cheaper. And what’s relevant to what we’ve been talking about is this is all whole food plant based ingredients. They have not used any of the newer, you know, meat alternatives. They’re just traditional whole food plant based meals. the other thing to mention is that there’s been two really useful reports, one from the one of the economic offices in the UK and the other from the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, modelling different ways of plant based eating for the UK, specifically with calculations around what would happen if the NHS adopted one plant based meal a day or all plant based meals. both reports are really quite consistent in demonstrating that there would be huge potential financial savings because of partly the slightly lower food costs and the benefit to reaching their environmental goals, and then also potential knock on effects for improving individual and population health. So I don’t think we should be scared away because of any financial risk. I think it’s difficult though, isn’t it? Because we all think very short term, and we need to be having more of a longer term approach to this because of course, the benefits for overall health and climate are not going to be felt immediately on a year year or year budget line for the hospitals. So I don’t think there needs to be any depth to people’s budgets. But the only other thing to notice is that the reason why the food we’re serving is potentially cheaper than, you know, a higher quality diet in the UK is because of the way the government subsidies work for farming. You know, the government is subsidising meat and dairy, we dedicate 85% of our farmland to raising animals for food. And yet we only use about 15% of our land for horticulture. we know that at least two thirds of our fruits and vegetables and beans and so forth need to be imported. And they’re not subsidized in any way. So it’s really hard for horticulture farming to make, you know, a profit. They’re not supported by government. And in the supermarkets, those foods are not appropriately supported in terms of making them more affordable. So we need a bigger shift in society where government farming and communities prioritise the food that promote health. And that doesn’t require us to be eating a diet of meat and dairy, but that’s what we produce essentially.

Robin Daly
interesting how these government initiatives do skew the picture of course and we we don’t particularly notice that we just go to the shop and pay what it costs but uh yeah they do very much change the picture all right so um tell me about uh your ambitions for this project do you how do you see change happening what do what’s your campaign look like what what kind of things you’ve got in the offing which you hope again bring attention to it and how do you hope that the change might take place

Dr Shireen Kassam
thank you. So as I say, although we’re doing work in the background campaign formally launches on October the 16th, which is World Food Day. We launch alongside a report that I’ve contributed to from the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change. It’s an update to their food policy briefing report, really talking about food system transition away from animal source foods to a plant based food environment and prioritising plant based meals in all settings. So I think that’s nice to have a policy report and an actionable campaign. We’re going to then be sending on this day an open letter to all NHS hospital trust, to their CEOs, their lead dietitian sustainability managers, but also to all healthcare organisations, so all the Royal Colleges that support and work in health care. And we’re going to try and get a little bit of a sort of national conversation going on this. But as I say, with an action plan that comes down to making contact with a campaign team, being put in touch with the greener by default team who will then work with all of these institutions who might be interested. And the idea is to obviously get from pilot data for the UK. We’ve got information now from New York. There’s been a pilot in Vancouver General Hospital, and probably more as well. But everyone likes UK pilot data. So the idea is to get a group of healthcare institutions, whether they’re hospitals or healthcare organisations, to have implemented this way or prioritising plant based meals, and get the pilot takes their bees out there and then roll the programme out further. But we’re really also hopeful to be able to have some conversations with NHS leaders. Awe would love to speak to the health minister, those in charge of the NHS, to really get a top level support for this initiative. But as you know, it’s quite hard, isn’t it, when there’s so many priorities. You’ve got to shout loud. Got to shout loud.

Robin Daly
Yeah, it’s very difficult to gain attention for matters, however important they are. So you’ve got a pilot underway, I think you said, at the Royal Orthopedic. Is that Stan Moore? Is that right? Yes, it is. Yeah. And how long has that been running and what’s happening there?

Dr Shireen Kassam
probably I haven’t got any results to share there. We know that it’s going on in the staff canteen. I’ve been aware of it for a few months, so I think we’ll have to watch this space for any detail, but it’s just been around really deciding the canteen, prioritising the plant-based meals that they’ve got on offer and hopefully we’ll have some statistics soon to show that people are through these sort of behavioural initiatives and choosing them and hopefully they’ll have been enjoying them as well. So watch this space, I haven’t got much to report there yet.

Robin Daly
Fair enough. And there’s a lot of activity you just talked about there. So how many of you involved? I mean, you’ve got this partnership, obviously, with a company who’s going to help big time. But, you know, on our team in the UK, how many of you are beavering away at this?

Dr Shireen Kassam
I guess people are actually hard in the background, probably about four or five, but we’re also formerly in a partnership with an organisation called Real Zero. And that’s spearheaded by Sue Montgomery, which some of your listeners may have heard about. He’s a real, he’s a professor in ICU at the University College London, but he’s really been involved in the climate movement. his organisation is working more at a higher level, sort of trying to engage and it’s a single and greener NHS and us sort of getting a grassroots approach. And I think together we’ve got a working group from all aspects of healthcare, from procurement to supply chains to the dietitians. we’re really hoping to have an impact through bringing together all the stakeholders within food provision in healthcare.

Robin Daly
do you have any notably high profile advocates within the NHS or on your side already who you think are going to swing things for you?

Dr Shireen Kassam
That’s difficult to know whether we’ve got any key stakeholders. I think really the stakeholders are those that, you know, the UK Health Alliance of Climate Change, the organisation, but all of us, of course, work within the NHS, so hopefully we’ll able to be able to bring that to our workplaces as well. We’ve definitely got sustainability managers who’ve signed our open letter, non executives and board members of NHS Trust probably can’t divulge everyone’s names without me checking the GDPR on their signatures. But the brief answer is yes, we’ve definitely got people from wide ranges and institutions and I’ve already got three meetings lined up with NHS Trusts who want or want to sort of explore this option. So I think the message is getting out there, but with all these campaigns, I think, you know, we’ll recognise that nothing’s going to change overnight, but it will be something that we’ll be working on hard. And as soon as we’ve got a few pilot sites off the ground with some results, I think we’ll be able to get more people interested.

Robin Daly
It’s interesting, the sustainability angle is something that probably wasn’t part of any previous food campaign within the NHS. There’s a relatively recent development, which of course the NHS has to be concerned about like everybody else, more so than most probably, and so that’s an added thing which is an interesting thing which will bring some weight to the argument.

Dr Shireen Kassam
Well, I think that’s absolutely right. And, you know, certainly all the organisations that are supporting this campaign are not the advocates of a plant-based diet, they never have been. But they’re really coming to this through sustainability. The NHS is the first healthcare system in the world to declare a climate emergency and they’re permitted to reaching net zero emissions by 2040. unless we address food, we’re not going to be able to achieve that. I mean, although food is only contributing 6% of sort of healthcare emissions, that doesn’t take into account the co-benefits to, you know, reducing antibiotic use and promoting stewardship there. Because we know antibiotics are used in farming, it doesn’t take into account the pandemic issues around industrialised factory farming. And it also doesn’t take into account the fast amounts of land that could be restored back to nature if we reduced our reliance on animal source food. I think that’s why there’s been so much interest because it’s not necessarily the plant-based eaters that are coming on board with this. It’s people who are truly, fully and rightly so concerned around climate and ecological health as spearheading this.

Robin Daly
Interesting. I mean, sadly, if that’s the thing that swings it, it means that the NHS manages to see if they can avoid the fact that food’s got anything to do with health, which is tragic, to say the least. But anyway, it also must be a case of whatever works when it comes to this change. We want to see the change and so all aspects are important.

Dr Shireen Kassam
I think that’s right. I think the good news is that we don’t need to compromise on on health. We don’t need to make a choice between health and climate. If we design, you know, a good quality and nutrient sufficient to, you know, plant based menu, we can meet our health goals and our sustainability goals and, you know, impact these wider aspects of health like antibiotic resistance and pandemic risks. So it’s the win-win. So which is why we’ve been able to sort of get support from some different areas of society, really.

Robin Daly
Alright, well thank you very much indeed for coming on the show today, tell us all about these various initiatives, we wish you the very best of luck in improving the nutritional offering of our NHS, of course, something desperately needs to be done, so thanks very much Arie.

Dr Shireen Kassam
Thank you Robin. Bye bye.

Robin Daly
If you want to read more about the issues we’ve been discussing, you can look up the Plants First Healthcare campaign at plantsfirsthealthcare.com, and also Plant-Based Health Professionals UK is at plantbasedhealthprofessionals.com. Some other links will be included with the show information. I want to remind you that it’s just a matter of a couple of weeks until the Yes To Life annual conference, which is taking place on the 28th of September in Euston, London. title is Pushing the Boundaries, and it will feature leading speakers in the field of integrated medicine. You’ll go away from the day with a wealth of resources from our expert speakers, as well as from our extensive range of exhibitor stands. It’s our flagship annual event, and one not to be missed. Find out more and book your place at yesterlifeannualconference.org. Thanks very much for joining me today. I’m hoping you’ll be able to listen again next week, and I’ll be back with another Yes To Life show.