Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yes. Well it happens that in Belgium all half Swedish and Japanese people live no, it's not, it's just very not because as you said, it is a really foodie kind of place.
People think of France, of course, France has delicious food in Europe, but but Belgium actually is surprising and accessible and yeah, they just have great pastries and chocolates as well. So that's why I got hooked on chocolate from an early age. And then also my parents, my mother being Japanese I grew up with amazing home cooking Japanese food from her and my father and mother both loved delicious food.
So I was spoiled by going to great restaurants and so on.

Claudia von Boeselager: You're so lucky Sakiko yeah. Amazing. So beautiful. And you're quite an accomplished expert on nutrition and amongst other things, you have a three year master's degree in personalized nutrition based on functional medicine, which is for me, the medicine of the future.

Have you always been so aware of the importance of healthy nutrition and avoiding sugar?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: No. So, I like many people grew up understanding that you know, we should have sort of low fat yogurts. We should have low fat, this and that because, you know, fat makes you fat. That was kind of the logical simplistic

Claudia von Boeselager: I grew up with that too .

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: That most people understood. And it was not only our fault, but actually some misguided us government guidelines started the whole thing about an anti-fat kind of movement and the food companies followed suit and created a lot of low fat products as you know, and in order to make them taste good, they had to increase the sugar because otherwise it tastes like nothing.
And so progressively sugar crept into so many food products in the supermarkets. But. Yeah, I still, until just until about like eight years ago, I was convinced that, you know, that was the case and that sugar was just sort of empty calories, like not really nutritious or anything, but just sort of calories.

And so I definitely didn't come at this feeling from a very young age that sugar was bad at all. And in fact, I have a memory of being in the supermarket and London and Sainsbury's and this lady or was looking at me as I. Reached out for the sugar package for baking because I love baking.

And she looked at me she's like, that stuff is poison. I looked at her and I was like, ah, whatever. And I rushed her aside. Like a year later I was deeply into sugar science and couldn't believe how it's. Not neutral. It's, you know, actively toxic is a very inflammatory word, but I really feel it's on that spectrum to the body actively not just neutral.
So, yeah

Claudia von Boeselager: I'd love to dig into that a bit more. Because I feel like, you know, sugar, everyone knows the word sugar. Some people are addicted to it that they might know or not know about. And can you talk a bit more about what exactly is sugar and how to best tell when buying a product and reading the food label? What to look out for?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. Yeah. So, basically bigger is biochemically sucrose. That's what we normally think of as sugar and sucrose is just a word that means a di saccharide of two things, glucose and fructose, and those bonded together equal sucrose. And you can tell if it's the sort of harmful sugar, if it tastes sweet.

So, What is particularly problematic about sugar is the fructose component. Many people argue about this, the line and so on but genuinely, if you look at the body of research and evidence there is a lot of evidence that excess fructose in particular is very damaging. And so that's half of the sucrose molecule, if you will.

So table sugar, half of that is fructose, but also it's also problematic when they're in combination and in all sweetening, typical sweetening ingredients. You will find varying combinations of free floating, fructose, or fructose bonded with glucose and so on. And that goes for dates, you know, date syrup, coconut sugar, table sugar, raw cane, sugar, Brown, sugar honey, those sweetening ingredients are all slightly different varying combinations of glucose and fructose.

So they're essentially the same. They're broken down into the same things, glucose and fructose. And they had the exact same pathway metabolic pathway in the body that is harmful. So there is no difference between Brown sugar and white sugar. In fact, in the supermarket, a lot of Brown sugar is allowed to be called Brown sugar.
When in fact it's white sugar where they've added back a bit of molasses to make it Brown. So it really there's no distinction. So when you taste something sweet or you have a sweetening ingredient, unless it's one of these few organic and I'm sure we can talk about them, a non sweeps, healthy ingredients.

There's a few of them out there. Thankfully one of those then, you know, it's got fructose in it, you know, it's sugar basically. So by your taste, like literally by your taste and even with fruit, for example, if you have a bright green banana, it doesn't taste very sweet. Yeah. If you have very ripe banana, it's very sweet because fructose has formed in that fruit during the ripening process.

So you can tell by your taste. Of the food you're eating. If it's sweet, it's got fruit juice. And then in terms of food labeling you want to look at the back and luckily in the UK and Europe, everything is per 100 grams, whereas in the us for a while, it was like per servings only. And then it's difficult to compare.

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah, it still is by the way, because I had to point something out to my sister two weeks ago and it was per 30 grams. Cause she's like, Oh, it's only this amount of time. I was like no, actually this is a lot of sugar per a hundred grams.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: In grams. Cause you can just think of it like. As a percent, if it's 40 grams per a hundred.

Yeah. You know that 40% of the weight of the item you're holding the food item is sugars, you know? And so you shouldn't be a bit alarmed by, I would say. And think of it real treat or candy. So personally, I try to avoid any packaged food that has more than five grams, per hundred grams.

Of sugars. So, less than 5% of this item is sugars. And and I don't worry too much if it is less than that, if it's a natural kind of product or a healthy product, because it's really hard to have genuinely sugar-free food products, because you have trace amounts of sugars, even in like almonds or Hazel nuts, or so, you know, that's another warning sign.

If it's really 0.0, then usually it's sweetened with an artificial sweetener. If it tastes sweet or that it's not a natural thing. So I would say if you're looking at a food packaging, try to go for things that are less than five grams per a hundred grams. And I don't even pay attention to anything else on the nutrition label.
Like I don't care about calories. I don't care if it's a natural kind of healthy, like with natural ingredients. And it has less than five grams per a hundred grams of sugars. I think it's fine. And you will be surprised that on many sauces and you know, everything from ketchup to salad dressing, you'll find sometimes added sugars.
So just check the label and look at that amount.

Claudia von Boeselager: It's really incredible because I guess I have the fortune you could say of being handed a book and I'm trying to think back, and this is going to date me, but I think in the sort of early two thousands it was called sugar busters and it was by four us doctors around the pandemic around sugar.

And so it really opened my eyes and after reading the book and they also explained how to read it, you know, a label. Right. And I was looking at the US supermarkets and I was seeing that there was, they were putting sugar into bread. I was like, you know, who puts sugar into bread? And I was thinking, you know, it's such an addictive substance and I'd love to talk about it and hear your view around that as well.

That in absolutely everything, as you said in catch up, I mean, you know, even now with children, I try to be really careful about how much sugar they're actually getting, unless it is like genuine treats and that's okay. But otherwise they're, you're feeding them sugar enough front incentive. Can you talk, so talk a bit about the toxicity of sugar and the addictiveness, I guess as well.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yes. Okay, well, just maybe I'll take the addictiveness first. So, everyone quotes these famous study with breaths where they're feeding them either. They're having apps free access to sugar, liquid sugar, or cocaine, and the rats go for the liquid sugar every time. And they also do like these brain scans and showed that the areas that are associated with addiction that light up when it's, when there's sugar.

Claudia von Boeselager: Which is so scary in itself. I feel like everyone should know about this study.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. A hint towards the addictiveness of it. And then also what's particularly I don't know if you would call it addictive, but I think it's on the spectrum of addictive quality is that of all the food ingredients and food items, sweet sugar, and in particular fructose is the only one that.

Does not activate our satiety hormone, which is leptin. So it actually suppresses the effectiveness of leptin. So the lectin that's secreted in your body when you eat doesn't work with fructose. So at the same time for those actively. Increases the hunger hormone ghrelin. So on both sides, it makes you more hungry and it makes you less full.

So results. You keep eating whatever, not necessarily sugar, but whatever you're eating, you're going to eat more of everything. If you're on a high-fat diet on a high-fructose diet. So sometimes they, they do these studies like they're called ISO caloric studies, where they give people the same amount of calories, but one group has more glucose in the diet versus fructose.

And one group who has more fructose in the diet and they keep this calories the same and they check them over a week and see what biomarkers change is not. But it's really misleading because in reality, in the real world where your diet is not being fed to you in a controlled research environment just simply by being on.

A higher fructose diet, you're going to eat more calories you're so, so that's just one step one in like gaining weight. Right. So, so that's the thing about sugar in terms of, I think it's related to the addictiveness topic because it's, it just, it makes you eat more and usually more sugar because you're eating that anyway.

So, so, that's the really problematic thing. And in terms of toxicity, I mean, we could, I could spend hours and hours talking about toxicity, but so maybe I will just start with a key, I think like the most important toxicity factor basically, is that the nature of how fructose is metabolized.

It's quite special. And so some of when you eat fructose, it goes into your gut and some of it is absorbed through the intestines. And if there's a lot of it at one time, especially some of it eventually gets processed by the liver, which is your detoxification organ. And in the liver, it goes to this pathway that basically the end of the pathway, the steps through the metabolic pathway fructose and ends up in triglycerides formation.

So the creation of fats, triglycerides are fats and they are packaged up in these particles called VLDL particles and they get transported into the book. And so, you might most people when they get checked up by the doctor and as adults, this is a typical test that doctors do. They check your LDL cholesterol, they check your triglycerides number and you want that number not to be high.

For many reasons, including heart disease which is the biggest killer of human beings, still hearth disease as kills more humans than cancers and all of these other chronic diseases put together. So, that's a very important factor for that. And so basically fructose creates more triglycerides, but just by the nature of its metabolism.

The other thing about fructose metabolism is that it's not it's not a negative feedback loop. So with glucose, there's a negative feedback loop. So when you've got like enough, it kind of stops the process and makes it not keep going. Whereas with fructose, you can just, you can drink gallons of Coca-Cola or fruit juice, and it'll keep pushing this pathway and it'll keep producing these fats.
And so that's a problem because sorry, I'm trying to keep this short.

Claudia von Boeselager: No, it's good. And this is so informative. No, it's great.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: It's so, so I think most knowledge will up to date medical doctors, general practitioners people in functional medicine and nutrition. Believe that underlying the main chronic diseases that cause so much pain and problems.
And in people all around the world is this condition called insulin resistance. So insulin is this hormone that we need in order to get glucose. So when we talk about blood sugar, are we talking about glucose in the blood? And by the way, most things we eat have glucose and them like everything from broccoli to tomatoes, to rice, or, you know, everything has energy.

We use glucose a lot for energy. And so when insulin, what insulin does is it helps to get the glucose that circulates in our blood, into the cells that need it. To be burned for energy or to be actually used as storage as glycogen. And so, when insulin resistance is is happening then that insulin doesn't isn't able to activate that process of getting the glucose into the cells.

So you ended up having high blood glucose by high blood sugar, and your cells are actually starving for energy and not functioning properly and causing a lot of damage. And very there's the way that they actually test this condition and so on in animal models is they, the fastest way is to give them liquid fructose.

So they make the animals insulin resistance by giving them look liquid fructose. So that's a hint to like, what is a strong causal factor of insulin? Resistance is sugar. And I forgot to mention liquid sugar is really the worst. So like if you're going to have some sugar, like, please don't have it in a fruit juice, but you know, have it in a piece of cake once in a while, but don't cause liquid sugar causes all of these things in a much more rapid fashion.

And actually there are studies that have proven direct causal link of having liquid fructose, liquid sugar too much. And that causing directly colon cancer like directly.

Claudia von Boeselager: But is that like the concentrated on healthy fruit juices or is it a fresh squeezed orange juice that you make at home or does that the organic Apple juices?
Is that when you say whole juice.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: I mean, unfortunately they're the same biochemically you know, some fruit juices that you're packaged. They've added even more sugar to them, but that's quite unusual cause there's plenty of sugar and fruit juice. And unfortunately, even if you make it at home, it doesn't matter if it's the fibers pretty much eliminated and it's just pure fructose, almost pure fructose.

We cannot eat like five apples easily because there's a lot of fiber in there. But if you put them into juice, you can easily drink five apples of juice problem. It's a huge hit of fructose all in one, go in a liquid form, which really. It's all right. It's all these pathways. And so, there's still a huge amount of research on all the causes of insulin resistance, but some of the leading researchers, they've concluded that it, you can already see insulin resistance in the muscle cells.

So the muscle cells are where a lot of glucose are, is disposed as glycogen to, as a storage. And when that is not working they've noticed that they can tell that's not working in the muscle cells. And they think that the cause of this is that within the muscle cells. And how does fat get within the muscle cells?

That's if the mitochondria, these little organelles in the muscle cells are not working properly or as efficiently as possible, and, or they are inundated by. Triglycerides floating around in the blood and what causes triglycerides to and about in practice. So, so I think that's might be the mechanism at play with why fructose causes insulin resistance in a big way.
If you have too much.

Claudia von Boeselager: That's super enlightening. And I mean, also. I think most people are familiar with, you know, table sugar is so bad, et cetera. So it's a very narrow view of what is actually sugar, but fructose is obviously fruits arrived. Are there any fruits that are, you know, still okay to eat, but then smaller quantities?
What would you say.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. I mean, I really like the the amounts of fructose and most fruits versus the fiber and vitamins and micronutrients. Like usually the is like most fruit is good to have. You know, one portion of fruit a day because they have micronutrients, they have fiber, they don't have that much sugar, you know?

However it does depend on the fruit and like dried fruit, for example, which is very sweet is really, should be thought of as a candy. I mean, there is some fiber in there, but like the amount of sugar in there is just not just fighting the fight, I would say. So if you'd like dried fruit habit once in a while, but really it's like candy basically.

Whereas like berries, wild, blueberries, Raspberries strawberries, blackberries. They have great micronutrients, polyphenols, healthy things for you, and they are relatively low in sugars. Or whereas for example, grapes, you know, they're very sweet. They're not very high in fiber. They're more, you know, less that you would want to have.

And you can really tell by the taste, like if it tastes really sweet then, and many of the things like if you, if we were to eat a a strawberry from a hundred years ago, we would be like, God, this is sour it's because you know, all the farming is geared towards crossbreeding towards more and more sweet fruits.

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah, exactly. And then obviously the organic

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: I don´t avoid fruit entirely, I eat berries every other day or something like that.

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah, me too. I think my go-to is sort of the blueberry and then sometimes raspberry and strawberry as well. Organic also let's touch on longevity. And if you had to choose one function of your body to focus on, to optimize for longevity and lengthy health span, what would it be?

One function of your body. And you touched on also metabolic health before, but I wonder, would you say that would be for longevity and to optimize for longevity? What would be the one function of your body to focus on? If you were trying to optimize
for longevity.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah, a hundred percent metabolic function because it's the basis of all other functions, because it is the basis of you being able to create energy in your body and your everything from your immune system to your, you know, all your endocrine system, nervous system is dependent on your ability to efficiently and in a clean way, like clean as in not lots of peripheral damage which can happen like, with you know, reactive oxygen species being created when we don't process food and don't metabolize and create energy in an efficient, clean way.
So definitely I would optimize metabolic function always. That's the key.

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah. I try to there's a really cool Silicon Valley startup called Levels health. I don't know if you've come across them. Yeah, and they have really cool app, I guess, interface. They use the Abbott laboratories, continuous glucose monitor.

You just basically you have, you know, you have it stuck on you two weeks at a time, but you see your personalized, metabolic response to different foods, to different things you drink, but also to stress, to exercise. And it's really fascinating. And I think the future as well, because I completely agree that metabolic health is so far reaching in so many different aspects of life.

And to have that personalized, which is fantastic, what we have available nowadays to have that personalized response, because you know, it's not one size fits. All right. So, I saw my metabolic response to a sweet potato soup. I thought I was, you know, being super healthy, eating sweet potatoes. Well, for me, it just has this extreme glycemic response and insulin response.

So, that's really exciting. I think what was coming out of them?

Can you talk a bit about sugar and skin aging? Does sugar have an effect on skin?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yes, it totally does. So, I mean, as I mentioned, I would focus on metabolic function for longevity. That's also because your body prioritizes, you know, it has a limited amount of resources and you can increase the energy resource or decrease it by being metabolically healthy or not.

And so when your metabolism is not functioning, optimally, it's going to deep prioritize things that are not essential for your survival, including your hair and your nails and your skin and so on. So that's one like. Sort of an indirect pathway whereby having too much sugar is going to suppress your metabolic function and it's going to deprioritize your body's ability to have nice skin re skin renewal and song.

And then also so what happens is this thing called glycation and maybe your audience has heard of these advanced glycation end products, which are called ages because, and that conveniently is a sort of pun because it really causes aging. And what happens is that sugar attaches sugar molecules attached to the proteins that, you know, our body is mostly made up of protein.

Our muscle, our skin is made up of mostly protein. And when this process happens with them, attaching to the proteins, that's called glycation and fructose, by the way, does this. Like a million times more than glucose or not. It might not be a million, but a lot more than I know it's because it's very reactive.

And when that happens, that totally sort of distorts the structure of those proteins. And when that structure is distorted, then you're much more likely to get wrinkles. And it's a direct cause of cellulite because that underlying layer underneath the skin, the subcutaneous fat, basically it starts to get distorted because of this natural protein bedding gets messed up because these sugar molecules get attached and mess up the structure.

And then you've had this dimpling of the skin, which is cellulitis. So both range have

Claudia von Boeselager: you had to find someone who is happy to have,cellulitis.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: So wrinkles and so you're like definitely. If you want to avoid them, then you want to have a low sugar diet.

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah. Right. Very good to know. One key issue preventing longevity is of course chronic disease. And in your view, how can we best optimize for this chronic disease pandemic and that we have currently with around chronic disease?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. In terms of lifestyle or nutrition.

Claudia von Boeselager: Nutrition I think, I mean, potentially lifestyle as well. Right. But in terms of nutrition and you know, sugar at being a major effect on that.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. Longevity. Yeah. So I mean, as I mentioned, metabolic function so, important. And so I would say that, well, obviously we've been talking a lot about sugar, so you should try to avoid or reduce your sugar intake dramatically. And in doing that, you know, can eat more of like healthy protein sources and healthy fats.

And the thing is also about like our metabolic function. So, I mean, we've been talking a lot about what to avoid, which is sugar, but what really can help is to make our metabolic function more. Human, like, and I'll explain that and saying, and also more flexible. So for most of humanity's existence as a species we really did not have access to refined carbohydrates.

 I mean, farming agriculture started around 10,000 years ago which is like 0.1% of our existence. It sounds like a long time ago, but actually in the big picture, it's not. And and also sugar Ray, you know, actually having access to a lot of sugar. It happened, even less time ago, a hundred years ago that we were had everyone had access to sugar that only happened recently as well.

So, we were eating for most of our species lifetime , wild animals, fish, things that we caught things that we collected nuts seeds. So, the diet that we're on now is not sort of normal for most people, and you can say, Oh, but my grandmother had bread and sugar and stuff, but like, that's still not going far back enough.

So we have to catch up with this current diet. And our metabolism is genuinely evolved to be able to burn fats for energy and to switch even to burn some protein for energy. But so now I think we need to retrain our metabolism and not retrain it. Sorry to give it the nutrients and foods that it is capable of of metabolizing and. Or evolution. So that means having more fats in the diet that are healthy fats. Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager: But like avocado, olive oil.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Butter from grass fed.

Claudia von Boeselager: Grass fed exactly.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. Those things. And by, avoiding the sugar and increasing those fats in the diet and maybe doing some fasting overnight, which I think is everyone can do, which is basically the, I don't know the exact number of hours, but having more than 12 hours to 12 to 16 hours of not eating, then they'll naturally kickstart your body's sort of ketosis process, which is basically burning fat for energy.

So you're training your body to burn fat for energy, and you're not allowing it to take the easy route of just. Getting some carbs and burning those quickly. So by doing that, your body, even when you're sitting around, not eating is gonna, like when you've gone through a long, a fasting period, maybe 16 hours overnight, your body is going to burn your own body fat.

So if you're wanting to lose body fat as well, which is a longevity factor, it's not just an aesthetic thing, you know, is not good for longevity to have too much you know, that's going to really improve your body's ability to be flexible with different fuels sources and optimize for longevity.
For sure. Yeah..

Claudia von Boeselager: Amazing.

I'd love to jump into a few rapid fire questions and then get on to your journey. To becoming, I guess, an expert in all things, sugar, but also the reason why you created Nomosu after. So I'm starting with a few rapid fire questions. What are some bad recommendations you hear in your area of expertise?

So I think you must hear people recommending and experts in apostrophes recommending certain things around sugar. Like maybe you can need artificial sugar, but don't have, you know, glucose, what are some things that really make you cringe when you hear them?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Okay. So one would be that. Yeah, definitely.

The artificial sweeteners. I am not a fundamentalist. I mean, I like having organic food and I think inherently it's probably more likely to be good for me. And there, there is research showing that it is higher nutrients and you know, less chemicals from pesticides, obviously. But I was open when I started this journey.

I was open. The old sweetening ingredients that were not sh forms of sugar. So I did look at the artificial sweeteners, but one by one, I crossed them off because there is enough research to show that they're not helpful to health. And some of them are actively damaging and then others, you know, cause a lot of laxative effects that are quite strong and for some people, and basically I crossed them all out for evidence-based reasons.

So people who say like, Oh, but you know, if there's no research showing that sucralose causes cancer and it's not only about cancer, you know, there are other things that can go wrong. So, so, I I get a bit annoyed when people who haven't done the research, haven't read the research properly. Say those things that artificial sweeteners are fine.

I don't think they're fine. Another which is not what people say, but that are a lot of shoe sorry. Sugar-free food companies use multi-channel as a sweetener, especially, and chocolates and stuff, because it tastes just like sugar. It functions just like sugar. It acts like a preservative, just like sugar.

But you can say sugar-free, but once it's broken down in the body, it's broken down into glucose and fructose, ultimately, which is inside the body. It's sugar.

Claudia von Boeselager: For people just briefly on that for people not familiar with it. How do you spell that?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Maltitol.

Claudia von Boeselager: So people know to look out for that as well, because it's so deceiving if it says sugar-free, and then you're having the same metabolic response or yeah. Incident.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Because the breakdown process of multiple breaking down into those components is this thing called the polyol pathway basically in the body.
And that causes reactive oxygen species damage, basically. So the process of maltitol turning into fructose causes a lot of damage. So it's almost maybe potentially even worse and many people with diabetes buy these chocolates, and it's really damaging to them. And it's just, it makes me very angry that the food regulators allow this.

To be going on. Yeah. And often you will see a company says, Oh, sweetened with Stevia on the front and on the back, the first ingredient is multiple and the last ingredient study. So they're just using the Stevia as a marketing thing.

Claudia von Boeselager: I know. And that's why I think the education around reading food labels and actually understanding what these different, you know, fructose or, you know, the syrups or the corn syrup, or even like coconut sugar, coconut.
Oh, great. But it's sugar.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Right. So, yeah, it's the same. So, so, and then the third thing, I think that really well there's me is that the this health halo around like a gab syrup or which is by the way, I would prefer to have table sugar. Then a gab syrup because It´s higher in fructose and it's liquid.

So it's terrible, I think. But, and there's this some kind of health halo and some kind of idea that Oh, these are natural. So sugars are natural sweeteners, but sugar is completely natural, like tea, you know, sugar. Unnatural rusher. So the whole natural argument is totally irrelevant and misleading.

Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager: Marketing as well. I know. And I feel that, you know, people who take things at face value and maybe aren't paying that much attention and, you know, come into a supermarket and especially, you know, for example, in the U S where you have, you know, a healthy. Diets, and this is good for you and whatever, and no, sugar added.

And I'm thinking, great. You know, this is all healthy, but actually it's packed in sugar and it's super detrimental to your health and to tell the day, whatever comes where it's a real, genuine packaging that actually tells you the truth. If you don't need to be, you know, a scientist to know this, but I think it's Dr. Mark Hyman, who says, you know, if any supermarket you should just stay around the outside, never go into the fresh food, fresh vegetables, getting wild, caught fish, grass, fed meat and then check out.

Do you have any particular morning routine to set your day up as a success?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yes, well, a couple of things I do basically I fast, so I don't have breakfast. And that is not necessarily a circadian rhythm optimization thing. It's just that I have like to be social and have dinner with friends and so on.

So in order to get that sort of 16 hours of not eating, it's easiest for me to skip. Breakfast. The first thing I do is a bit of yoga, which I've been doing since I was a teenager because I had an Indian family friend who had a yoga, like nobody heard of yoga at that time. Amazing. But he gave me a routine and taught me and I've been doing it ever since.

So I do about a 20 minutes, 15, 20 minutes of yoga. And then I meditate for about 20 minutes. So that's my morning routine.

Claudia von Boeselager: Oh, that sounds perfect. And your meditation practice, you follow any certain one for listeners may be interested.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. So I'm half Japanese and I've spent a lot of time in Kyoto in one particular temple.

It's a Zen Buddhist temple Nanzen Ji and I learned from them the monks there, they give some meditation sessions that you can join for and you can stay at the temple. So I stayed there quite a few times. And so it's basically Zen but it's meditation, which is just breathing and counting the out the exhalations up to 10 and then back to one again.

And these are you focused on the exhalation along deep exhalation. And do you focus on your sort of stomach area and that deep breath of excalation, then you just release and then the inhalation kind of happens naturally, and it's really amazing to feel fills your lungs. And yeah, that's kind of very simple.

Claudia von Boeselager: I'm feeling so relaxed, even just thinking of it. It's incredible. What a way to start the day, right? I'm such a step up for success. Have you had any particular mentors along the way that have made a big impact on you?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yes. I mean, I've had some who I've met in some who I haven't met. And yeah, so, so there is one British doctor called Dr. Yadkin who wrote this book back in the seventies called pure white and deadly, which is at the turning point when all these food guide dietary guidelines said, Oh, we should decrease our fat in our, in, in our diet. And he was like no. Look at this real research I've done like, look at these studies, like, no it's sugar, that's the problem.

But he was harassed by the sugar associations and really went through a tough time. And so he was like the first person as pioneer. So he was definitely an influence for me. And. And also in re real life too, is my actual mentor who I see regularly is Renee Elliot. Who's the founder of planet organic.

And she just like. Such an inspiring, amazing person. And I heard her give a talk. I went specifically to that event to hear her talk, and she was just so genuine and so passionate about creating a place where people could feel safe walking into a food store, and they knew that it was sustainable, good quality, organic, healthy ingredients, and products.

And yeah, she's really completely led by her heart and vision. And then also she's incredibly intelligent and just a wonderful human being. And it's interesting because I really, it really resonated with me because for me, for creating my own brand Nomosu it was also like, I want people to see this brand on the shelf and they don't have to look at the back.

They can if they want to, but they don't have to worry about the ingredients. They don't have to worry about the nutritional label. Like they know it's going to be healthy for them. And that's it, you know, that's kind of the, I have a similar feeling of what Renee was saying about, she wanted that to be the feeling people get. Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager: So walking into the store, I mean maybe there needs to be a new approval agency that there's a special logo or a special stamp on these products so that, you know, I don't need to think about it. I need to turn it around and look at the label. Maybe that's the vision one day. I'd love to change.
Yeah. I'd love to change gears and understand more about your journey to actually going about creating Nomosu. Can you tell us about that?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. So, yeah, back as I mentioned before, I thought sugar was just empty calories, but then I started suffering. I started baking a lot more when my ex partner kind of moved over me and I was more sugar crept into my diet in Britonlee.

And I go to personal trainer for a while and he pointed out in my dialogue, like, Oh, you're having a lot of sugar, but I was like, Oh, you know, but it was all in the form of like drive through and low fat yogurts with sugar in them, men and so on. And so he told me like, you need to change this. And I did, and I increased my protein and then I thought, okay, I'm going to go all the way because my skin was suffering also at the time.

And I was getting really energy slumps in the mid morning and the mid afternoon, which I wasn't, that used to. And so I went on a sugar-free diet, like really no sugar and no fruit, even for three weeks. And. Everything improved dramatically. And I felt, and I'd ever felt in my life before because my whole life has had a bit of sugar every day.

I think it's normal for us in this day and age to have that experience. And so, having this incredible sustained energy, I was not, I never knew that was possible to feel that great amazing. And so I was so happy, but then I realized like, Oh I really miss chocolate. And so, so that's when I started doing research and.

After work. I went to the British library in the evenings and reading all these papers and journals from food science, and also from metabolic health hands-on perspective. And then I found a few ingredients that were not sugars that were not unhealthy artificial state and there's that tastes sweet, but nature has provided and I was.

So excited and I started experimenting with them and just to list them there's Stevia xylitol, erythritol and monk fruit extract, and then another one called , which is not available in the, in Europe yet. But yeah, so I was reading about these and experimenting with them, and then I found I could make initially chocolate chip cookies that were healthy and genuinely sugar-free honestly sugar-free and tasted good.

Claudia von Boeselager: With almond flour or coconut flour or.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: A mixture of different non-gluten sours, buckwheat flour, Brown, rice flour, white rice slur.

Yeah. I mean, I was so pedantic, like almost not as great, but it does have trace amounts of sugars. Did it help you to be sugar free?

Yeah, but they only taste the so the products developed over time and people started buying from me. So basically colleagues at work were like, Oh, I'm trying to put sugar too. Can I? And they tasted the cookies and they loved them. And one friend in particular, like ordered like 50 a week and she said and she really wanted yeah, she needed it. And I was like, yeah, I need them to like, and she's like, you need to like make a business out of this because this, these products don't exist. And she and I came with the same, sorry, before I started making my own products, I did go to planet organic and whole foods and looked for honestly sugar-free healthy treats, chocolates, cookies that I could eat, but none of them met that bar.
They were either sweetened with, you know, natural, as we say, sweeteners like honey, dates, etcetera. Or you can find these artificially sweetened sugar-free products that are not healthy. So it was one of those two categories. There was nothing that was honestly sugar-free and natural and organic and healthy.
So, so that's the reason for it. I started Nomosu cause I wanted that for myself to be honest. And then for my friends and colleagues and people apparently really wanted this as well. But I only could create seriously delicious because it had to be that benchmark because. Nobody wants to feel like they're sacrificing or there's no point, like I would rather have some chocolate with sugar in it versus one that tastes like dirt.

Yeah. I mean, not only like it needed to be tasted, I wanted it to taste fantastic, amazing. Equally good to premium chocolates, if not better. And the only way I could do that is by needing the founder of this this company that creates this Stevia that is unique in the world. So most Stevia in the world comes from China and is grown with a lot of chemicals and pesticides and so on. And it's extracted to sweet molecules are extracted from the plants using a lot of harsh chemicals as well. So, what do you end up with a, you end up with a different molecular structure of the suite molecules, like literally the structure of the molecule changes and that changes the way it reacts with our taste receptors and it tastes bad.

And also the chemical remnants are there and that also tastes like chemicals. So you, it's not a pleasant taste. So that's so unfortunate because many people have tried a lot of products sweetened with Stevia and say they don't like Stevia, but that's because it's this totally destroyed and so, this other company, the company that we use their Stevia is grown organically all the way.

And it's Extracted using just water. So they've created this amazing process, just using membranes. And they just extract it using water, no chemicals at all. And that maintains the molecular structure and it reacts nicely on our taste buds and on our sweet receptors and it tastes great and it finishes and it's complete and full kind of lovely natural sweetness.

And this explains to me why I was wondering, why are people in the Amazon and South America eatingSteviafor how they had been eating it for thousands of years? If it tastes bad, like why would they do that? Like humans don't do that. And actually naturally natural Stevia tastes great.

Claudia von Boeselager: What's the name of the company?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: It's called SWT studying.

Claudia von Boeselager: I'll link this for everyone listening in the show notes as well, so they can find.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: But it's right now, it's mainly like a B2B business. So for food companies who want to create sugar, free products, they can use their but we've collaborated with them and we're going to assume, come out with a B to C so retail product, which will be an organic sweetener sweetening ingredients.
That's like a sweet mix. That is a one-to-one replacement for sugar.

Claudia von Boeselager: Excellent. Cause it's so hard to then find the products and, you know, like baking here too, but you take the Stevia that you can find. So it's great to have that eye-opener of where the traditional Stevia is actually being chemically produced in China, which is you know, defeats the purpose.

Really yeah. Yeah, that's really helpful to know. And so could you talk a bit about the vision that you have for Nomosu and what you would love to achieve with it?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah, well, I really, as I mentioned, I want it to be one of like a completely trusted brand. And that It will be the go-to brand for sugar-free honestly sugar-free products and ingredients.

And really we are starting with these chocolates. We have eight different flavors that we've started with, but we have many other products in the pipeline from like cocoa drinking powders for hot chocolate from keto friendly chocolate spreads using MCT oil. Chocolate hazelnuts spreads.

And as I mentioned, this sweet mix, which we've, by the way, tested with a lot of pastry chefs so far, and they're just, and also Renee, who's an amazing Baker pastry chef in herself. And everyone is blown away by how it exactly tastes and behaves as sugar. But it's not sugar and it's organic.

And so, that's one thing. And then also we have. Like syrups and maple syrups coming. We have lots of different sweet ingredients that and sweet products that we think can help people also cookies the chocolate chip cookies that I started with. We are working to make them perfect. And so, the vision is really have Nomosu be like the go-to brand for honestly, sugar-free treats.

And I really hope that mothers and I can give them to, to their children because that's a really important age where you're developing your tastes and so on. And also for their longterm health, it really helps for them to not have a lot of sugar in their diet. And also I should mention that we've really if you taste the chocolates, you know, like the milk chocolate is sweet tasting, but we've really tried to calibrate very carefully the sweetness levels and all of our products not to be like overly sweet.

We could make them super sweet, but we don't think that's necessary. And and also. Eat all the delicious flavors of the chocolate of the cacao can come out. If you don't put too much sweetness in there. So it's a really nice, and we got great feedback that the balance, the sweetness is really good.

Claudia von Boeselager: I can vouch for that because I had the pleasure of trying some of them and they're absolutely delicious. And I love the way that you've been able to really contrast with the sea salts dark chocolates, all the different dark chocolate ones were delicious as well. The almond butter is so smooth with the hazelnuts.

I mean, I could go on and on, but they're even look beautiful from the beautiful packaging. And even my children loved the packaging. They thought it was for them, but like these beautiful rainbow colors, and I thought they're vegan, they're organic and they cover it and take so many boxes. So it's such an exciting product.
And thank you for making this impact on the world that give people the choice to still enjoy chocolate without the guilt of detriment to their health. Speaking of bodies and body composition and sugar.

What have you seen through your research? The, has the main driver and impact of weight gain?

I think a lot of people obviously still, and we're becoming slowly more aware that, you know, fat is not the enemy. And we talked, touched on this before, but maybe you can. Dig a little deeper into body composition and sugar.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. So as we touched on before actually you, in order to burn your own body fat, you need to train your body to burn fat, which means eating fast.

And so, yeah, that's a key point which is a bit counter-intuitive at first, but when you think about it, it makes sense. So, so that's why having higher fat versus carbs in your diet can definitely help your body to burn fat and also with yeah. Body composition. So, so as I mentioned, inherently in the fructose metabolic pathway or their sugar metabolic pathway is the creation of fat.

So the end of that pathway ends and triglycerides but also insulin resistance itself, which is caused by excess sugar intake. Is a condition where you're going to, you're going to be storing fat more so just getting into that condition is a setup for storing more fat. So you don't want to get into that condition.

And what causes that is having excess sugars. And also fructose in particular creates a particular type of fat called visceral fat, which is fat in and around the Organs, the central Organs liver, the pancreas this area. And when those organs start to have more fat than they dysfunction as well, and that accelerates the whole process of insulin resistance.

And so that causes. Fat gain and fat being kept on your body. The other point is that the for justice, very inflammatory and also promotes chronic inflammation. And that also is a state of stress. And when the body is stressed, it stores fat. So when the body senses that there's something stressful in the environment, and that can be a signal to the body by the food you're taking in, or the lack of certain foods.
So if you're not taking in enough, omega-3 healthy fats that are essential, for example, or you're lacking some key nutrients, your body's going to think you're in a deprived state, even though you have enough, plenty of calories. If you don't have the right micronutrients, you will be in a stress state and you will store and retain fat.

And the other key point to point out is I did my dissertation thesis on fructose and atherosclerosis, or she is basically heart disease. And I saw during that research, that fructose turns on genes and turns off specific genes. So there's this thing called epigenetics, which is the turning on and off of genes based on your environment or diet and fructose epigenetically turns on fat creation, genes, fat production genes, and turns off fat burning genes.

So again, this like super combination, which is likely to cause you to gain fat or store fat. I'm sure a lot of people.

Claudia von Boeselager: Are very interested to understand them. Yeah. So, and that's just fruit. So glucose is that squatted to, someone's going to think, okay, I can eat you know, table sugar, but I can't eat fruit.

What, how would you interpret that for someone on a day-to-day basis?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. Okay. So, remember like table sugar is half of it is frictionless, so it's, you know, and so when you have like some white rice, it doesn't taste very sweet. White rice is mainly glucose. And I would definitely prefer to have a bowl of white rice than a bowl of sugar.

Even though neither is fantastic because the white rice will spike your blood sugar. That's another point that people should note is that they used to give fructose to diet people with diabetes because they saw, fructose doesn't spike your blood glucose in acutely, but over time it totally messes up your metabolic function and causes high blood sugar.

So, it's not the glycemic load isn't or glycemic index is not the only thing to consider in this. And so, you don't want to be having lots of the white rice potatoes. And so on every day, every meal, it's not great, but it doesn't have fructose in it. So they're bad for different reasons, but the, I would much rather have once in a while, some white rice or some.

Potatoes than to have a high fructose diet. So if people want to think about it that way generally, you know, having much like as all the healthy fats, you mentioned lots of healthy protein sources by the way, protein is the food that really satiates us for the longest. So we really can feel full for a long period of time on, on protein.
So protein is really important from that factor too. So the other thing about fat gain and weight gain is it's really hard to fight against our natural feelings of hunger and fullness. Like they're so natural and they're so strong. And so we don't need to be counting calories because those hormones like work for us and make us eat are generally reasonable amount.

That keeps us at the right way. So it's only when we had this really high sugar diet, which as I mentioned makes you hungry, makes you less full, that it's so hard to fight against those urges. Like you just. You can't. And so, and when people are in the state of obesity than a lot of those that the endocrine system is dysfunctioning.

And they literally feel really hungry a lot of the time. And they also, their body tells them don't move too much, you know, you need to stay still because you're in a sort of a dangerous state. So that means they sit and they don't exercise it but it's like a, it's like an earth. These are hormonal urges that are really hard to fight against.
So, so we have to be empathetic when you're getting in this metabolic, dysfunctional state and endocrine dysfunction state. It's really hard to come out of that.

Claudia von Boeselager: The vicious cycle really, right. Yeah. You have the peak and then the trough and then the probably is just so low for mental health as well.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: It's not about that. It's really like about hormones. Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager: And it's interesting because. Through my mother who suffers with memory loss and another podcast guests we had as well. So all in Dr. Dale Bredesen, who's a focused scientist on neurodegenerative diseases and where they're seeing a lot of the causes, also insulin resistance and the percentage of people around the world who have some form of insulin resistance.

And, you know, you're on a clear path to one of the other chronic disease from it, be it cancer, be it cardiovascular disease type two diabetes or Alzheimer's. And just having that awareness and the importance of having good metabolic health, but also avoiding of sugar and moving towards healthy fats as well.

And you touched briefly on the ketogenic diets, would you say that's the go-to diet, does that sort of one size fits all? Or what's your view on the ketogenic diet, which obviously doesn't include any sugar.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. So, I think the ketogenic diet can be at, from what I've read and heard very therapeutic and certain conditions including certain cancers States because cancer spreads with the condition of insulin resistance causes cancer to spread and cancer cells famously feed off of sugar glucose and fructose, to be honest.

And so that is one condition where ketogenic diet can be extremely useful. And there are other conditions including diet type two diabetes, where I think a ketogenic diet protocol could definitely help to maybe even reverse the diabetes. But I think there's a couple of things to note.

So, I don't think personally, I choose not to be on it. A hundred percent ketogenic diet, because I feel you have to have such a few carbs that it's really hard to get a lot of micronutrient, rich, even vegetables. And I love vegetables and I believe they're healthy for you, but definitely they have a lot of micronutrients that we need from minerals to vitamins.

So if you're on a really strict ketogenic diet and you need to have a very little amount of you cannot have a lot of even vegetables, not just carbohydrates, but even just plain vegetables. So that's why I choose not to do it for myself and And also, I think people say, sometimes say they're on a ketogenic diet where they're eating quite a lot of fat a reasonable why of protein, but they're still not meeting the extremely strict amount of carbohydrates, which is like 20 crowns or something like that per day.

So they end up having a high-fat and not so low carb diet, and they might be a Guinea pig. So in order to be in freedom, you need to test yourself every day. With these keto strips or whatever tests you can get for testing your ketones to make sure you're in that level. So that's why I think they're a bit dangerous in terms of, unless you're.

Super hardcore and testing yourself. You might not actually be achieving the ketogenic diet, even though you think you are. And you might be eating just a lot of fat and quite a lot of carbs and not, that's not great either.

Claudia von Boeselager: Margaret either. Exactly. Yeah, no, I agree. And it's also interesting because when I was with my mother and I recently, and I put it on the ketogenic diet because of her memory loss issues and to sort of re feed her brain with the ketones, which you have as well.

And then we were doing the testing as well. And it was interesting because. She was at a 1.1 monomer, right? So that's the measures, the BHP that the ketones in the blood. And I was at 0.7 and I was you know, Hey, how is she producing more ketones at night? So even it's so individual it's so personalized as well.

And that's why I think what I actually love about nowadays, you have the opportunity to test and to see, and we had from Abbott laboratories, the precision extra finger prick testing for the ketones, which is apparently the most effective. But you know, it's apparently very great for your DNA repair, et cetera, to get into ketosis, intermittently.

I mean, if you don't need to, for a medical purpose you know, some people recommend, I think it's tough to Peter Attia says once a month, for three days, you can do like a three-day fast. You can take exogenous ketones, like MCT oil, et cetera. But anyway, That's another topic but very interesting as well.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Just to mention also you can get into ketosis by fasting as well. You don't have a genic diet, so yeah, I believe I haven't tested myself recently, but I believe I do get into ketosis when I'm fasted for a good number of hours as well. So it's to be intermittent, you know, getting into for general people who are not in a disease state or something like where if I had cancer, I would definitely go on a strict ketogenic diet.

And, but and also if I had a cognitive decline and so on, so, so, but you can go in and out of ketosis and I think that's great for longevity.

Claudia von Boeselager: There's a really cool app. I don't know if you know it, but this sounds like it would be a few it's zero, Z E R O. Yeah. Yeah. So Dr. Peter Attia is actually the co-founder as well.

And as soon as you stop eating in the evening, you kind of tick starts, and it's as the different States that you're in. And it tells you that after, you know, for me, it was after 16 hours that I'm in a ketosis state as well. So it's nice to be able to track it. And as soon as you start beating again, so for people doing intermittent fasting, or even a few day fast, it's kind of a companion or coach with you that lets you know, what's going on in the background in your body, which is really great.

Just to change gears a bit, how has a failure or an apparent failure set you up for later success in life?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah, it's hard because there's so many little failures along this extremely challenging word to, to I suppose I, well, I'm speaking mainly about my experience with creating Nomosu. So, I think it's, yeah, it's not like one massive failure, but many small failures along the way, especially in terms of creating the perfect formula recipes.

Because I really, my benchmarks, as I mentioned, were very high and I wanted to tick every single box and not only tick every single, but think even more deeply about how can I make each product actually adding a lot of value to your health and diet, not just being neutral, like no sugar, you know, I can make sugar-free products, like, I could make a simple butter cookie with you know, white rice flour and Stevia and sugar-free, and it would be gluten-free, but it would spike your blood glucose would be high GI and it wouldn't be great.

So all of our products are high fiber and high. High-end polyphenols and we've even gone to the lengths of researching CACO fermentation to optimize for higher polyphenol content, which is a super food.

Claudia von Boeselager: Antioxidant.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: It is full. Yeah, amazing. In hands of polyphenols, but if you just go on pub med and you research CACO health benefits, cardiovascular health, cognitive health, it's a fantastic and fantastic food.

So, yeah, I had many failures along the way because I was trying to make this as extremely healthy as possible products and. As extremely delicious as possible at the same time. And I didn't want to like give away on either side. So, I had a lot of times where I was just crying, like so sad because I didn't feel it was tasty enough or, you know, I, one friends that like, no, I still get the different tastes.

It doesn't taste like sugar. And I went through a lot of failures on that front until I got here, but I'm so happy that I went through them. And I guess I learned through this whole process that you, if you really believe and have hints along the way that it's something is possible that just you should persevere persevere.

Claudia von Boeselager: That's great advice. I like that. What has been your most exciting purchase in the last six months? Anything from different things, something you use listen to.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Gosh, most exciting purchase in the last six months. Did it makes me sound so boring. All of my exciting purchases are like

Claudia von Boeselager: COVID allowing we all love this stuff.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. I just, I'm sorry. I'm not sure if it is the most exciting purchase. I, maybe something else will come to mind after our conversation. But like, for example, I love this thing called it's very simple. You can buy it on Amazon. It's called a mindful, so it's a blindfold, but the name is mindful and it's just really nice.

One where it's got foam around the edges and that you can actually open your eyes while wearing it and see darkness. So it's so, you know, usually my blindfolds have they press onto your eyes? Yes.

Claudia von Boeselager: Uncomfortable. I heard you. I think I saw an image of it. I must try it because I'm very night sensitive and obviously looking at sleep and hacking sleep and getting better at sleep. It's so important. So I'm going to try this so mindful you'd recommend it.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah, exactly. It's like the curtains in the room we're staying in at the moment I, that I'm staying in. It's it's not pitch black. So having this really helps me to sleep better.

Claudia von Boeselager: Okay. I'm going to try this as well.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Very small thing.

Oh, I love all this type of stuff. It is. It's an American brand of earphones called S H U R. And they're the ones that fit into your ear. So obviously you can have the big, like, audio techniques, ones. Posey ones, but the ones that fit into your ear the Shur. Brand they have the best ones and the sound quality is amazing and it's noise canceling.

And I really recommend them if you want, Oh, I must try them.

Claudia von Boeselager: I have the Bowser ones as well, which I love. And I think if, especially if you travel or something like that, to get that background noise out, it just also for brain function is really good. So I'll be sure to try them. And what is a book that you have gifted most often?

What is some of your favorite books to gift.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Okay, so one is the count of Monte Cristo. Yeah, it's just it's just a page Turner and a great read. So I've gifted that quite a few times. And then in terms of science and sugar what is it called? The Dr. Lustig.

Claudia von Boeselager: The book's name sugar metabolic syndrome and cancer. Is it that one.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: It's the one it's called something with the word fat in it. There's the bitter truth, sorry he writes really well, and it's very passionate about a particular fructose and so on, but he, but I he writes in a way that I think is accessible to most people and it just definitely alarms you to the issues with sugar what's happening.
I've gifted a lot. And then also on a more sort of philosophical, spiritual side of things is perennial philosophy by Aldous Huxley.

Claudia von Boeselager: What's that a fan?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: So is famous for a brave new world, mostly as a dystopian, like future kind of and so on, but he was. An incredible incredible writer, reader, intellectual philosophical philosopher, sorry. And he was the editor for the encyclopedia Britannica for quite a while because he's read everything and he summarizes and synthesizes all this wisdom and learnings from different religions and spiritual practices and things from around the world and does it so eloquently and beautifully and humbly.

And I think his book the perennial philosophy is just wonderful and so insightful. And you basically don't have to read all the different spiritual traditions around the world because he's got them in there in such a succinct and deep way. So, yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager: Sounds excellent. I'll make sure to check it out and have you come across Joseph Campbell's work and there's actually a great documentary called finding Joe and he summarizes so like methodology over the years and from all different cultures and contents and does just a common theme, be it, you know, from Japanese culture to Greek mythology and all of them.

So, also really interesting. Yes, exactly. The hero's journey for my listeners would like to learn more about nutritional health and toxicity of sugars, Stevia. And we talked about the book the better truth, but are there any other online resources or maybe from your website or newsletter that you would recommend for them to start with?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. So on a, well, from our website on Nomosu.com you can read the science section, which has some pages about sugar, about fructose, artificial sweeteners, and so on. And then we also have an ingredients page where you can read about the healthy ingredients in our products and explains to you the science behind wipes.

Stevia has a great choice as a sweetening ingredient. And there's all references to scientific papers there, which you can read the original ones as well. So that's a good resource spent a lot of time trying to make it accessible, but still very scientific so that people can read that. And in terms of, I would say more than online, necessarily research.

People, as you mentioned, Dr. Peter , I think his work is so valuable and his podcasts are so amazing. And these show notes, like you should definitely subscribe because they're extremely scientific with the most wonderful leading researchers in their fields. And he's a great interviewer. And so his podcast is definitely my number one topic for scientific metabolic health and longevity and then also I do love Dr. Rhonda Patrick who has a podcast called found my fitness. And she also has great scientific material and she's able to convey it as well in a technical way that is relatively accessible. I think her and Peter are really top in doing that and not dumbing things down.

I think most people are, you know, intelligent and can read and research and look up words if they need to. And I just think it's wonderful that they don't like dumb things down, which is there's too much of that going on. I think.

Claudia von Boeselager: Exactly. And I think with COVID as well, people have become more interested in the science behind things and the effects on the body, et cetera. So I think it's this new era of health that we're really seeing. So that's exciting.

Where can people learn more about what you are up to and what you would like to share with people, maybe social media or what's the best way to follow you?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah, well, again with, for now, I've remained kind of private on social media for quite a few years.

I think I'm going to start sharing more science information on my own Instagram but I think more useful for people would be to follow Nomosu because basically it's all the writing there is for me and the posts are for me. So that's a good place to learn more about what I'm up to and what the most is up to and where we share the science behind our products and about sugar and so on.

That's going to be on there a lot. And then also if they do want to sign up to our newsletter at nomosu.com we will also be sharing just like once a month research that we've read and analyzed, and we will have some infographics and illustrations and hopefully share a lot more about metabolism in an accessible way.

Claudia von Boeselager: Exciting.
And that's nomosu.com, right. And N O M O S U .com

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. Stands for no more sugar. So it's the first two letters of.

Claudia von Boeselager: No more sugar.
I love it. And you can see it really nicely on the packaging as well. And the people wanted to try the product. So are you available in Europe or where for people try your products?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: So from May 4th, we will be in the UK and planet organic in their 11 stores. And also in online we also shut sell on our website and nomosu.com within the UK and Europe for now. And we are planning to launch with a bunch of other retailers in the UK and in Scandinavia soon.

And also hopefully we're looking to work with some retailers in California and other. Places in the States within the next year, within this coming year. So, yeah. Exciting also Amazon, of course, Amazon Europe, Amazon, UK, we're getting set up with and hopefully eventually too.

Claudia von Boeselager: Perfect. That's exciting.
Do you have any parting thoughts or message for my audience that Sakiko, this has been a real pleasure, but anything to part with?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: I would say If you're interested in really getting in deep and reading research papers and on some really like science about metabolism and everything. I really recommend reading a book first called bad science by Ben Goldacre, who is an amazing doctor and researcher.

And it just, his book about science makes you understand all the flaws and biases and things that can go wrong in scientific research and nutrition research is extremely prone to a lot of these flaws because people are passionate about food and diet. So there's a lot of biases and things that can go wrong and just, well, poorly designed studies and so on.

And so just keep your, you know, that hat on when you're reading research papers and you're looking at people publishing stuff about nutrition, so I would say that's one thing. And when you listen to people online, like take everything with a pinch of salt, try things out for yourself.

Also why I studied my MSC was in personalized nutrition and it really is personal. Like people's bodies react differently to different foods and so on. So I would say that and then about the sugar, you know, really try to avoid liquid sugar, anything that's liquid and sweet, unless it's like, sugar-free sweetened with Stevia, for example, it's not going to be good for you.

And yeah, look at the food packaging, just look at the grams per a hundred grams. You know, if it's less than five grams for undergrads, go for it. I would say in sugars. Also you can tell if something has high in it really by the taste, unless it's sweetened with one of the organic, healthy, sweet ingredients.

I mentioned like steady or as I was told her with her 12 zone then it's going to be high in sugar. If it tastes really sweet, you know, if it tastes really sweet and you know, it has fructose in it. So yeah, those are some key tips, I think.

Claudia von Boeselager: Pleasing advice. Yeah, this has been so helpful and so enlightening as well. Thank you so much Sakiko for your time and sharing your knowledge and so exciting to see Nomosu out there and expanding and look forward to enjoying chocolates on a very regular basis with no guilt.
Thank you.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Thank you so much.

Claudia von Boeselager: Bye-bye.