hello henry hey hayley how you doing yes good thank you i am very excited to talk about this
topic i think it's going to be really interesting and one to really get the dads out there listening
i think men's health is something that is really important to talk about and i know this topic was
kind of suggested to me in terms of what to cover it on our podcast and I don't know if you've ever
thought very much about your dad bod Henry I'm sure you've never had to be too concerned about
that eating healthily as a chef it's a work a constant work in progress but I thought it might
be nice to kind of share with you and the listeners just things that I hear about in clinic
the questions I get asked and just to kind of go through some of the myths and also the facts about
what is actually important for men to concentrate on so you avoid the kind of pitfalls and you can
get the best out of your body um not just how it looks but the physical the mental the mental health
side of things as well um we'll dive straight in so and then um on that kind of theme of men's
strength and abs of steel we can talk about um some of the sort of best cut like kind of um
cooking utensils and also pots pans that sort of thing in the kitchen uh because you mentioned that
on a previous podcast and I really wanted to explore that further.
Yeah, great. We can talk all about all you want.
So starting off, something that I often hear in clinic is that people come in with an injury
and it might be commonly around the neck, around the knee, around the lower back
and sometimes into the tendon areas.
So things like the Achilles tendon.
And this is something really commonly seen in men
because the effects of declining testosterone.
So we talk about estrogen in females, that declining,
but we also see that happening in men.
And your kind of testosterone levels start to decline at the age of 30
and it becomes more and more pronounced sort of by the age of 40
and then further into your 50s as well.
And it's something like 1% to 2% decline from the age of 40 onwards.
so with that in mind your testosterone is there as a sort of protective function in terms of it's
quite sort of anti-inflammatory it has lots of different roles in terms of how it can impact on
your muscle strength so it's there to try and keep you as strong as possible like keep that
kind of man physique for reproduction and that's the kind of whole reason why you have testosterone
but so it helps to maintain your muscle strength so as we as we decline in testosterone your muscles
get a lot weaker and it can also impact on your bone density as well because your bone density
starts to change as you get through the sort of later years. It's a little bit slower than
what we've talked about in the female body. So roughly from the age of about 50 in men,
you will start to see a decline in bone density. But we need to be considerate about our bone
density in men, especially if, you know, in your younger years or if younger men have sort of been
using sort of steroid-based medications or you know using them at the gym that sort of thing like
the oral and polycerone or any other kind of steroid-based medications and then it does impact
on your bone density and you might suffer with that later on in life so they don't always think
about that though when they're kind of pumping the steroid and trying your muscles as big as possible
and you know I'm sure people won't be thinking about the impact on their bone density they'll
I think, oh, I'll just deal with that when I'm older.
But it's really important that you do.
And you might start to find that you become a little bit more tired.
That can be a kind of sign of lower testosterone.
And you will also see a kind of stiffening through the collagen and the tendons,
which then leaves you a little bit more prone to injury risk.
So this is another reason why it can impact on your recovery after exercise and the importance of what type of exercise you might want to do.
And, you know, I can sometimes nine times out of 10, we'll have somebody who's trying to do some exercise and they might have had, you know, a few days before that having some alcohol, gone out for a night out.
They'll have a drink and alcohol plays havoc on your tendons and also on your muscle.
so that's what we commonly see so we want to try and avoid these pitfalls or guys will cram in
sometimes exercise in a short space of time and you know as we do get older with the declining
testosterone we need to kind of monitor how are you allowing adequate kind of recovery periods
because otherwise there are different phases within our tendons and in our muscles and they
they go through a bit of a reactive phase if we overload them too fast and that's not nice because
that's an acute response that our body does to overload. And then if we keep doing that to the
body, you end up causing quite an inflammatory tendon and it becomes quite a grumbly tendon.
So the body tries to repair itself by laying down larger protein molecules and you'll have
something called neovascularization. So the tendon swells, you get blood supply growing into the
tendons and it becomes like just a bit of a disorganized, not very good quality tendon.
And then that way you just sort of think, well, okay, you can't load it as well. It'll be more
painful and it won't be as strong. So then you leave yourself at risk of, you know, rupturing
a tendon potentially and having a chronic issue through the tendon and it becomes more degenerative
with time. So we want to make sure we're kind of really respecting the body and what we're doing,
but we do need to subject our body to loading, but in the right way. And what areas are we
focusing on? Okay. So coming back to you, Henry, would you say you have any of those experiences
yourself or if you don't mind sharing or should I talk more about what I said?
No, I mean, I guess I'm a dad and I have a body and whether it's an official dad bod,
I don't quite know.
I guess probably with me and my health, I probably think about my kids' health and my wife's
health and I probably don't think about mine so much or I don't worry about it, so to speak.
But I guess as I have had a family and getting a little bit older, they're still not too old,
I definitely feel, you know, whether it's like the weight is harder to shift or I feel
a bit tighter, you know, if I do exercise and push a bit hard, you know, that kind of
recovery time can feel, you know, you leave me feeling a bit sore.
And then I'm probably, you know, like my job is quite sedentary.
So I sit at an office, I drive to work, you know, I sleep in a bed.
So I'm probably, you know, hunched up and, you know, not moving as much as I would like.
And then, I don't know, probably a combination of probably drink a little bit too much alcohol.
I do try and not drink every day, but I do quite like beer.
I'm not going to lie.
But then, you know, there's probably been times where I've, you know, overindulged on the weekend, say.
And then, yeah, that kind of, that recovery period can be quite tricky.
But I'm actually slightly suffering from a sore neck.
I had a bit of a heavy weekend, two weekends ago.
and I did some press ups and sit ups straight out of bed and probably, I don't know, maybe I was a bit dehydrated
and something went and it's been quite painful.
So I've had to, I've been to the chiropractor a couple of times.
I'm very fortunate my brother's a chiropractor so he's quite a handy person having a family.
But then I also had a sports massage and that sounds really nice.
I hadn't had like a proper massage for like outside of like a hotel where they just kind of, I don't know,
stroke you for a bit but i'm not really a big fan of those but this was like proper painful kind of
like hot stones i think she did some dry cupping anyway all sorts of stuff but it definitely
loosened me up and i feel better but it's still yeah um i guess it's that reality for me of like
i'm not as young as i used to be and maybe you have to think about things a bit differently but
i mean are they are they kind of like normal you know as you know as you enter into your
forties you're kind of these all things to expect as a dad well um well the the things that we can
see but not something that you should have to put up with so so sometimes we we look deeper into some
of the risk factors so you took the example of um you woke up and it was suddenly there with your
neck pain and um this is really common but what we have to do is look um before the time of injury
so basically what happens or builds up the weeks or months leading up to the injury is it that you
You're doing the same repetitive exercise without stretching sufficiently.
Talking about the declining testosterone, I know you're so young and healthy, Henry,
but as the testosterone declines, it would cause more of this issue with the muscles
and the stiffening and weakening to the tendons.
And that's because testosterone has impacts on tendons because it supports collagen synthesis
and that's why it works.
So obviously as it declines, it's going to become a stiffer area in the muscles and tendons.
So if you are kind of not stretching adequately or you're doing the same exercise and your body's kind of used to you doing the same thing, but you're not progressively incrementing your strength to match, you know, to match what's happening in the physiology of your body.
Or, you know, it could even be things like, I know obviously you're a chef, everyone listening knows you're a chef.
So it could be that your working postures are contributing to it.
It could be mattresses. We often talk about in clinic, you know, how good is your bed?
And the amount of people who will sometimes say, I've got the same mattress and I've had it for 20 years,
but I don't really want to, I can't afford to buy a new one.
Which I understand, mattresses are expensive.
However, our back, and if you think of how long you're in the bed for, you know, eight hours a night at least,
you want to make sure your joints and your muscles and everything are fully supported.
And then on top of that, your pillow position.
Are you sleeping with too many pillows?
Are you sleeping with too...
I often...
It's the opposite to women because men will often say,
well, I sleep on one really thin pillow because my wife has them all.
So I always hear.
That's so true.
I got the two crap ones.
Yeah, my wife's got the premium ones and then she sleeps on one
and the other one is kind of nearby and I've got the dregs.
Yeah, actually I've got a really...
Our mattress is, we replaced it a couple of years ago and it's actually really comfy.
But I found out that the mattress room before that was my mother-in-law's,
one that she discarded after sleeping on it for like 10 years.
I was just like, obviously when we got married, we didn't have any money.
And I still didn't have any money, but even less then.
And anyway, so we do have a new mattress and that has made sleeping so much nicer,
but I probably haven't.
I need to invest in a better pillow, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
And what you should look at, if I had a pound every time someone says to me, what's the best pillow?
And I wish I could make them because that would be ideal.
But basically, you need to consider...
Sounds like a business opportunity, Hayley.
No, I think so.
So what you're really looking for is the kind of distance from the outside edge of your shoulder to your kind of ear position.
If you're quite broad and everyone's different sizes, obviously, if you're quite broad, you might need, you know, maybe one bigger pillow or two pillows to kind of fill the gap so that you can try and keep your spine in alignment.
And then it depends on what you put that pillow on.
You know, if you're going to put it on a softer mattress, then you might not need so much of a pillow elevation because you're going to be slightly more curved.
Sunking.
Yeah, more sunking.
whereas if you've got really good stability through the hip and pelvic area and the knees
and ankles then you want to kind of offload the neck with the right level so everything's in a
nice line so it's not it's not something that's so straightforward but it's something to consider
and then on top of that you know how how not just looking at the neck but looking at if we if we have
an injury we often in physio talk about joints above and below and that can be two joints above
below the injured area so what's going on around the shoulders and what's going on the elbows and
the hands and you know are people having symptoms you know related to that pins and needles numbness
any kind of muscle loss of strength any altered sensation in the hands or in the legs if it's a
lower limb injury and so that's what you're kind of considering you know have you had it before
is it something that you're kind of masking it gets better after a couple of weeks but then
four months later it comes back i've had a i've had like a i think i've mentioned before like my
my lower back is i've had problems with it and i've done quite a lot of pilates and stuff so i'm
quite conscious of you know when i'm doing exercise or things or or you know whether it's
some digging in the garden to kind of like make sure i'm bending the knees because i know that
that can flare up but my yeah i've never really had neck pain and um but uh when i had the massage
she would she pinpointed the my shoulder blade a big old knot and and she was like you know she
found it fairly quickly and then started you know working at it and um which obviously was quite
painful but you know i was there to you know have it have it sorted out and um and uh um and then
she was then talking through like oh why this might have happened and she said you know she
mentioned things like probably you know being dehydrated and like that build up over months and
then sometimes it just takes an event like you know you've you've you've possibly not been drinking
much water and maybe a bit too much alcohol and i was like oh yeah this is exactly what happened i
had a boozy weekend didn't drink much water jumped out of bed right that's it you know i'm gonna you
know get monday going did a little press-ups and then um yeah wallop it punished me so um yeah
Yeah
And we see it a lot
Because you know
People will go for
You know
Beer or two
And then they try and run Like a 10k race Or a half marathon Yeah you said before Yeah I should have listened but you leave yourself if you do dehydrate yourselves and you and you got you know
the this kind of declining um testosterone but you've also got the the issue of having had alcohol
we know the direct impact on um causing sort of micro tears and sort of you're more at risk of a
tear as well in the muscles yeah yeah and so yeah you don't really want to be going down that route
and at least keeping hydrated in the round look definitely as well yeah so the rotator cuff
injuries so that shoulder injuries um is quite common in men um especially around the ages of
sort of 30 to 45 50 so this is not just guys will often do bicep curls they'll do triceps
they'll go well i do all this stuff in the gym and then i show them an exercise that requires
There's maybe some external, I can't do it here in my picture, but external rotation of the shoulder, doing resisted exercises into different positions of the shoulder.
That's not your classic up and down with your elbows.
And all of a sudden they're shaking or doing press ups.
As physios, we would suggest that you do a lot of upper back strengthening.
That might include some of the postural muscles that you've mentioned.
you probably had a knot in your rhomboid muscles which are the muscles between the shoulder blades
and then yeah and then you want to work the muscles sort of underneath the scapula and which
is your shoulder blade and above and then all the stability around the shoulder now you'll probably
be working quite a lot of your global muscles anyway in in your job so if a man is quite mobile
and active you've got a physical job you might be engaging more of the global muscles and not so
much the stability postural muscles you might let your posture slip a little bit so your larger
global muscles try to kick in to compensate and that's why it's a really good idea for guys to do
more stability proprioceptive exercise um not only plyometric exercise but doing things that are not
just your traditional resistant exercise you need to do a whole recipe or a whole kind of
combination so you get variety and that way you can help to prevent problems so what kind of exercises
what kind of exercises could that be yeah so yeah so we we always want to make sure we get things
from different categories so aerobic exercise so that might be that you like your running cycling
swimming okay yeah fast walking you know one or more of those making sure you get your um 150
minutes a week of aerobic exercise then two to three sessions a week should be resistive exercise
so that might be you know some of your like most people say it's an arms day a legs day an abs day
whatever you can you can continue with those you should then be looking at really good core
stability and so that might be like your pilates based program um and in physio we get more we go
deeper than that we go deeper than just what we would say core stability we look at neck strength
So if you're a runner or, you know, with your job, Henry, you might find that you get very dominant through the back of your neck because you're kind of your head's down if you're working and those muscles get tight.
Your neck extensors get tight, but it can make your neck flexors a little bit weaker.
And so we need to strengthen up the neck flexors through the front here so that you get a good manly neck, you know, a nice strong neck.
But you can see that, you know, if you overload the upper body and you don't have good lower limb strength, like there's good research to show that if you improve your leg strength, it can increase your power output in your upper limbs by 22%.
There's like really good statistics about these kind of things.
And that's why if you're working with tennis players, you know, you don't just work on shoulder stability.
You're looking at power through the legs and vice versa because the two work together.
so you're always looking at combining exercises together so trying to maybe do an exercise
maybe standing on one leg and you're doing some resisted weight work with either therabands or
pulley machines or cable machines um to challenge your body beyond just standing with your feet
planted and trying to you know moving around often you'll see men kind of in the gym wavering around
doing their exercises and if you could just stabilize them and say right now lift that weight
you would find a lot of them would struggle because they're compensating in their spine or
compensating in the joints and the loads not being channeled to the muscles correctly so posture
technique um and variety so balance guys make out the strength like the stretching sometimes and i
don't want to be too generic in saying that because i have some men in the clinic who come in and
they're brilliant at doing a stretch program but they might miss something else out so we're always
looking at this complete you know circle of exercise and that's the bit i probably i definitely
am a bit lex on the stretching i will admit that i think um yeah and then obviously you know if you
do something too fast and then and now obviously i'm you know suffering for it um so it's kind of
it's almost like a uh you know i've had a whack on the back of the neck but also that kind of
metaphorical one of them, actually, I know I should be stretching before doing exercise.
And then you're like, oh, it's fine.
I'll just, you know, just crack on.
It'll be okay.
I got away with it last time.
And then obviously now I didn't.
So hopefully, hopefully I can learn my lesson too.
You can learn your lesson.
Is there a reason why you miss the stretching out?
Is there, cause a lot of guys might sometimes say, well, they just didn't quite
understand the importance of why stretching is so important because your muscles.
Yeah.
When I go to my exercise class, obviously there's a teacher there who, you know, knows
his stuff.
And so we always stretch at the beginning and we'll like, you know, kind of slowly warm
up and some stretches and stuff.
And then, you know, you don't hit into the hard stuff until probably 15, 20 minutes of
kind of, so you are fully warmed up.
And then obviously stretching at the end.
And because there's someone telling me to do it, it's fine.
Like you just do it because you're, you know, you're paying to be there.
But then when I'm on my own, there's that bit of like, oh, I can't bother.
I just I just skip that bit because you know I just you know I've only got five minutes I just
I'll get into it quick because you know I've got to be somewhere else and uh and but you kind of
know I know deep down that that's not you know it's probably the equivalent for me of like you
know I would always cook an onion properly but then it's a bit like oh I can't bother today I'll
just do it quickly and then and then you meet me like oh they're a bit disappointing so like I I do
know that and now but I've I guess I've been able to get away with it but obviously this week didn't
get away with it and it's been um you know a constant pain in the neck reminder that uh that
actually i need to you know i need to be a bit more conscious that maybe i'm not quite as young
as uh you know um oh i don't know like i have to be a bit more concerned about stuff but um
but then lives are left it's all learning isn't it you know it is and i think if you can try and
find maybe just two or three stretch sessions a week maybe because when you've had an injury
um what you need to do is really try and get on top of that um and if we talk about so there's some
really lovely research that i remember covering um in my master's degree as a physio about um
cook and purdom's theory on tendons and their recovery and how and how it's impacted and all
the factors that influence it um and you know really stretching is is really essential because
if you if you stretch a muscle you're going to realign all those muscle fibers make them all
nice and neat i sort of imagine spaghetti if you line line up all the dry spaghetti and it's lovely
and straight then if it's in a lovely uniform pattern you're going to be able to load that
with much more tensile strength um whereas if it's kind of all jambled around you know imagine
like now cooked spaghetti and it's all kind of jumbled up on your plate that's not going to be
such good quality and you're not going to be able to load that as well um and come comes with that
like the swelling if you know if you're not if you're not taking the time to stretch in between
sessions or if you're if you're loading yourself time and time again they say if you're training
for something and you often see men go right i'm going to go run every single day and at certain
ages and or if you've got a tendon problem or a muscle problem it's not going to do you any favors
to just keep going back to back you need to allow time for recovery because we know from physiological
research that you need time for your tendons to actually lay down new protein and just repair
themselves really nicely rather than rush the process otherwise the body goes you're going to
make me run again and actually I'm going to just fastly put down all these proteins are not going
to be really well done the matrix might not be so good and then this is when you have a problem so
it's trying to spread out exercise doing variety so that you kind of get that really nice combination
and that you're not doing the same thing every single day or just one type of exercise back to
back for your whole life like considering your bone density because you know if guys are in the
gym and they have had a history of you know doing whatever to try and build their muscles up in the
in their youth um and i have had patients who you know they are now osteopenic um because they have
used steroids in the past or of course other health issues as a result of it so that's not
the only way to try and build muscle um is that still like a big like steroids is that still i
mean i kind of you know obviously i think about you know kind of your bodybuilders and
arnold schwarzenegger and those kind of things but like is it is it still like really prevalent
steroids and stuff is that kind of do you see or is it kind of like something of a bygone era i
don't know i don't i don't i don't go to a like a bodybuilding gym so like maybe i just
just don't see it but um is it something that you see in clinic quite a bit
Yeah, so we see it from the sense that the generations that might have done that are obviously now we're seeing the effects of having done that.
Yeah, fine, okay.
We've sort of seen those changes.
The younger generations are better educated and they're more into their health and even with the whole sense of alcohol too.
So the younger generation are being much better at not drinking alcohol and being a much healthier generation, hopefully generally.
my nephew my nephew and nieces don't ever drink it's like you know they're they're at uni and
you're like you're like what do you do and they're just like i just yeah it's just and maybe a bit of
it is it they're like you know they they don't know how expensive a pint is and you're like well
okay yeah fair enough if i was going out you know at their age and a pint was six quid it's quite
hard to you know drink 10 of them and spend 60 quid um whereas when i was at university was a bit
uh or college it was a bit cheaper but uh but yeah but but but i guess they've also seen you
know the older generation who have been smashing a bottle of red wine every night and thought actually
maybe maybe i don't want to do that which is probably a good thing you know yeah i think i
think that is and i think that's a sign of um you know that that's good that they're they're kind of
trying to avoid some of the the problems and the health issues that that you're you're seeing in
some of the our generation in particular um we know you know we get we um just flipping to women's
health just very quickly we know that alcohol is one of the biggest risk factors for breast cancer
rather than always just hrt which was you know badly labeled as a reason for for breast cancer
we know that the impact of alcohol um isn't great on the body in multiple in multiple senses so it's
trying to significantly reduce your consumption if not consider eliminating it altogether if you
possibly can yeah because you have to also um think about just your your general health and also
from from a man's point of perspective the prostate i then see the older generation coming
through into the clinic and a lot of them will be saying they've got either in large prostates or
getting screened for or scares with prostate cancer or we might be treating them for other
musculoskeletal conditions alongside their diagnosis and that's again something that men
are often sort of coping with or dealing with as well as sometimes as they get older men will report
to us in clinic a lot about getting up in the night to go to the loo and they'll be quite
concerned about how often they're getting up in the night and we'll often say you know one to two
times a night getting up to go to loo is considered relatively normal.
Any more than that, you should be looking at as to why, why that is.
Yeah.
Is it that someone has had alcohol?
I'm lucky.
My bladder is still quite good.
So I can, I can, I can power through.
Yeah.
That's good.
I have had, I have been getting up and doing stretches in the middle of the night when,
you know, stuck in a position.
Yeah.
um i'm sorry so i was just gonna just while we talk about the bit about the um urinating at night
which i know is not a great topic but um something to consider though is um it is a common complaint
in men and they often don't know what to do so if anyone's listening and they sort of think like i'm
too embarrassed to ask or they don't see the relevance of it you want to kind of look at
trying to get your fluids in through the day
and not having too much liquid intake before going to bed,
which can have an impact.
If you are obviously going to the loo frequently in the night,
then we suggest that you talk to a doctor
because any frequency isn't a normal thing at night,
especially if it's problems you're eating.
So that's a bit of a, it's a flag to monitor.
Yeah, potentially,
especially if getting up a lot in the night goes alongside other symptoms so things like fatigue
particularly if it's something like weight loss you know issues with you know ejaculation or
erections and things like that for men but also other other symptoms like are you struggling to
pass urine like some men will say that they have the urge to go but then they can't pass or the
flow rates changed and and this sort of all these kind of things indicate there could be something
going on with the prostate so speaking to the GP who routinely usually do a PSA check and that something that you get screened on Henry as you get older it your PSA level Have you ever come across that Is there anything you ever heard of before No never No news to me What is it
So, so PSA levels are used.
It's one of those things that's quite, it is used to kind of screen for prostate cancers,
but it's not just the only thing that's used.
It's quite a good first line check, but it's the accuracy of it sometimes can be influenced.
The number can be influenced by other factors, which is why it has to be taken into consideration clinically with what else is going on.
Rather than just someone panicking, thinking, oh, I can't, I'm up more than two times a night and I've got a raised PSA.
You have to kind of look at the whole picture as to what's going on with someone.
The PSA check is a number that's given to you after a blood test.
Okay.
Typically, it should be between 0 to 2.5.
But if it's getting higher, particularly certain reference ranges for different age categories, that's when you might go on for further testing if it's elevated.
And sometimes it can be impacted by things like infections.
It might be that you have got a larger prostate, but there's nothing sinister going on.
Sometimes, you know, markers are very raised.
But it's something as you get older as a man, it's something that it does start to become more of a regular test.
So trying to keep healthy.
We know with guys declining testosterone, we know that diet is really important.
And you'll probably know this, Henry, anyway, but cooking tomatoes,
did you know why that's so good for us?
Well, not for us, but for guys.
No, tell me, tell me.
So if you cook, it's considered that if you cook tomatoes,
the lycopene that's produced when you cook tomatoes
it is supposed to have a really good effect to reduce the risk of prostate cancer
by being quite an antioxidant and other food types that you should really try and get mentioned.
So with tinned tomatoes, would they count?
Or I guess, no, they've not been cooked, are they?
I mean, it can help, but you're better to try and cook the tomato as best you can.
So sort of putting it in the oven and cooking tomatoes just releases that lycopene.
But I'm sure you probably would get a little bit maybe from cooking tinned tomatoes.
The other thing is that you really want to get your things like Brussels sprouts, broccoli
and cauliflower in.
We know that those kind of vegetables are really good.
They contain a particular product, if you want to call it that, like a substance, which
I can never pronounce it, but it's something like sulforaphane.
And that's, again, very protective in the body.
Berries, Mediterranean diets, we know.
Yes.
that comes up a lot it comes up a lot doesn't it berries a mediterranean diet if you ever
unsure what to eat that's one of the one of the things to eat and we know that that's also
important men are more likely to we haven't talked about you know as a condition coming up in other
episodes we might cover something like parkinson's disease and that's more prevalent in men so we see
more men with parkinson's disease than females so but we know that if you eat your tomatoes and
your broccoli sprouts cauliflower all your nice berries green tea that sort of thing i think there's
some links with pomegranate juice and others kind of healthy options making sure you get enough
protein zinc is also really important for guys okay and it's the levels so you can kind of really
try and improve your general health um just by looking at the food types and and sort of trying
to take that whole picture in for like a nutrition size.
I guess that just feeds back into that, just trying to eat, you know, diet that's cooked
from scratch with, you know, where possible with good quality ingredients and just have
plenty of variety because you're going to be hitting in some of those numbers.
Because I guess it's, you know, if you pick up a broccoli, it doesn't always tell you
what it's going to do for you.
maybe they should have prostate
prostate
messages on broccoli maybe
maybe people need to eat more
absolutely
lucky I don't work in marketing
but the way you cook it is going to be important as well
Henry and I know this is where
you've got some really excellent
opinions and
experience on what we should be using
to cook because you can buy
all the good ingredients but
I know you were talking last time
a little bit about what types of pans and things we should be using.
Oh, pans.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So tell me more about that.
I'm really interested to hear what you've got to say about this.
Well, I guess a chef and their pans, you know,
we'll see if we do a lot of cooking,
a good quality pan or a range of good quality pans is a must.
And I think the kind of, you know, having kind of worked in kitchens
and then obviously, you know, try to source good equipment at home,
I'm just kind of used to them.
I hadn't ever really thought about it,
is when people come over to my house and quite often if they you know i try and get people involved
and help and the one comment they always make is god your pans are so heavy and um and and so i'm
like are they just like they're just metal pans yeah obviously they're going to be heavy and it's
then i guess when you go to other people's houses or like an airbnb's your classic you know you're
like a self-catered place and you pick up these pans and they're just like they're lightweight
they're flimsy and um and then you know they don't cook the ingredients well but then also
So they often, some of them, particularly the non-stick ones,
have coatings and stuff that are not particularly good for you.
I think some of the kind of Teflon ones,
they've removed some of the kind of, I think,
known carcinogenic properties.
So maybe the new ones don't have it.
But even so, you know, quite often if they get a bit older and more,
those bits of metal or whatever,
the protective coating that stops the food sticking,
peels off when that's coming into your food
and it's probably not ideal eating bits of metal or whatever the product is,
it's probably not better in your body, better on the pan.
And I guess when you see people cooking with pans that are really scratched up
and they're old and knackered, and you just think, just get rid of it.
There's no point buying lovely produce and then cooking it in a battered old pan
that needs to go into the recycling tip.
So anyway, for me, when it comes to pans, there's a couple of options.
So I kind of grew up or worked in some kitchens that had some beautiful copper pans.
So I have a kind of soft spot for copper, but it is a bit high maintenance.
They're like the kind of the diva of the pan world.
To keep them shiny, you have to kind of buff them with a salty lemon a couple of times a week.
Otherwise, they discolor and lose their shine.
Salty lemon, would you say?
Yeah, so the outside.
So I worked for a period of time at the Le Gavroche, Michel Roux restaurant in London.
It's sadly shut, actually.
and one of the jobs that I had to do was um uh was buffing the pans and you basically get half a
lemon and then you dip it into like coarse sea salt and then you rub it on the outside of the
copper and it just it like takes um it basically cleans it and then and then you buff them again
and they go super shiny but then as you cook with them they lose that shine and then you have to do
it again the next day it's a completely pointless task but but they're beautiful you know so it's
like having you know like a bentley car and not not not keeping it clean you know it's like what's
the point of having it like you know you're going to keep it nice but it requires effort but they
don't so i had these beautiful copper pans that i kind of accumulated throughout my younger years
but then i got an induction hole and they don't work on induction so they're now my camping pans
which is yeah so they so it's like well i'm not going to throw them away because they're
sentimental so they now live in a box in the shed and then we take them camping which seems a bit
excessive but anyway um so so what i'm left with is uh um you've got stainless steel or
cast iron really and and some people are like a cast iron kind of person and some people are
stainless steel that for me personally i'm a bit of both like i actually you know i do like a bit
of cast iron i do like a bit of stainless steel or i guess the middle one would be like a you know
the crusade pot which is a cast iron that has been um enameled which um uh gives it a bit of
protection and makes it a bit easier to clean but but i guess cast iron is is a wonderful one
it requires a bit a little bit of maintenance because the cast iron can go rusty so you don't
want to kind of if they get wet you just want to dry them out make sure they dry nicely but the the
key with a cast iron is that once it heats up it retains its heat really well and it has a lovely
um that you don't really get hot spots so much like it so it's a it's a very nice surface to
to like fry in or cook things in it's to make it non-stick you have to season it so if you get a
new cast iron pad and also this pan will last you forever like it's not like you buy it and you've
got to replace it in five years like this thing you can give it to your grandkids you know it's
a solid piece of metal that if you look after it will last forever so so you know it's a bit of an
investment but actually they're not they're actually not that expensive like you can pick
up a good one for let's say 40 quid and that's going to last you for a lifetime whereas you think
like a kind of flimsy pan that you get from tk max or something it might cost 15 quid but you've
to chuck it away in two years time because it's knackered all the handles fallen off you know so
rubbish don't don't don't don't buy that stuff and actually don't buy one of those kind of like um
sets you see in the back of the newspapers it's like you know 40 pounds you know all kind of
set but pointless you just you can you can do most things with about you know uh you know a couple of
frying pans a few pots and you can cook nice things at home like unless you unless you're
cooking a you know you know you're in a restaurant you don't you don't need hundreds of pounds just
get a few good quality ones and they'll last your lifetime but with the with the cast iron
you need to season it so what this means is the first time you heat it you put some oil in
and then you basically heat it up to really high heat and um and it kind of creates like a i think
that i'm gonna get the word one but it's like a like a pattern it's like um on uh a non-stick
layer which then when you cook your food in it doesn't stick to the um and then every time you
use it you just kind of wipe it out you don't want to scrub it with a metal because that will
remove it and you have to redo it um and essentially you can just keep you know using that
pan over and over again i mean i guess if you've cooked some mithril in it and then you're going to
be cooking an aubergine you might want to give it a bit of a wash because it's gonna um it's gonna
have a bit of mithril flavor in it but you know with a bit of good hygiene cast iron pan works
is beautiful but then on the other side you've got stainless steel pans oh sorry yeah yeah yeah
i was just gonna ask a question on the on the cast iron pan so is that every time you have to
heat the oil up to really no no no no no just just just like you have to do it the first time
and then if you're using it regularly and as long as it doesn't go rusty so like um uh and so so in
like a restaurant if you're using a pan over and over and over again and you're not and it's not
being cleaned properly you'll get a build up of carbon and then once or once in a while you'll be
like right we need to scrub and get rid of all of that a bit like with your barbecue you gotta get
you know give it a right clean back to the basis then you need to re-season it and um and i'd
probably do that at home maybe i don't know once every six months or so but um but but if you're
just cooking you know using it in evening you know you come and you cook some onions and make it make
a little sauce or whatever it is just clean it out and just with with like a you know a a natural
brush or like a one of those plastic brushes just not like a metal scourer and just give it a light
wipe and then make sure it is it's dry and doesn't go back into the cupboard wet um because it will
rust and the next time you come to heat you just put more oil in and heat the oil up and that will
naturally season it again so it kind of builds that layer and it becomes that natural kind of um
non-stick a nice barrier yeah like a barrier and there's there's there's great stories and
this might appeal to you or will really gross you out but there's like um there's restaurants in i
think there's one in america and there's one in mexico where they they like they've never cleaned
the pan ever like you know so they're cooking whatever it is their dish and they've never
cleaned it they just like you know wipe it out and um and reuse it again and it kind of builds up
this kind of history it's probably a bit minggin uh you know i'm not i'm not suggesting that you
need to never clean your pan but essentially if you look after it you know it kind of really
sorts itself out yeah yeah totally can you use any oil can you use any oil to do that yeah yeah
well yeah i mean yeah i mean i'm a big fan of yeah kind of you know olive oil or um or i actually
really like tallow or um which is beef fat or um coconut oil is a really good one for curries you
know uh any any oil that you can heat up to a high smoke point um so things like with olive oil
you know if you're like sweating onions and garlic and stuff you know you're not that's
gonna be like a medium heat so that'd be totally fine but if you're um you know if you're frying a
steak say for example then you want something that can go a little bit higher uh extra virgin
olive oil would would would burn at that temperature i i would use personally i would
use beef fat because it's you know if you're cooking beef cook it and be fat if you're cooking
a pork chop cook it in lard you know and then also with the with the the cast iron pan because it
naturally builds up this kind of non-stick as you don't need that much oil so it kind of you know
particularly if you're cooking a piece of meat as you as you kind of render the fat out of it so
whether it's in the skin or in that kind of you know the um you know the edge of the steak that's
got a bit of fat you can start it on the fat side and then that oil will naturally come out and then
And that kind of creates your numstick surface.
And on the other side, you've got stainless steel.
Now, stainless steel, again, it's obviously a more modern steel.
It's very easy to clean.
But you have to cook them slightly different.
Because if you say you've got a stainless steel pan, you heat it up,
and you want a really heavy bottom one.
So when you pick up a pan, give it a tap on the bottom.
If it sounds hollow, get rid of it.
You want to have at least, I don't know, like two-pound coins thick,
you know like a decent a decent base because you want it to kind of get a lot of heat into there
um and and not kind of fluctuate when you put food in you you know you don't want to be putting
your your food into a pan that then loses that heat really quickly because then you're going to
get hot spots um it's it's a pain in the butt you're going to get inconsistent results so a pan
that's got some good weight to it will give you better results but with it with stainless steel
you need to you need to heat the pan up before you cook with it because if you don't heat it up
fully everything sticks to it so it's not like it so yeah so it can punish you quite badly so you
need to like so you you basically want to heat your pan up until it's almost smoking and then
you turn the pan down put the oil in and a good test is you you can flick a bit of water and if the water like bubbles and sizzles around and sounds kind of you know sounds kind of poppy you know your pan hot enough Now you can turn it down put your oil in
and once the heat's in the pan, it's much better to cook with.
So say, like, your piece of fish, or say, like, a chicken breast.
You put it skin side down into the pan.
It's gone nice and hot.
You've now turned it down to a medium heat
because you're not trying to, like, you know, cook it.
You're going to burn it.
You just want to get a nice caramelization.
You put a little bit of oil in there.
You put your chicken in.
What will then happen is in a cast iron pan or a nonstick pan,
you can move that chicken around.
It'll be fine because it has this nonstick.
Whereas the stainless steel, it will glue itself to the pan.
And you have to just relax and know what's going to happen.
As the kind of proteins and the meat cooks in the pan,
it will then release itself off.
And so it will get all that lovely caramelization and color,
and then it will release itself.
So after like two or three minutes, you just, you know, take your tongs or your spatula and just start to lift.
And if it feels like it's releasing, then it's fine.
Flip it over.
If it feels like it's sticking, just wait another minute and then flip over.
And it does release.
And so, but I often see it with people with stainless steel pans is they, you know, they're used to a card-stown pan or a non-stick pan.
Normally they've come from non-stick and they just try and like move it around.
and then all that happens is you just get bits of chicken kind of like glued in different hot spots
around around the pan which is not a good thing because you're you're leaving your dinner in
what i do i think henry there okay okay you have got some stainless steel um saucepins which i think
we probably got from waitrose actually and i love them they still look as good as as they did when
we had them yeah from brand new but i didn't realize you had to heat the pan first yeah because
that would explain why my porridge sticks every morning yeah fine totally yeah so you just have to
you just have to heat heat it first then let it cool down for a bit it's just yeah with the
stainless steel that just helps but yeah like so i i tend to have cast iron on the frying because i
i quite like cast iron pan and then i have stainless steel for like pots and you know for
you know you're making like a risotto or tomato sauce like you know the stainless steel is perfect
for that and then i do i do have some um like lecrucet pans some of them official some of them
unofficial ones but they're you know they're essentially a cast iron with an enamel um i
think that's almost like glass they kind of heat up i think quite now they do it um you're right
it's it's yeah i think i think it's i think it's like a glass enameling it's yeah it's like very
hot glass they kind of um i don't know i don't know how they do it um actually my cousins who
live on the isle of white do and have an enamelling business and they they make all the enamel signs
for the london underground i'll have to ask them that how that how they enamel but um i think it's
like a glass but yeah but that that that again naturally is slightly non-stick so um uh yeah
kind of works the same but um for me parents you know just avoid the ones that have any kind of
like non-stick property because they are um they're good when they're new but then as soon as
as soon as they start getting battered around a bit and that stuff starts peeling off, you
know, you just don't want to be eating that.
And even if it says it's now safe, I just think just don't bother.
Just buy a good solid castan or stainless steel pan.
It'll last your lifetime.
And yeah, and just, you know, use them properly and they'll reward you.
Yeah.
So what can you use on an induction cooker then, Henry?
I don't actually have one of these yet, but I'm quite intrigued by them.
What can you use?
Well, the way the induction works is it's like it creates like a magnetic field or like, you know, so your pan basically has to have a magnetic metal in it.
So, because dine is magnetic, you know, you can stick a magnet to it, whereas not all like aluminium isn't magnetic, copper isn't magnetic.
So they don't work on induction.
But you often on the bottom of a pan, it will just have like a symbol and it have like induction ready.
and um so if you have an induction hob you you have to buy actually i kind of have a love hate
with my induction hob because it's very good because you can clean it but i'm i i missed i
love fire like i like the kind of um yeah so i kind of i would my ideal setup i think i mentioned
before would be to have a couple of gas rings that i could you know um um you know have that
kind of bit more drama but then i have a barbecue so i can i can have life live fire outside yeah
Flambeying, yeah, flambeying with induction is ultimately totally disappointing
because you pour your brandy in or your alcohol,
you tilt the pan hoping for something to happen and it just steams.
Whereas, you know, if you've got a bit of gas,
you can get some lovely flamage and it makes the kids squeal
and, you know, the wife thinks I'm impressive.
Maybe if you're lucky, you set the fire alarm off, you know.
Obviously, don't start a house fire.
now that's the kind of the the theatrical person in me loves a bit of flambé and induction
hobs have um ruined it for me but um but they're very easy to clean so it swings around in that
yeah i have i have wondered about these induction cookers actually so so you can use stainless steel
like the pans um i think so i think so yeah just check just check on the bottom just check on the
bottom because some of the stainless steel ones won't be induction ready so you so you just have
to so basically when we got our induction hole that was the big disappointment for like all like
all of my copper pans don't work and so i you know they they were ejected but then like the the
the crusade did work it was like great perfect well we can still use them so and i i didn't know
that until we got it you know because i haven't really used induction before so it was a um um
yeah a bit of a lesson there on the pans yeah i think they did mention that when we looked one i
I was like, oh, I don't actually know what we can use.
No, yeah, yeah, totally.
But they are good.
They are good, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, they do sound good.
So anything else kitchen utensil-wise that you would say you have to have?
What would you say as a chef that you can't live without, Henry?
Well, I mean, I guess knives, you know, the obvious one, I think a good,
again, like with the pans, just one or two good quality knives
that you look after, don't ever put them in the dish or shell.
if you can't sharpen it get friendly with your local butcher buy a few steaks of him or her and
then take take them in and they'll sharpen them for you because they'll quite often have either
the uh you know like a proper whetstone or a mechanical one they'll be able to do it in a
couple of minutes or or learn how to you know there's plenty of um videos on youtube how to
sharpen it but in terms of like yeah i love i love i love my um pestle and mortar um and uh it's a
proper like it's a really big heavy one so it's like it probably weighs like i know like three
kilos and it's got a big big heavy petal and it means you know if you're making curry pastes or
you know kind of uh grinding up spices it's you know with a bit of with a little bit of work you
can um you can create a lot of friction and bash up those those seeds whereas quite often you see
them in these like little small crappy ones and you know you've got your you're trying to bash up
your coriander seed and they're just flying everywhere and it's just like no you need you
need a decent one so like um and it feels very like um you know if we're gonna like make a curry
and you've toasted
a lot of spices
and you put them in
and then you start
kind of grinding them.
It gets you in the moment
because you've got
all these lovely
kind of aromas
kind of coming up
and makes the kitchen
smell nice
and it gets you
in the vibe of like,
oh yeah,
we're going to make
a nice curry now.
So I like my
pasta and mortar.
I don't know
if it's an essential
but it certainly
brings me plenty of joy.
I was just thinking about,
oh yeah,
sorry.
Yeah,
I was thinking about
a kind of recipe
for your dad bod
and I don't know
like,
I don't know
I guess there's probably not one recipe that's going to sort your dad bought out.
But I was trying to think of a recipe for what your dads could eat that they might enjoy.
And then on with the pan.
So I was thinking, actually, if you've got yourself a good pan,
then cooking a decent steak is a personal favorite of mine.
If my wife ever says, oh, what do you fancy with dinner?
I'll quite often say steak, even if we're not going to have it.
um you know you gotta you gotta you gotta you gotta um you know uh build yourself up for when
you do have one absolutely live a little yes totally and i'm and you know obviously i'm not
advocating that we should eat you know loads and loads of red meat but obviously you know good
quality grass-fed meat you know um um you know it's got plenty of protein if you're um you know
if you are hitting the gym hard it's you know um important but i thought yeah i um i'm a big fan
of serving it with chimichurri, which is like an Argentinian, a bit like the salsa verde
we had last week with the fish too.
This one is, again, it's like a little kind of flavor booster, but it's built off lots
of herbs and then some chili and then red wine vinegar and some olive oil and a bit
of that oregano and stuff.
And you chop it all up.
I mean, you could actually do it in your pachelors mortar if you want, bash it all around in
there.
and um and it just really cuts through the um cuts through the kind of the the kind of the
beefiness in there you know it's a ribeye and it's got or rump and it's got plenty of fat in it it
just yeah that kind of acidity really cuts through yeah and then serve it with you know i mean i guess
you could do chips or you know some sweet potato wedges or some of that and and maybe some some
broccoli you could blanch the broccoli first and then um uh just give it a little browning off in
the pan after the after the steak you know get a bit of color on it which you know if you if you're
not a fan of broccoli i know i you know people quite often have veg in their plate and then they
just kind of leave it at the end because it's you know kind of uh blanched uh blanched uh cabbage
in unseasoned water with no kind of butter or anything on it is is is fairly dull whereas
actually with things like broccoli or cabbage or whatever actually if you if you get a bit of
caramelization on it it really it brings out a lot more flavor and then you know if it's based
and a little bit of whether it's the fat from the beef pan or just like a little bit of butter.
It's going to be delicious.
So you're going to get in the benefit of the veggies and they're going to taste nice.
So would you cut the broccoli and the cabbage quite small
and then just chuck that in at the very, very end then, Henry?
Well, I'm quite a big fan of like big bits of broccoli and cabbage.
So one of my favorite ways to cook a cabbage,
and actually this probably works better, is to get like a kind of like a hispy cabbage or like a January king.
One of those kind of like pointy ones, you know, they've got quite a kind of tight, not like a massive savoy cabbage,
more like a tight pointy one.
Chop them into half or into wedges and kind of keep a bit on the stalk.
So it looks kind of quite kind of architectural.
and then you can just,
you can literally just put it kind of cut side down
into your cast iron pan on a really high heat
with just like a little bit of fat.
So it can have a bit of the beef fat
or a bit of olive oil or whatever.
And you basically want to burn it
and you want to get loads of caramelization on it.
And then you can turn it over a knob of butter,
add some garlic, a bit of, you know,
some rosemary or a bit of thyme or whatever,
kind of in the pan,
give it a bit of basically plenty of seasoning
and then pop it in the oven
with your sweet potato wedges
for you know 10 minutes or so and you've got this really kind of like um like a caramelized cabbage
and i cooked it for my my father-in-law and um and he's someone who definitely just pushes the
any kind of veg on his plate he just like moves it around and you're like you're not eating it
you're just pushing it to the side and then goes oh cool i'm really full and it's like he's left
all of the veg and i think he grew up on just like boiled veg in unseasoned water and it's like
well that sounds miserable no wonder you don't like it and so he had this cabbage and he was like
what have you done to it?
And I was just like,
well, I've just, you know,
I've just cooked it nicely.
Yeah, that is a,
if you're, you know,
if you're having a steak
and you're kind of, you know,
you're trying to, you know,
embrace your dad bod
and you're thinking,
oh, so I won't have any veg,
actually, you know,
a bit of cabbage
or some broccoli
that's then been cooked,
you know, a bit of colour on it.
That actually is delicious.
And then with the chimichurri
spooned over, you know,
because obviously you're going to have
that you're going to have quite a lot of.
You don't want it to feel too greasy.
So actually you want something to kind of cut through
or like a kind of nice mustardy dressing
or something that just kind of cuts through the fat
with the acidity and it's just going to bring balance
and it's going to be delicious.
Sounds good.
We'll be rounding an hour.
Exactly.
And make sure you have it with a non-alcoholic beer
rather than four points of Guinness.
Plenty of water.
Yeah, plenty of water.
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, plenty of water.
That's brilliant, Henry.
I'm actually going to really try those tricks with the pans
if I can get my porridge not to sleep in the morning.
Try that with the cabbage and the broccoli.
That sounds great because I'm probably the person that's seasoned in the boiled water.
If you are boiling it, just make sure you put plenty of salt in your water.
It'll make your veg delicious.
I tend to steam it because there was that generation
where we were told to steam our veg, weren't we, because it was healthier.
do you steam that or do you just do it in your ways that you've said because it's much tastier
you've got the know-how we've got one of those bamboo steamers but it's on the other side of the
kitchen yeah it comes out occasionally if we do like dim sum or you know the kids have bowel buns
or something but yeah yeah i think i find like broccoli it takes like 20 minutes in there whereas
you know you kind of i'm normally a bit impatient yeah oh well yeah yeah absolutely right because um
it does take a while because sometimes you've been cooking whatever else you're making and then i go
oh no forgot to put the broccoli on so actually your method will not only save me time
much quicker exactly exactly well and i'll write i'll write the recipe up and and share it so then
people can have a go yeah no that's great henry i think everyone will appreciate that and yeah just
a reminder to those listening to um follow us on instagram and facebook and all the different
social media platforms um it's pretty much at the healthy bit and give us a like and a follow
and subscribe if you can people please. Definitely. Thank you. Cheers Hayley.
Thanks very much Henry. See you on the next episode.