Diary Of A CEO: w/ Glucose Goddess Jessie Inchauspé (Transcript)

For example, if we take an orange and make an orange juice, what are we actually talking about here? Oranges are not even a natural fruit. They were invented thousands of years ago by crossing other species of fruit. To make an orange juice, you throw away part of the orange — you throw away the solid part, which is the fiber. So you’re left with the sugar of a very sugary fruit, water, and no fiber. As a result, you’re getting a very unnatural amount of sugar in your bloodstream with no fiber to protect against the spike. So a big, big glucose spike.

And people often say, “Well, fruit has vitamins in it, so therefore orange juice must be better for you than Coca-Cola.” That’s actually a total myth. If you compare a glass of orange juice to a glass of Coca-Cola, it’s the same amount of sugar — about 25 grams. And the sugar in the can of Coke and the sugar in the glass of orange juice, they’re exactly the same. They’re glucose and fructose molecules. And your body absorbs them in the exact same way. Your body does not make a difference between sugar from an orange and sugar from a sugar beet that’s now in a can of Coca-Cola.

I hope that orange juice disappears from school lunches, from hospital meals. The World Health Organization recommends 25 grams of sugar per day or less. So with just one glass of orange juice in the morning that you squeeze at home — that you think is good for you — you’re already at the maximum limit of sugar recommendations. And most people drink this glass of orange juice thinking it’s good for them. Most people with diabetes drink this glass of orange juice thinking it’s helping them with their condition. And that’s really where I want to act. I want to help people understand what they actually need to do to feel better so they don’t fall victim to marketing.

Glucose Crashes, Doom Scrolling, and Dopamine

STEVEN BARTLETT: We talked there about glucose crashes and what that causes in terms of behavior. I was wondering, does it also cause other compulsive behaviors? Does it make me more likely to want to doom scroll on the Internet if I have been eating lots of sugar?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Well, that’s a great question. Why does sugar feel good? Because it releases dopamine in our brain. Dopamine is the pleasure molecule. It makes us feel good. So if I were to drink this glass of orange juice — which you would have to pay me a lot of money for me to drink — my brain would let out so many dopamine molecules and I would feel this wave of pleasure. Now, the problem is people confuse that with energy. It’s not energy, it’s dopamine.

And dopamine is the same exact molecule that gets released when you’re scrolling on Instagram. You look for the next post, you look for the next video. Every time you get something new and interesting, bam — a dopamine signal in your brain. So if you’re constantly triggering dopamine in your brain, you’re going to constantly crash. You’re going to have dopamine spikes, dopamine crashes, and become more and more addicted to it.

So I don’t know about studies showing glucose spikes and doom scrolling specifically, but if you look at just the biology of it, they’re triggering the same center in your brain. So for sure, I can imagine that if you are on a dopamine addiction cycle, both an orange juice glucose spike and doom scrolling can go hand in hand.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I was just looking at some research here and it says, yes, you’re significantly more likely to doom scroll during a glucose crash. And it explains that that’s because of something called the energy crisis in the prefrontal cortex, where your prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for willpower and decision making and saying no to things like doom scrolling — in the case where glucose drops, this area is first to dim the lights to save energy for vital functions. The result is you lose your executive function, making it nearly impossible to resist the hit of dopamine that social media provides. But it also says the second reason is this dopamine trap. And the third is generally your emotional regulation goes out of the window.

I think this in part because I notice in myself that when I am on a higher glucose diet, I’m more likely to get involved in compulsive behaviors that I otherwise don’t like. Like doom scrolling on the Internet.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: You have less willpower, less control.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, I have less willpower.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: You feel more addicted.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, like I have less control over my life.

Breaking the Sugar Addiction Cycle

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: And the first thing that people notice is that when they are on a glucose roller coaster, they feel addicted to sugar. Like it’s no longer a choice to go after that cookie. It feels like a compulsive behavior — “I need sugar right now.” Because that glucose crash is triggering a biological mechanism that is nearly impossible to override.

So when you tell somebody, “Just eat less sugar,” that’s B.S. You can’t just eat less sugar. You have to go fix the underlying cause, which usually leads to the glucose crash. You can’t override that feeling of craving that comes from deep inside your brain. When you have a glucose crash, you need to fix the spike, reduce the spike, and then naturally the craving also reduces and you feel fewer cravings.

There’s this theory called the protein leverage hypothesis. And this theory says that your body will keep you hungry and keep you seeking food until you’ve given it enough protein. So if in the morning you have some oats and toast and jam — very little protein — your body’s going to be like, “Okay, we didn’t get any protein, we need to get more protein.” So you stay more and more hungry. At 10am you’re hungry again. If you have a cookie, again no protein, your body will keep you hungry. If all of a sudden you have 40 grams of protein, then that craving dissipates and that feeling of seeking out food sort of calms down because your body got what it actually needed, which was protein.

Decoding Food Marketing and Deceptive Labels

STEVEN BARTLETT: People send you lots of messages. You have an enormous online following. If I was to peer into those DMs you get, what would be the essence of what people are saying to you?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: They’re asking me about specific foods. They’re saying, “Are lentils okay? Can I eat three eggs a day? What kind of vinegar should I use?” And often it’s people trying to navigate the marketing messages they’re seeing on the packaging of things. They’ll be like, “This can of tea says zero grams of sugar. Is it good for me?” They’re trying to decode what these food products actually contain and whether they’re actually good for them.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And is there any real standout marketing message that is deceptive?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah, “no added sugars.” That is so deceptive because this glass of orange juice has no added sugars in it because the sugar was there at the beginning — it came from the orange, from the original ingredient. So on a carton of orange juice, you can say “no added sugar,” even though it contains 25 grams of sugar, which is the maximum limit the WHO recommends for your daily sugar intake. So that’s a really, really bad one.

Another one would be something that says “gluten free” or “vegan.” It’s not because it’s gluten free or vegan that it’s good for you. But we’re being tricked. Food manufacturers do everything they can to make you buy their products.

Glucose, Fertility, and Planning for a Family

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think I’m in the season of life where I’m thinking a lot about fertility — both my fertility, my fiancée’s fertility — and how my diet, the things I eat, has an impact on that. What is it we need to know about, if we’re trying to conceive, if we want to have a family? Is it really the case that I need to start thinking about my own fertility in the lead up to putting that sperm into that egg?

Nutrition, Pregnancy, and the Power of What You Eat

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yes, both the males and the females need to be thinking about fertility. And nutrition plays a big role and health plays a big role in the quality of your sperm, for example. So a good idea would be to reduce, before you want to have a kid, if you’re the man, reduce alcohol, exercise more, eat better so that your sperm are high quality.

The sperm turnover is about three months. So do like a three month, sort of intense, “my sperm are getting in shape” kind of situation. It’s a good idea.

For women, it’s different. So our eggs are present from before we’re born, but the quality of our diet, of our nutrient reserves is going to impact our ability to have kids also. And it’s going to impact what our baby gets in the first trimester of pregnancy.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You’ve just given birth eight months ago?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah. Feels like just last week, but yeah, eight months ago.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And I guess that’s somewhat linked to why you’ve written this new book, which is titled Nine Months That Count Forever: How Your Pregnancy Diet Shapes Your Baby’s Future. You could have written about anything, Jessie, and people would have bought the book because people are so fascinated by you and the work that you do. Why, of all the subjects you could have written about, was this the subject that meant the most to you to commit a long period of your life to?

The Gap Between Science and What Pregnant Women Are Told

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Because it is a subject where there’s such a big gap, Steven, between what science knows and what parents are told. And it felt like there was just a canyon between information in the studies that’s been there for decades and what I, as a pregnant woman, went through and what advice I was given. What’s available out there to pregnant moms.

So even though I was pregnant and I was tired, I felt I need to write this book because people need to know the power that they have.

So today science knows that you’re not just an oven when you’re pregnant. Have you heard this thing, “a bun in the oven”? It’s an American expression.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think I’ve heard it once or twice, yeah.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Okay. So often if you’re pregnant, people will say, “Oh, you have a bun in the oven. That’s so cute.” It’s like an expression. And I feel like this is where all of our problems started because it implies so many misleading things.

It implies that when you’re pregnant, you are an oven, meaning you’re just there to provide heat and time. And people often say, “Just relax, let nature do its thing.” So it implies that you’re passive, that you have no agency, no power, you’re just a vessel of heat and time. That’s the first problem.

The second problem is that it implies that just like a chocolate cake that you put in the oven, your baby, the moment the sperm meets the egg, is set in stone. Like if you’re making a cake, when you make the brownie and you put it in the oven, the oven is not going to change the brownie into banana bread. The oven is just cooking the brownie.

Well, actually it’s very different with pregnancy. Your baby is not set in stone at conception. What happens during the nine months of pregnancy is co-creating your baby’s plan. And depending on what you eat, a different baby will come out. So we’ve been lying to pregnant moms, telling them they have no agency, they have no power, they should just relax and let nature do its thing. That’s why I wrote this book, because the science is fascinating.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So where are pregnant women being let down in this regard? Is it that there’s just not enough information out there, there’s not been enough research? Is it bad advice currently on the Internet?

How the Food System Is Failing Pregnant Mothers

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: This is the fault of our food system, this is the fault of society, this is the fault of the food industry that we were just talking about — the marketing messages for everybody. Today in developed countries we are being fed processed, unhealthy foods that are hurting us. Whether we get diabetes or heart disease, there’s a link to food. And today even pregnant moms are being let down by the food system and are eating a diet, without knowing it, that’s not giving them the nutrients their baby needs.

So the moment I became pregnant the first time, I started researching. I went to Google Scholar and I just opened about a thousand tabs on my computer, which is usually what I do when I’m researching a new topic. And I looked at the big review studies, the meta-analyses of how nutrition during pregnancy impacts our baby’s development. I read probably 2,000 scientific papers and I just went deep, deep, deep into the research.

And out of it, I saw these four big themes coming out — four nutrients that most moms are not getting enough of in their diet, or too much of in their diet. And I wanted to create this guide to help parents navigate that food system and see easy things they can do in the mom’s diet to help their baby’s development.

So while your baby’s DNA is set the moment the sperm meets the egg, with your diet during pregnancy, you’re programming that DNA. Have you heard of epigenetics?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yes.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Okay, so epigenetics are like these little dimmer switches that sit on your DNA and that say, “Activate this gene” or “Silence this gene.” And so during pregnancy, you’re putting these little switches on your baby’s DNA. And this is going to have an impact on your baby’s development and on his future risk of disease.

I’ll give you a very simple example. If you have very high glucose levels during pregnancy, scientists have found that your baby’s DNA will have epigenetic switches that are programming him towards having a higher vulnerability to develop diabetes himself in his lifetime. So if you have high glucose levels, your baby will be programmed to be more likely to then have high glucose levels himself throughout his life — as a kid, a teenager, and an adult. That’s epigenetic programming. And depending on your diet as the mom, you can program your kids differently. But nobody tells moms about this, and that’s what I’m trying to change.

Understanding the Basics of Pregnancy and Nutrition

STEVEN BARTLETT: What do I need to know as someone that knows very little about pregnancy to really understand the basics of what’s going on, what time frame matters, what happens when?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: So females have a uterus, which is an organ, and the uterus is where the baby develops. The uterus grows as pregnancy progresses. And then when you give birth, the baby comes out of the uterus, and the uterus stays in the mom. So that’s important.

When conception happens — so you have the sperm meets the egg — that little packet of cells will implant in one of the walls of the uterus and start growing. And pregnancy is divided into three trimesters. It’s about nine months. So months one to three is the first trimester, four, five, six is the second trimester, seven, eight, nine is the third trimester.

And what we’re going to talk about today is about nutrition and how your baby’s getting the building blocks that he needs to develop in your womb. Because your baby needs to grow from a single cell to 40 trillion cells by the time he’s born. He grows from nothing to three or four kilos. And that has to come from somewhere. It doesn’t just come out of thin air. All those building blocks, all that matter, is coming from you, from what you’re eating. What you eat becomes your baby.

In the first trimester, your baby’s getting food from this sort of milk that your uterus creates, so it’s uterine secretions. And then from the second trimester onwards, something incredible happens.

STEVEN BARTLETT: When’s the second trimester?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: It starts at four months.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: And so for the second and third trimesters, there’s another organ that you create inside your uterus. It’s called the placenta. And the placenta’s job is to bring your baby’s bloodstream and your bloodstream as the mom in really close contact. And all of a sudden, symbiosis is established. And your bloodstream and your baby’s bloodstream are then going to exchange nutrients and waste. So your baby’s going to get all his nutrition directly from your bloodstream.

And, Steven, here’s a main myth that people believe. They believe that your baby will just get what he needs from you during pregnancy. That’s something moms are told: “Don’t worry. Your baby will get what he needs from you.” This is a lie. Depending on what you eat, your baby will have different access to important nutrients. So your baby doesn’t get what he needs. He gets what’s there and what you give him.

So let’s take a simple example. One of the nutrients that is really important is called choline. Have you heard about choline before?

Choline: The Nutrient 90% of Pregnant Moms Are Missing

STEVEN BARTLETT: Is that in eggs?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yes, exactly. It’s in the egg yolk. So choline is super important. It forms your baby’s brain in the womb. So your baby’s brain has these cells that are forming called neurons, which are the ones that process information. And choline is important to creating those neurons. And choline creates the parts of your baby’s brain that have to do with memory, learning, and attention.

So that egg that you’re holding contains about 125mg of choline. And it’s an incredible, incredible substance. The thing is, if you don’t eat enough choline, your baby’s brain is not going to get enough choline. And this can have an impact on the development of your child. So much so that the American Association of Pediatrics says, “Failure to provide choline during this time can result in lifelong brain deficits in the baby.”

Today, 90% of moms are not getting enough choline during pregnancy. 90% of moms are not getting enough choline during pregnancy.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Because nobody is telling them about it. And because today we don’t eat very nutritious foods anymore that contain a lot of choline. They’re present in eggs. So four eggs a day gives you all the choline that you need. But choline is also present in organ meats like liver. Nobody eats liver anymore. Most of the foods that we eat today — cupcakes, dried fruits, burgers, chips — they don’t contain a lot of choline. We need to be eating eggs. This is the simplest way to give enough choline to our baby.

And scientists do these animal studies where they deprive moms from choline, and they look at the impact on the brain, and they see that brain development in the baby stops earlier than it should, and those babies are born with fewer neurons. The amount of choline in your diet during pregnancy is going to be impacting your child’s brain development. And nobody’s telling moms about this. It’s really messed up.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So how many eggs a day do I need to eat while I’m pregnant to get enough choline?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Four is the golden number. So here I think we have 28 eggs. So every day during pregnancy, I ate four eggs. So this is the amount of eggs that I ate per week during the nine months of pregnancy. That’s a lot of eggs. But as I was doing this, I knew I was giving my baby all the choline that he needed, which is about 450 milligrams per day. And this is not very expensive. 28 eggs is about $7. So for $1 a day, you’re getting all the choline that your baby needs to form his brain.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Mothers are often told to avoid liver while they’re pregnant. Why is that? You’re saying that that’s not the correct advice?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: So liver contains a lot of vitamin A, quite high levels of vitamin A. And there’s some older studies that show that liver and high vitamin A can cause issues to the baby. That’s why liver is not usually recommended during pregnancy. I would say check with your doctor. Different countries have different thresholds of how much liver is allowed. And honestly, I don’t like liver, so I prefer to have eggs.

But liver is super, super high in choline. It’s quite impressive. You can also take choline supplements, but eggs are the cheapest, easiest source.

And, for example, in the supplement world — so scientists have done this study at Cornell. They gave one group of moms the bare minimum amount of choline that is recommended, so 450 milligrams in supplements. And then they wondered, “Well, if a baby’s brain needs choline, what happens if he has a lot of choline available? Does his brain form even better?” So they gave the other group of moms double the bare minimum recommended amount.

And then they brought the kids in during their first year of age for some tests. And the main test that was used is you basically place the baby on his mom’s lap in front of a computer screen and you flash images on that screen and you measure how quickly the baby reacts to the new images — so how quickly he moves his eyes. And the reason they do this is because this test is correlated to adult IQ, meaning the faster a baby reacts to images in the first year of age, the higher his adult IQ. That’s the association.

And so they were wondering, “Could we see a difference in the baby’s reaction time depending on the mom’s choline level in the womb?” And they found that the babies who were born to the high choline moms had 10% faster reaction time to this test.

Breastfeeding, Sugar, and Pregnancy: What the Science Says

STEVEN BARTLETT: People talk a lot about breastfeeding as well, whether it’s good, bad, indifferent, whether you can breastfeed too much, etc. And obviously, there’s lots of practicalities that make breastfeeding quite difficult for a lot of mothers, which we probably should acknowledge. But otherwise, what does the research say about breastfeeding?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: So the main difference between breast milk and formula is that breast milk is alive. It’s alive with information. It’s alive with little molecules that are going to continue that DNA programming. Formula is inert. It’s not alive, it’s not doing that programming.

So, yes, breastfeeding has advantages for the mom and for the baby, but formula is nutritionally complete, and it’s very useful for many moms who are not able or don’t want to breastfeed. And if you’re using formula, you actually have to check, because today not all formulas have choline in them. So checking the ingredients for choline, also checking the ingredients for omega-3s — which is something that we’ll cover in a bit — look for choline and omega-3s in your formula to make sure that your baby is getting what he needs in those respects.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I was reading about a study in the Pediatric Research Journal that says a 2013 Dutch study of 120 children found that less breastfeeding was linked to a silencing of the gene for leptin, the hormone that signals fullness.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: So that’s a good example of epigenetic programming. We have this gene that codes for leptin, which is a protein, and leptin is one of the molecules that makes you feel full. You and I both have this leptin gene, but depending on our epigenetic programming on that gene, you might be producing more of it and I might be producing less of it. So for the same meal, you might feel more full and I might feel less full after that same exact meal.

And so in the study, they saw that if you’re not breastfed very long, your leptin gene is deactivated, so you feel less full after eating. Now, these are small associations, but they show you that there is a difference here and that potentially breastfeeding could help your baby be more satiated after eating.

The Impact of Sugar During Pregnancy

STEVEN BARTLETT: What about sugar during pregnancy?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: So sugar is fascinating. When you eat sugar, your baby is also receiving that sugar because the placenta lets the sugar through. Your baby doesn’t need any sugar during pregnancy. He needs a little bit of glucose, which is different. But sugar — as in the very sweet molecule of fructose that is in chocolate, that is in cupcakes, that is in dried fruit — your baby needs none of it.

And the most interesting study on sugar in pregnancy actually came from the UK. From 1940 to 1953, in the UK there was a government-mandated sugar ration, meaning for 13 years, the government controlled how much sugar people had access to. It was during the war and they were trying to manage resources. So everybody in the UK got 10 sugar cubes per day. That’s it. And this was down from what people usually ate before the sugar ration, which was about 20 sugar cubes per day.

So everybody, including pregnant moms, for 13 years had a capped amount of sugar. At the end of the sugar ration, after 13 years, everybody went back up to eating more sugar. And so scientists in the early 2000s thought, “Well, that’s really interesting. This means we have two groups of pregnant moms — during the sugar ration and right after — who had babies develop in their womb either with 40 grams of sugar per day or around 80 grams of sugar per day.”

The scientists wondered, “Can this small difference be making an impact on the baby’s long-term health?” So they called up 60,000 people who were born either just before the ration ended or just after, and they asked them about their health — do you have diabetes? Do you have heart disease? How are you feeling? What’s your weight?

And they saw that the babies who were in their mother’s womb during the sugar ration had a 15% lower likelihood of having developed type 2 diabetes in their lifetime. So what does this mean? It means that the amount of sugar during pregnancy can be slightly increasing or decreasing your baby’s vulnerability to getting type 2 diabetes later in life.

And today, scientists look at the epigenetics of babies who are born to moms with very high glucose levels, and they see that the genes related to diabetes are activated. So we have a full picture now of data — we have epigenetics, we have this long-term interesting study — and we now see that the amount of sugar that we eat during pregnancy is subtly programming our baby.

Steven, I don’t know if you know this, but when I was 25, I was on the cusp of pre-diabetes. I almost had pre-diabetes. I had very high glucose levels, so I had a vulnerability to diabetes. And as I was reading the studies, I thought, “Oh my God. Maybe this has something to do with what my mother was eating when she was pregnant with me.” Because pregnancy is this window of outsized influence in somebody’s health.

So I called up my mom. I said, “Mom, what did you eat when you were pregnant?” She said, “Oh, it was the 90s. I ate very little protein, very low fat. And in the morning, every morning, I had a big glass of orange juice and I had Special K cereal with about a half a cup of table sugar on top.” I thought, “Huh, that’s pretty interesting.” I wonder — I will never know — but I wonder if maybe my vulnerability to diabetes had some roots in the womb.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And the science suggests that it does have a correlation.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Absolutely. The science suggests that the amount of sugar that you’re eating during pregnancy is having an impact on your baby’s epigenetics. And today, as I was mentioning, the WHO recommends 25 grams of sugar per day, but most moms are eating 80 grams of sugar per day. 80 grams. Which is usually more than what they eat when they’re not pregnant — because of this collective myth that you should eat for two, that pregnancy means you’re going to gain weight anyway, so eat as much sugar as you want.

Really, we’re failing moms. Because we’re not telling them about the incredible opportunity they have, by just being a bit mindful of how much sugar they eat, to help their baby be less vulnerable to diabetes.

Sugar, Gestational Diabetes, and Psychiatric Disorders

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s not just diabetes, though, is it? I was just looking at some of the studies. There’s a study in the JAMA Network — a Danish study found that children born to mothers with diabetes had a 15% higher risk of psychiatric disorders, with schizophrenia risk being 55% higher, intellectual disability 29% higher, and a connection to autism and ADHD.

A 2025 review of 200 studies, covering 56 million mother-baby pairs, found a 25% higher risk of autism when mothers had diabetes during pregnancy, from the Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology Report. And it’s important to note that these studies show correlation, not causation. And a 25% increase in absolute terms only raises the prevalence from 1 in 100 to around 1.25 in 100 children. So there’s some nuance to be had on that.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: There is some nuance, but that association holds very strong. And as you said, 56 million mom-baby pairs. So across the world, we see that when a mom has diabetes during pregnancy, her baby has a higher risk of psychiatric disorders.

And the main theory that could explain this association has to do with the baby’s brain. Your baby is forming his brain in the womb. And today, Steven, you have about 100 billion neurons in your brain, and they are the exact same neurons that you had the day you were born. Neurons never get replaced. So what does this mean? It means that the neurons you have for life are formed during pregnancy in your mother’s uterus.

Now, you have these neurons in the baby’s brain being formed at 250,000 per minute. Neurons everywhere. And next to the neurons, you have another type of cell called the microglia, and it kind of looks like a starfish. It’s patrolling the baby’s brain, and its job is to make sure that the neurons are forming properly. Microglia are cells from the immune system, and they are on the lookout for any neurons that are being damaged or not formed properly. As soon as they find a neuron that is not ideal, they go over to it and they eat it and they destroy it. So they’re pruning the brain, looking out for damage, and making sure everything develops normally.

Now, if the mother has high inflammation levels during pregnancy — and this can be caused by a number of things: high glucose levels, infection, chemicals — high inflammation seems to be making these microglia overactive. All of a sudden, they become a bit deregulated, and they start eating and destroying neurons that don’t need to be destroyed. They start destroying healthy neurons, and as a result, the brain forms in a slightly suboptimal fashion.

Scientists believe this to be the leading theory behind why we see the association between gestational diabetes and a higher risk of psychiatric disorders. We believe it has to do with the inflammation levels going on in the baby’s brain during pregnancy. And so what does this tell us? This tells us that when we’re pregnant, we’re influencing the amount of inflammation in our baby’s body. And this should be something that we tell women about, because if they can have power over their inflammation levels — for example, by reducing their glucose spikes — they could also give their baby a benefit to its brain formation.

Continuous Glucose Monitors During Pregnancy

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you think it’s useful for women during pregnancy to wear those continuous glucose monitors?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: I did. I did the whole time. Is it useful? Depends on what you want to do. I think it’s really interesting. It helped me a lot. Maybe just for two weeks could be worthwhile, so you can kind of see what’s going on and learn about your glucose spikes.

And I think one of the issues we see during pregnancy is that your glucose levels are usually tested in the third trimester with the diabetes test, but by that time you’ve already been going along for six months with your glucose levels. I think we should be testing glucose levels much, much earlier — like in the first trimester — because your glucose levels in the first trimester can actually predict very well whether you’re going to get gestational diabetes or not.

So I think we should maybe put a glucose monitor on all pregnant moms in the first trimester, or even pre-pregnancy, to help them understand their glucose spikes and show them the easy tools and habits and hacks that you can put in place to reduce them.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I was reading about a study from Diabetes Care. That study said they put continuous glucose monitors on 700 women and found that if they did it in the first trimester, they could accurately predict who would develop gestational diabetes at 24 to 28 weeks.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah. And that’s really interesting because a lot of people used to think that gestational diabetes — meaning diabetes during pregnancy — is kind of random. Like, “Oh, you get it? We don’t know why, it’s just random, your body’s just doing this.” And now we have evidence that suggests that actually it’s correlated to your glucose levels in the first trimester.

Now, in the first trimester, your glucose levels are pretty much the same as when you’re not pregnant. As pregnancy progresses, hormones come into play and things start shifting. Glucose spikes get bigger and longer. Fasting glucose levels become lower. But in that first trimester, your glucose spikes and your glucose levels are similar to pre-pregnancy.

This means that essentially your non-pregnant glucose levels can predict whether or not you’re going to get gestational diabetes. Which means that gestational diabetes is not random. It actually has roots in what was happening before pregnancy. Meaning that if you had high glucose levels before pregnancy, you’re more likely to get gestational diabetes. Gestational diabetes could actually just be a symptom of having had high glucose levels before pregnancy, but just not knowing about it.

What “High Glucose Levels” Actually Means

STEVEN BARTLETT: When we say high glucose levels, is that a very individual thing?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: No. We have very clear cutoffs. So for example, if you’re not pregnant — like you and I — 100 milligrams per deciliter is the cutoff between healthy and pre-diabetes. That’s your fasting glucose level, your glucose level first thing in the morning. If you’re pregnant, that changes. Anything above 92 milligrams per deciliter is considered diabetes of pregnancy. So high glucose levels — it’s very well segmented. We have these very specific ranges that say normal, too high, much too high.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But if you and I both have a teaspoon of this honey that I have here on the desk, our responses to this honey are going to be completely different, right?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah. The glucose spike we experience is going to be different for a bunch of reasons — our microbiome, our genetics, how much muscle mass we have, how hydrated we are, how stressed, how tired we are. So maybe you’re going to get a spike of around 30 milligrams and maybe I’ll get a 45 milligrams spike because I’m tired right now.

What does that mean? It doesn’t mean that honey is necessarily better for you than it is for me. It just means that my body today is more or less good at managing this influx of glucose.

The Role of Muscle Mass and Movement in Managing Glucose Spikes

STEVEN BARTLETT: Today?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Today. Yeah, today. And it also means something very important, which is that if you and I both used a glucose hack. So for example, if you and I both had a chicken breast before the honey, both you and I would have a smaller glucose spike from that same honey.

So glucose hacks and ways to reduce your glucose spikes work in everyone. The exact absolute values after eating something, these can vary. But one thing that is true for everybody is your fasting glucose. So glucose before you eat anything, that is something we can compare. So if you and I both, at 7am before we eat anything, had our fasting glucose levels checked, we could compare. We could say, “Oh, Jessie is very close to pre-diabetes and Steven is not very close to pre-diabetes.” Those are very easy numbers to compare. The spikes after eating — these can vary.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So if I put on a little bit more muscle, that means that I’ll tolerate glucose better.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah, because your muscles are an amazing sink where your body is soaking up glucose from your bloodstream. And that’s why we see that even during pregnancy, having high muscle mass is protective against diabetes. So women with higher muscle mass in pregnancy are less likely to have gestational diabetes.

Let me give you an example. We eat this honey. What happens? The honey goes from our mouth to our stomach to our intestine, and then it goes through our intestinal wall into our bloodstream. So all these glucose molecules are arriving into our bloodstream. Now, there’s two options. Either we stay here and we don’t move — in that case, glucose is going to rise in our bloodstream, big glucose spike, and then crash. Or we say, “Okay, let’s go outside and go for a walk.”

Right after we eat this honey, we’re walking, our muscles are contracting, our leg muscles are contracting, our arm muscles are contracting. And these muscles, as they’re contracting, they’re looking for energy. And the first place they look is in the bloodstream. They look for glucose in the bloodstream, which is why if you move after you eat, you will get a smaller glucose spike because some of that glucose is being used by your muscles for energy.

Calf Raises, Squats, and Post-Meal Movement

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’ve heard you tell people that they should do some stuff with their calves.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Calf raises. Yeah. Okay, so put your feet on the ground, Steven, and just do some calf raises. So you go up onto the ends of your feet and back down.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, so I’m going. I’m lifting my heels.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Exactly. Lift your heels up and down. So as you do this, there’s a muscle in your calf called the soleus muscle. Can you feel it contract? It’s your calf muscle.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Okay. So this muscle is very good at soaking up glucose from your bloodstream. So an easy hack you can do after you eat something sweet is you just do some calf raises at your desk like this — nobody could notice. Five minutes. And that’s going to help reduce the glucose spike of what you just ate.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Five minutes?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah. In the studies, they do sometimes hours of this, but even just one minute is better than nothing to reduce your glucose spike.

STEVEN BARTLETT: This is probably why a lot of cultures go for a walk after dinner, right?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Completely. And a lot of the glucose hacks that I’ve talked about, they actually mirror a lot of traditions. So, for example, the glucose hack of having your vegetables at the beginning of your meal — this is incredibly powerful, pregnancy or not — because vegetables contain fiber. And when you have them at the beginning of your meal, they create this protective mesh in your intestine that slows down the glucose molecules from carbs and makes the glucose molecules arrive more slowly into your bloodstream, meaning a smaller spike.

Now, eating veggies at the beginning of a meal, that’s something that we call crudité in France, which means raw veggies at the beginning of your meal.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What other simple exercises do you recommend? If I’ve just eaten something that’s high in glucose, that I can do quickly to help bring down my glucose spike — that’s ultimately what it’s going to do, bring down the spike.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: The best thing to do is to move your body. So get up, find a spot in your apartment that needs to be tidied, find a place you need to vacuum, find some laundry to do, and do that within 90 minutes after eating. Your muscles are your best ally in reducing your glucose spikes after you’ve eaten.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So what’s going on there? I start eating a cake, I finish eating the cake. How long have I got to get that cake into my muscles?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: That’s a great way to put it. You have about 90 minutes — so an hour and a half.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: That’s when the spike is usually going to be at its maximum.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So if I start squatting —

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah, squats are a great tool.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I want to go for a big muscle, right?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah, absolutely. There are some studies showing that if you do, I think it’s five squats or ten squats every five minutes, that is a very, very powerful way to get your glucose spike down. Now, you don’t always have the space to do some squats, but if you’re alone and at home, go for it. That’s one of the best ones.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So what’s going on in my body there? I start squatting. I’m working my glutes.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah. So your glutes are looking for energy, and the first place they look is in your blood. They’re looking for glucose.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Because glucose is the energy that your muscles are using.

Standing Desks and a Glucose Experiment

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you use standing desks? I’ve really got into it.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah, I do. I have a desk at home that moves up and down.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Same.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah. But sometimes if I’m tired, I just feel more tired with the standing desk, so I have to have a bit of energy left over. Do you always use a standing desk?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I kind of oscillate between standing and sitting, but I think especially in the morning, I find it to be really, really good.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: You just gave me an idea for a glucose test. I should do the same muffin and afterwards — standing desk for 30 minutes, or sitting at the desk for 30 minutes. That’s a great test. We need to put some glucose monitors on beforehand. But yes, we can do it. We should do it.

So I will eat a muffin first thing in the morning, then stand for 30 minutes, and the next day I will eat a muffin first thing in the morning and then sit for 30 minutes, and I’ll send you the spike. We can see how much glucose is being burned when we’re standing at our desk.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, well, we’re going to put the results in the episode.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Okay, great.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Now, what you see on the screen, if you’re watching, is the results of Jessie standing after having a muffin. And then these results, which you see on the screen, are Jessie sitting after having a muffin.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: And either we’ll see that the spikes are very similar, which means that standing doesn’t use much more muscle energy than sitting, or we will see that standing is using up some of the glucose from my bloodstream and therefore the spike is smaller after the muffin.

Exercise During Pregnancy and Its Impact on Baby’s Brain Development

STEVEN BARTLETT: On that point of exercise, mothers are given conflicting advice about what to do when they’re pregnant. Some people say exercise is not good. Some people say it’s great. What’s your position from all the research you’ve done as to whether mothers should be doing exercise during pregnancy?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Exercise is incredibly good for your baby’s development. And there’s one study done in animals — because we can’t do many studies in humans when it comes to pregnancy, for obvious ethical reasons — but there’s this incredible study which I think is my favorite study in the book.

Scientists took two groups of pregnant rats, and they gave them the exact same housing conditions, diet, lighting, everything. The only difference is that one group also had these tiny little treadmills that they had to walk on for 30 minutes a day, every day during pregnancy. So same exact conditions. The only difference is one group of pregnant rats is moving 30 minutes a day on these tiny treadmills.

Then they wait for the babies to be born, and they put the babies in these mazes to measure how quickly they’re solving the maze. They also measured the babies’ anxiety levels. They found that the babies born to the moms who were exercising solved the maze twice as fast and had fewer anxiety symptoms. So they found this strong association between a mom exercising during pregnancy and the outcomes of the baby’s brain.

The main theory is that when we exercise, there’s this molecule produced in our brain called BDNF. It’s got a complicated name, but what it does is it helps neuroplasticity — it helps your neurons create new connections. We know that in humans, when we exercise, that’s one of the reasons exercise is good for the brain, because it increases BDNF.

And in these pregnant rats, they found not only were the moms’ BDNF levels higher, but the babies’ BDNF levels inside the wombs were also higher. And they believe that is why they saw this impact on the baby’s brain development after birth.

So what happens in the womb is really setting up a strong foundation for your baby’s brain. It’s laying out the basic architecture, which is why it’s so important to do these simple hacks to give your baby’s brain the optimal nutrients that it needs to form properly.

The Soil Metaphor: You Are Your Baby’s Environment

STEVEN BARTLETT: There’s a little metaphor over there — those two plant pots. What is the metaphor?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Okay, so both of these plants come from identical seeds. The only difference is what they were planted in. So one of these plants was planted in basically little rocks and gravel with a tiny bit of soil in it. The other seed was planted in rich, fertilized soil.

What is this showing us? We intuitively understand that when we’re planting a seed, the soil we choose is important. We understand that the same seed is not going to lead to the same tree depending on where we plant it.

And I think for pregnancy, we’ve lost this intuition. Because your baby is a seed. You, as the mother, your body is the soil. And the soil is going to co-create your baby’s plant. So when you’re pregnant, you have this little baby with his DNA plan, but depending on the nutrients you provide, he is going to grow into a different tree. He’s either going to grow into a super optimal tree that has all the nutrients he needed, or he is going to have to adapt to what’s available and grow into a slightly different tree.

Now, the main difference is that humans are not plants. Humans are very resilient. Your baby will probably be okay — even if, like 90% of us, you don’t have enough choline. Even if, like 75% of us, you don’t have enough omega-3s. Even if, like 70% of us, you don’t have enough protein. And even if, like most of us, you’re eating more than the recommended amount of sugar — your baby will probably be fine. But he will be adapting to a slightly suboptimal nutrient environment.

So that’s what this metaphor is all about. You’re co-creating the plan of your baby with your diet during pregnancy, and it’s shaping him, and he’s adapting and calibrating to what you’re giving him.

Steven, what are you doing?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Just making myself a delicious coffee from the freezer. From the freezer? Have you not heard about Comptia?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: No.

Nutrition During Pregnancy: Alcohol, Caffeine, and Key Supplements

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m not going to be a pregnant mother in my life, but I am going to have a fiancée, hopefully at some point, who is a pregnant mother. So I would really like to know how I can help as a partner. But also I’m sure she’s going to listen to this, so what she can do to make sure that the soil in which my baby grows is optimal.

We’ve talked about a few of the things so far, like choline, and we’ve also talked about sugar and glucose levels throughout pregnancy to avoid gestational diabetes. We’ve talked about exercise as well. What about alcohol?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Not a good idea. Because as I explained, your bloodstream and your baby’s bloodstream are basically connected. So when you drink alcohol during pregnancy, your blood alcohol level rises, and then your baby’s blood alcohol level in your uterus also rises. There’s no filter protecting your baby from alcohol.

So when you have a glass of wine, your baby’s also having a glass of wine in the womb. And we know that alcohol is not good for our brains, and this also goes for babies. So you wouldn’t put red wine in your baby’s bottle after birth and give him red wine to drink. But that’s kind of what’s going on when you’re drinking alcohol when you’re pregnant.

There’s been a lot of stuff online about, “Oh, alcohol during pregnancy is fine in small quantities.” I think when you understand how alcohol is toxic to the brain biologically, it makes no sense to tell pregnant moms that a little bit of alcohol is okay. It’s best, if you can, to avoid alcohol entirely.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So complete abstinence.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: There was actually a study that came out in February last year, which is quite recent, from the University of Melbourne, where they used high resolution 3D imaging to reveal that even low doses of alcohol cause facial morphing — consistent changes in the shape of the eyes and nose at 12 months, persisting up to age 8 — and weaker connections in the right anterior cingulate part of the brain, the region critical for emotional regulation and impulse control, even if the mother drank only occasionally.

Which is very surprising, because I think for a long time we’ve always thought that heavy consumption of alcohol was a problem, and we know that. But even low doses are suboptimal.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: It kind of goes for all adults, right. We thought for a long time that one glass of wine per day was good for the heart. Now we understand that the ideal amount of alcohol is zero. There’s no benefit to alcohol. Now, is that to say that one glass of wine during pregnancy is going to indelibly impact your baby’s brain? Probably not. But if you can avoid it, this is the best time to avoid it entirely.

Caffeine During Pregnancy: What the Research Says

STEVEN BARTLETT: What about when you’re breastfeeding?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: You have much more leeway then, because the amount of alcohol in your breast milk mirrors the amount of alcohol in your bloodstream. So, for example, if you have a glass of wine, two and a half to three hours later you have pretty much no more alcohol in your bloodstream, which means your breast milk is also pretty much devoid of alcohol. So if you time it right, you’re going to be able to have a glass of wine without it actually going into your breast milk. But it’s all about timing.

Caffeine — the recommendation is to stay under two cups of coffee per day during pregnancy. It’s not a neurotoxin like alcohol, but caffeine does go to your baby’s bloodstream. And some studies show that babies are more active in the womb after the mother drinks caffeine. And it has no benefit.

So listen, you do what you can. I reduced my caffeine intake a little bit. Instead of having two flat whites, I had maybe half a flat white or a decaf flat white when I could. But some days I just really wanted a coffee, so I had a coffee.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Have they ever done any studies on caffeine and pregnancy?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Well, we can’t do any studies on caffeine and pregnancy in humans. It’s unethical to test anything in pregnant moms. We have associations, and the associations don’t show much difference. We don’t have studies that show caffeine intake in moms leads to bad outcomes in the kids. It seems pretty neutral at low doses. If you have really, really high doses of caffeine, there is an associative impact on the baby’s temperament. But for one or two cups a day, there’s no impact that we find.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And they’ve done animal studies?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah, they’ve done animal studies. Low doses also fine. Very high doses, we start to see changes in the baby’s behavior.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You talk about this in the book. In certain animal studies, they show that caffeine during pregnancy leads to smaller offspring, altered heart development, and delayed brain growth. But you explain that we don’t have direct clinical trial data on the long term impact of caffeine during human pregnancy.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: And also, those studies are at very high doses of caffeine.

STEVEN BARTLETT: The World Health Organization recommends that women who consume more than 300 milligrams of caffeine a day, which is roughly three cups, reduce their daily intake during pregnancy.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah. So probably one cup a day is not harming your baby.

Fermented Foods, Bread, and Glucose Needs During Pregnancy

STEVEN BARTLETT: Fermented foods and the gut — what about that? What should I be thinking about there?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Well, this is very early research, but it’s showing that potentially if a mother has fermented food during pregnancy, it’s also seeding her baby’s gut microbiome. But this is very, very early stuff. If you can have some kefir or some sauerkraut during pregnancy, it’s helpful.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What about bread? Do you think much about bread?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Do I think much about bread? I mean, I’m French, so I think about bread all the time.

STEVEN BARTLETT: In terms of your recommendations on the type of bread one should be eating?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Well, bread is interesting because bread is a carb that contains mostly glucose. And we know that in the third trimester of pregnancy, your baby actually needs more glucose because he’s developing and he also needs energy. Your baby needs about 70 grams of glucose per day at the very end of pregnancy. So as a pregnant mom, you should be eating 70 grams of glucose more than you usually do at the end of pregnancy. For the first and second trimesters, you don’t need to be eating much more glucose.

So you could have that via bread, or you could have that via rice, for example. 70 grams of glucose is about three slices of bread or a cup and a half of rice. In terms of the type of bread you should be eating, it’s always better for your glucose levels to have bread that is full of seeds. But to be honest, there’s not a huge difference between sprouted grain bread versus white bread. It’s all just glucose.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because there is a risk that mothers might get a little bit scared of having sugary foods during pregnancy. And then you’ve just said the baby does need glucose.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah. So there’s a difference. Glucose is present in carbs and starches — meaning bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, oats. Starches contain glucose, but starches are different to sugars. Sugars are the sweet foods that contain glucose, but also another molecule that makes them sweet, called fructose.

Your baby needs no fructose during pregnancy, ever. So your baby does not need any sugar from dessert, from chocolate, from muffins, from cupcakes — none of it. But your baby does need glucose, which is healthier to get from starches like bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes.

The Ketogenic Diet and Low Glycemic Eating During Pregnancy

STEVEN BARTLETT: What about the ketogenic diet while you’re pregnant?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: I don’t think there’s enough evidence to tell us whether it’s okay or not. It’s very early, it’s quite rare, and it seems that since your baby does need glucose during pregnancy, it’s just easier to eat glucose and to eat starches when you’re pregnant. And whole fruit is also a good way of getting the glucose that you need, because thanks to the fiber and the water, the amount of fructose in the fruit is not leading to such a big fructose spike.

STEVEN BARTLETT: There’s a study from the G1D Foundation that basically says for 99% of pregnancies, a strict ketogenic diet is considered dangerous. Doctors instead recommend a low glycemic index diet.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: And low glycemic diets mean a diet with smaller glucose spikes. This is really helpful for people with gestational diabetes — it helps them manage their spikes and reduce the need for medication. But also, for any pregnant mom, it’s important to think about your glucose spikes, because when you have a glucose spike, your baby has a glucose spike. And glucose spikes are not good news.

It’s better to give your baby slow rolling hills of glucose and not these big spikes that can lead to more inflammation. And as we talked about, more inflammation can impact the baby’s brain development.

Supplements During Pregnancy: Omega-3s, Iron, and Folate

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you recommend that mothers take certain supplements? Did you take supplements throughout your pregnancy?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah, I took Omega-3s. And the reason I took Omega-3 supplements is because Omega-3s also form the baby’s brain, and they come from algae in the ocean and fish. One Omega-3 in particular, called DHA, helps your baby’s neurons connect with each other. And this is really important.

In animal studies, when scientists restrict how much DHA a mother has access to, they see measurable impact on the baby’s brain. They see brains that are less efficient. They see babies who take much longer to find the exit of mazes. There’s a clear impact on brain development.

The easiest way to get enough DHA is to eat fish or sardines. The recommendation is fatty fish twice a week — I would say three times a week if you can. And it’s amazing because it’s very cheap. These three cans of sardines are your three servings of fish per week. This gives you all the Omega-3s your baby needs, and it costs about six or seven dollars in total. So for six or seven dollars per week, and for another seven dollars of eggs per week, you’re getting all the choline and all the Omega-3s your baby needs.

You’re opening it and you’re going to eat it. Okay, do you want to know how I have them?

STEVEN BARTLETT: How?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Okay, are you going to eat it? Yeah, go for it. So I open the can, I put it in a bowl, I put mustard, I put sea salt, a little bit of feta, some herbs, and I make this sort of nice little paste. And then I toast a piece of bread and I put it on top, and I have a nice little sardine mash on my bread.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It is quite nice.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah. And it’s really good for you. Lots of Omega-3s. I also supplemented with additional Omega-3s because I think the recommendation of fatty fish two or three times a week is lacking. Most moms don’t have enough Omega-3s in their body to give their baby everything that he needs. So I did fish three times a week plus 2 grams of DHA supplement per day.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What else was in your supplement stack?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: In the third trimester, I took iron because my iron levels were very low. This often happens during pregnancy, even though I was eating a lot of meat, because your baby is pulling a lot of iron from you. And then I had a normal prenatal supplement, but I made sure it had choline in it, and I made sure it had a type of folic acid called methylated folate, which is better absorbed. And folate is very important to prevent miscarriage.

Miscarriage, Motherhood, and Managing Cravings

STEVEN BARTLETT: You talked about your first pregnancy and you said, we’ll talk about that later. You went through miscarriage?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yes. Correct. So I got pregnant the first time and I thought everything would be totally fine. But I found out at the three month scan that the embryo had stopped developing.

I had what’s called a silent miscarriage. So usually when you miscarry, you start to lose blood, you have cramps, you know something’s wrong. I had a silent miscarriage, which is more rare, meaning the embryo stopped developing. The embryo was dead. My body did not expulse it.

So I found out that I had lost the pregnancy at the scan at the doctor’s office. And I found out that I had been walking around for a month with an embryo that had stopped developing. And I had no idea. I thought I was still pregnant.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What is that like for someone like me that has never experienced such news? What are the range of emotions and thoughts that occur when you get news like that?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Listen, for me, it was so devastating. It was so, so difficult. I didn’t want to believe it. I was screaming. I remember falling to the floor in my living room and saying to whatever God or the universe that I wanted my baby back. I was not okay. It was very, very difficult.

I felt a lot of anger, I felt a lot of despair. I felt a sense of injustice, like why me? I felt like I had done everything right. Like I was eating the choline, I was taking the right supplements, I was not smoking crack. And I still had a miscarriage.

I didn’t have it in my consciousness that it could happen to me. So I felt from very, very high. It was probably one of the most difficult experiences of my life.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Is this more common?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: 1 in 5 pregnancies end in miscarriage.

STEVEN BARTLETT: That’s really high. Way higher than I thought it was.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And is it usually in the…

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: In the first trimester? In the first trimester, but it can happen later also. And I felt so isolated, and I didn’t feel like people around me knew how to handle it because it’s kind of taboo. And then when I miscarried, I started talking to people about it, and I found out that so many people around me had gone through it but had never told me about it.

STEVEN BARTLETT: When was your first pregnancy?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: So I got pregnant in February 2024. So the miscarriage was in spring 2024. And then I got pregnant again in August 2024. And my son was born in May 2025.

So I got pregnant quite quickly afterwards. But it was difficult because I was still carrying the grief of the miscarriage. So I had a very anxious pregnancy. I was very anxious the whole time that something bad would happen again, that I would miscarry again and not know about it. It was very difficult.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: It’s a trial of the heart, man.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, the number’s way higher than I expected. Just much higher than I expected. And it’s scary to think about.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah. And that’s why people usually wait until the third month mark to tell their friends and family that they’re pregnant. And for some reason, I had no conception of that. So the moment I got that first pregnancy test, I told everybody. So it made it quite complicated to have to announce the miscarriage to, like, 50 people.

But at the same time, I felt less alone than I would have felt if nobody knew I was pregnant in the first place. But yeah, it was very, very challenging. And it’s more common than we think, and it happens to more people than we know about.

What Women Wish They Were Told Earlier

STEVEN BARTLETT: Is there anything you wish you knew earlier in life? I mean, we’ve talked about many of the things specifically around diet and pregnancy. But is there anything else you wish someone had said to you as a woman earlier that you didn’t hear?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah, I think I wish my mom had told me about her miscarriages. She had not.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, really?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Until I asked. Yep. I wish my grandmother had told me. I did not know. I wish people had told me more about their experiences, because that way I would have understood that it happens to a lot of people. And maybe I would have been more prepared and maybe it would have made the experience a little bit less painful instead of feeling so isolated. Or at least I would have maybe been a bit more cautious.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because you said one of the feelings and emotions you had was, why did this happen to me?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yes. I was like, why me? Why me? And then I realized it happens to many people and it’s not necessarily a reason. It’s nothing you’ve done. It can be just a chromosomal abnormality and the embryo just can’t develop anymore. It can be something we don’t understand yet.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s hard, isn’t it, getting pregnant? I think I don’t know what lie I was living under, but I just assumed that getting pregnant was — have sex unprotected.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: I know. Because your whole life you’re told do all these things to not get pregnant because it might happen without you expecting it. And then when you try to get pregnant, you realize, oh, it’s not at all as easy as I thought it was. It’s a lot.

And I was lucky. I got pregnant after two, three cycles both times. So that’s very, very quick. But for some of my friends, it’s taken them years to conceive.

How Motherhood Has Changed Her

STEVEN BARTLETT: How has becoming a mother changed you?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: It’s made me happier. I feel like my baseline happiness is higher. I used to have this like 10% kind of melancholy or spleen, or sort of like, oh, maybe my life could be better if I did X or Y, or questioning, do I need more? How do I find happiness? And that’s gone. With my son, that has been filled, and I didn’t expect it to be filled. So that’s been amazing.

And it’s made me very efficient because now when I have 42 minutes, I use those 42 minutes. I cannot imagine how much time I used to have. What did I used to do? And I thought I was busy. Now I’m really busy. It’s so funny to look back at my life before and what I used to think and realize that I was completely wrong. I was so wrong. I thought I was busy and I thought I was tired. I wasn’t. Now I am. You feel very busy, right?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I feel so busy.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: And you feel tired.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I do. I do sometimes ask myself, because again, I’m in that season of life — where am I going to get the time? Where does the time come from?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Because so many things you just delegate or you don’t do anymore and you find the time because your baby is the most important thing. And I think I’ve become better at my work because I’m more efficient. And I thought I was pretty efficient before, but now I’m like superhuman.

Can You Reverse the Effects of a Parent’s Poor Diet?

STEVEN BARTLETT: On that point of parenting and pregnancy and everything we’ve been talking about, you said that you spoke to your mother about the diet she had and her lifestyle when she was growing you inside her. If your parents did have a suboptimal lifestyle and diet — this is a bit of a strange question to ask — but is there something that I can do now as an adult to reverse that totally?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Well, first of all, my mom was eating a lot of sugar, but it wasn’t her fault. Culture around her was telling her, fat is bad, eat low fat foods. She was just a product of her time, like we all are. So our diet today is just a function of what food marketing is going on. So again, it’s not our fault. We’re just kind of swimming in this sea of the food industry and marketing and we do the best we can.

Pregnancy is important. It has an outsized effect on our vulnerability to disease. But it’s not everything. So I told you at 25, I was on the cusp of pre-diabetes. Well, I implemented the glucose hacks. I found all the science, and I never got pre-diabetes. So you’re probably going to be fine.

It’s more of the difference between — so I have two friends, Gabriel and Nicholas. They both work out the same and eat the same. One of them builds muscle really easily and has a lot of muscle mass. The other one doesn’t. They’re not equal. However, it doesn’t mean that they both can’t build muscle. It might just be a little bit more difficult for one than for the other.

Same thing with diabetes. One person may get diabetes with the same diet as another person who doesn’t get it. Well, when you apply things, when you change your diet, you can change the course of your life. You can change what diseases you face, but you might be more or less vulnerable. So we always have agency, we always have power, no matter our age, no matter where we are in life, to take back control.

Understanding Cravings: Enjoyment vs. Addiction

STEVEN BARTLETT: Cravings. Cravings are where it all begins. You can know everything.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Wait, say more about that. What do you mean?

STEVEN BARTLETT: You can have all the information. I’m sure that there are people that listen to this podcast, including me, who know a lot about this stuff. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have the control to take action. Because when your brain starts saying, “Go on, eat that thing. Go on, it’ll be so tasty. And you know what, you can do your calf raises after, it’ll all be fine.” That voice in your head that talks you into things that you don’t really want to do, and then 10 minutes later you feel really guilty that you did it.

I’m just wondering if you think much about the psychology — the things I can do upstream to either fend off the cravings or to have better agency and control over the cravings.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: So let’s talk about that voice, because that voice comes in two flavors.

For some, the voice is, “Mmm, that cookie looks really, really good. Chocolate chip with sea salt. That looks tasty. I’m going to probably buy it after the end of this meeting.” That is the voice of pleasure and enjoyment.

There’s another voice that might be in your brain, which is like, “Oh my God, I need sugar right now. What’s in the kitchen? I’m going to open the cupboards. Whatever there is — oh, this weird old cookie — I need to have it right now. I need sugar. Otherwise I’m not going to feel good.”

Those are two very different voices. That second voice is a voice of control and of almost being like a victim. Sugar addiction. I want to help people go from the sugar addiction voice to the enjoyment voice, because I think it’s fine to have cravings or to want to eat something delicious. I just want to make sure people are not controlled by that voice. Do you see what I mean? I want it to be something you enjoy, not something you are victim to.

So how do we separate these two things out? We need to balance our glucose levels so that that voice comes from a place of happiness and not a place of a glucose crash that is making you feel controlled by a biological impulse that is stronger than you.

So protein in the morning, a savory breakfast — super, super important. Then a veggie starter before your lunch and your dinner when you can. Avoiding sugar on an empty stomach to not kick off a rollercoaster of blood sugar ups and downs. That’s going to make you crave more and more of this sweet stuff.

But the voice that you just mentioned — “Oh, that looks really good, I’m going to do some calf raises afterwards” — I think that’s fine. To me, that doesn’t sound like you’re being controlled by it. It sounds like you kind of want to eat delicious stuff.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But I regret it 10 minutes after.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Why?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because, especially if it’s at like 10pm —

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: It messes up your sleep.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It messes up my next day.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And I think, why the hell did I do that? I knew I shouldn’t eat it. But the craving was too strong.

The Cookie, Sleep, and Glucose

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: And listen, sometimes that’s the situation we’re in. I do that too sometimes. Sometimes it is 11pm, I’m exhausted. I know my son’s probably going to wake up at 4am. But I want that cookie and I just have it. Maybe I have some vinegar or some anti-spike before. But it’s okay to give in to these things. I don’t think we have to feel guilty about them. That’s just life. Sometimes we can’t do the glucose hacks and sometimes we’re tired and the cookie looks good. So eat the cookie.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But it annoys me because I then feel sh*t the next day and I go, well, was it worth it? Absolutely not. Objectively, absolutely not.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah. So maybe if you had had that cookie after some almonds, or if after the cookie you could do some laundry or move around a little bit to reduce the spike, maybe you could help with your deep sleep during that night. But sometimes you can’t.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think as well the subject of sleep and glucose is one we don’t talk about enough, because some people really struggle with their sleep. And I’ve just noticed that when I’m in a heavy travel period and I’m flying and waking up early at 4am, fly to LA, fly Miami, go to Qatar, wherever, my ability to control cravings is significantly reduced.

And weirdly, I noticed that when I wake up — say I had dinner at 9pm the night before — if I’m woken up at like 3 or 4am, I wake up really hungry.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Interesting. Have you worn a glucose monitor to see if you’re not crashing in the middle of the night?

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, but I’ve always been so curious as to why that is. Because I know that if I’d slept for four hours more, I would have been like today, where the first thing I’ve eaten today — and it’s what, 2pm — is that sardine, because I just wasn’t hungry this morning. But if I’d woken up early, I mean, I’ve looked a little bit into it.

The Chicken and the Egg: What’s Waking You Up?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: I have a question. Do you think it’s the time you wake up that is causing you to be more or less hungry? Or is it the dinner you had the night before that is causing a crash that is causing you to wake up? Like, what’s the chicken? What’s the egg?

Because it sounds to me like maybe at 3am, if you’re having a glucose crash because you had a big carb-heavy dinner, then it’s your body waking you up and making you feel very hungry. For me, it’s kind of similar. In the morning, if I feel extremely hungry, it’s usually because I went to bed having just had a bunch of carbs before bed.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Well, thanks to the ability to do very quick research, I now know the answer, or at least a solid hypothesis. And the leading answer as to why, when you’re sleep deprived, you end up eating worse, is because of the hormone imbalance of leptin and ghrelin.

Sleep deprivation directly alters the hunger hormones produced in your gut and fat cells. Ghrelin increases — known as the hunger hormone, ghrelin signals the brain that it’s time to eat. Studies from Stanford University show sleeping for only five hours increases ghrelin by approximately 15%. Leptin decreases — the satiety hormone tells your brain you are full. The same sleep loss decreases leptin by approximately 15%. And therefore the result is that your brain receives a loud “I am starving” signal and a very weak “I’m full” signal simultaneously.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: And leptin is the hormone we talked about at the beginning, which, when you’re breastfed as a baby, you’re epigenetically making more leptin, and this setting can stay with you for life. So it’s possible that there’s also some stuff going on in early life that makes you more or less hungry.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Speak to my mum.

Protein: The Most Important Thing We Haven’t Talked About

STEVEN BARTLETT: What is the most important thing we haven’t talked about as it relates to Nine Months That Count Forever, your new book, that we should have talked about?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Protein.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Protein, yeah.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: By the time your baby’s born, he is about 50% protein, if you exclude water. So protein is not just for your muscles. Protein forms your immune system, your skin, your organs, many, many tissues, many, many signaling molecules in your body. So when you’re pregnant, you need to eat more protein to give more protein to your baby.

And animal studies show something fascinating, Steven. They show that when a mom is slightly protein restricted — meaning she’s eating a bit less protein than she needs to — there’s a little epigenetic switch happening in the baby that says, “Dear baby, keep your muscles small, because there’s not a lot of protein in the world you’re about to be born into.”

So what we’re eating during pregnancy is in essence sending a little postcard to our baby in our uterus, telling him what kind of nutrients will be available in the world that he’s about to be born into. And so these animal studies suggest that if you have a low protein diet, your baby will be programmed to stay smaller and have smaller muscle mass throughout his life.

And the thing is, Steven, you need a lot of protein when you’re pregnant because your baby is very protein hungry. So here I have four chicken breasts, which is basically the amount of protein that I needed to eat every single day in the third trimester of pregnancy.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Per day?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah, per day. It’s a lot. So I would have four eggs in the morning — that’s about 30 grams of protein. And then I would have two good servings of protein, represented by the three chicken breasts here. So I would have fish at lunch, probably a meat or a chicken at dinner, and then a high protein snack — for example, Greek yogurt. I would add some whey protein powder in there to make sure I was having enough protein.

So you need about 1.6 grams of protein per kilo of body weight per day in the third trimester of pregnancy. And this is where most of us fall short, because nobody’s telling moms they need to eat more protein.

So the result is that moms lose their muscle mass, because the muscles are being broken down to give protein to the baby. But there’s a limit to it. Your muscle mass cannot compensate for a low protein diet. And this is why we see across all women, all studies, that low protein diets lead to smaller babies and potentially this epigenetic programming of staying smaller throughout life. So protein is key.

GLP-1s, Vinegar, and Pregnancy

STEVEN BARTLETT: On that subject of muscle loss, have you thought much about the impact of GLP-1s — these sort of fat loss drugs — during pregnancy?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Oh, wow. I don’t think they’re recommended during pregnancy. I hope not, because they prevent you from feeling your hunger hormones — they prevent you from feeling hungry. So pregnancy would be a very dangerous time to take these, because during pregnancy you need to eat a little bit more in terms of quantity and calories, but also you need to eat differently. You need to learn about the protein, the choline, the omega-3s. And I think it would be quite dangerous to take a GLP-1 during pregnancy.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you know the vinegar thing you talked about to me before, where you said you have vinegar before eating something that’s high in glucose?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you recommend that for mothers as well?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: You can, but if you’re going to do that, you need to make sure the vinegar is pasteurized, because during pregnancy people are told to only eat pasteurized foods — you want to prevent any food contamination. So make sure you look on the back of the vinegar bottle and make sure it’s pasteurized. Apple cider vinegar is usually not pasteurized.

Do I recommend it? I think it’s okay to do — vinegar is fine during pregnancy, especially if you really want a cookie or muffin. It could be helpful to reduce the glucose spike. But truly, pregnancy is kind of the moment where you need to be eating as little sugar as possible, because it’s impacting your baby’s development. So ideally, you don’t really have to use the vinegar hack.

Is Obesity Genetic — Or Epigenetic?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’ve often seen people talk about an obesity gene and ask if obesity is genetic. I guess one of the things I’ve kind of deduced from today is that the genetic component might be that during pregnancy our mother had a certain lifestyle or diet, and that increased our predisposition to having a different reaction to certain foods completely.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: And the studies show that. So in animal studies, when a mom has a lot of sugar during pregnancy, there are little epigenetic switches in the baby’s DNA that encourage fat storage. Why is that? Because if you eat sugar, your baby’s getting sugar in his bloodstream. And how does the baby protect himself from high sugar levels? By turning the sugar into fat.

So by eating a high sugar diet, you’re sending a little postcard to your baby, being like, “Hey baby, you’re going to be born into a world with a lot of sugar. So become really good at turning that sugar into fat to protect yourself.”

And this is why we see across studies on tens of thousands of moms that the higher a mom’s glucose levels during pregnancy, the more fat mass a baby is born with. Higher glucose during pregnancy means the baby had to turn that glucose into fat to protect himself, so he’s born with more fat mass.

And it doesn’t just stop after birth. Studies show that this continues. Babies born to high glucose mothers are more likely to have obesity as children, as teenagers, and as adults. So the cycle continues. The programming of storing a lot of fat continues, even though they’re no longer connected to their mom’s bloodstream.

Reading Labels, Diet, and What’s Next

STEVEN BARTLETT: In the process of producing this book, did you think much about the evolutionary sort of backstory of where we came from and how our ancestors used to eat? Did you consider, I don’t know, the orangutan, where we share most of our DNA? I think it’s like 98% of our

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: DNA, because if you look at sort of what we used to — meaning nutrient rich organ meats, and not just like a chicken breast, which is just muscle, which is actually very poor in nutrients. If you think about how we didn’t used to eat processed foods, we had a diet that was much more conducive to a baby having more of what he needed in the womb.

Today, our food system is failing us. We’re all deprived of proper nutrition with what we’re eating with all these ultra processed foods, and that includes pregnant moms. So I tried to write a book that was going to help people navigate this very toxic food landscape to see these four simple things they could do to try to optimize a little bit what the baby was getting.

But it’s a lot to think about. And also, being pregnant comes with, I think, innate pressure. I felt pressure during pregnancy. I’m like, man, I’m making another human. This is a lot. And then you’re bombarded by messages online and Instagram, what to do, what not to do. And it feels like whatever you do, you feel guilty.

So I’m hoping this book gives clear scientific evidence to help people navigate that pressure. But listen, I just want babies to be healthy. I want my baby to be healthy. I want everybody’s baby to be healthy. I want moms to feel as little stress as possible. And that’s just the truth. And I’m hoping that this book brings a little bit of reassurance and light in this complicated world.

Stress During Pregnancy

STEVEN BARTLETT: Stress is something we haven’t talked about, but I guess that also is an important factor in this, the story of raising a healthy child.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: I was extremely stressed my entire pregnancy because of my miscarriage. The nine months of my pregnancy with my son were the nine most anxious months of my life. And that’s probably not very good for my baby. But, hey, you do what you can. I tried everything to reduce my stress levels. I just couldn’t. I was so nervous about losing the pregnancy.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You tried everything?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah, I mean, everything. I didn’t take anxiety medication, but I was doing yoga and breath work and working out and talking to my therapist. But I was still anxious because I really didn’t want to lose the pregnancy. And I was scared I would. Why are you smiling?

STEVEN BARTLETT: But you didn’t.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: No, I didn’t.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. And you have a happy, healthy little baby.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You and I — more babies?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: I would love to, but, man, now it’s like logistics. Like, okay, so I’m doing this project and that project and this work thing. So where can I find nine months plus six months where I can’t really work in this crazy schedule that I create for myself, by the way. I just love my work, so I’m always planning new things.

How to Read a Food Label

STEVEN BARTLETT: When you look at products in the supermarket, I think we all have a different thing we go straight to on the label. Sometimes people go to calories, sometimes they look at protein, sometimes they’re looking at whether it’s gluten, sometimes they look at the carbohydrates or the sugars. What do you look for?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Ingredients. I go straight to the ingredients list. Because in the ingredients list, things are ordered by weight. So the first ingredient is going to be what there is the most of in that food.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, I had no idea.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah. So they’re ordered by weight. So if there’s sugar or any other type of sweet thing in the first five ingredients — like dates, like fruit juice, like molasses, like orange syrups, whatever — I know that’s a dessert. And so I put it in my mind, okay, this is a food for enjoyment, for dessert.

So if you look at the sardines ingredients: sardine, olive oil, salt, natural flavor. I would try to look for one that doesn’t have natural flavor, because I don’t know what that means. I don’t think it’s necessary. But as you can see, there’s no sugar in here. So this is not dessert. This sardine can is not dessert. Is that helpful?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because I often just look at the back of labels and I just go straight for the carbs and sugar level.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Really?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. I don’t know why I always look at the sugar level. I think it’s because I’ve done keto for a little while.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: So it kind of depends, though, because if you’re looking at carbs and sugars for a pack of table sugar versus, I don’t know, like a protein shake — I mean, it’s a helpful place to look. That’s also where I look. Because carbs and sugars will tell you a lot about what the food is going to do to you. But also it depends on the ratio. If there’s a lot of protein also, then having carbs in there is not going to create that big of a glucose spike. If it’s a product that has just carbs, then yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: A lot of people look at the calories.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah, but calories are a very bad way of assessing a food because two foods can have the exact same number of calories and be completely different in terms of what they do to your body. So an avocado and a donut — both 200 calories, vastly different impact.

It’s like saying two books are the same because they have the same number of pages. Calories and pages tell you nothing about what’s inside the food or inside the book. We have to learn about molecules, which is why your reflex of going to carbs and sugars is much smarter, because you’re seeing what’s actually going to happen when you eat the food.

For example, avocado and donut. The avocado — mostly fat, fiber — is going to keep your glucose levels nice and steady, going to give your body healthy fats. The donut — mostly sugar — is going to create a big glucose spike, inflammation, aging, crash, cravings, fatigue. It’s going to have a vastly different impact on your body.

So only looking at your diet through the lens of calories is a very bad idea, because two diets can have the exact same number of calories and you can have a completely different experience of life depending on what you’re actually eating.

Jessie’s Daily Diet

STEVEN BARTLETT: And what’s your diet generally? Like, what time do you eat in the morning? Do you do fasting or anything like that?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: No, I don’t do fasting. I’ll have breakfast in the morning, always eggs. Right now my current kick is a bacon and egg quesadilla — super good — with coffee, always with whole milk that I love. Then for lunch I’ll have a veggie starter if I’m having some carb heavy lunch. Or I’ll have like a collard green chicken wrap with avocado and peppers.

After lunch I always usually have something sweet because I love sugar. I love sugar. So I’ll have like some chocolate or a nice cookie. And then I’ll try to move my body if I can. And then the evening is when I have most carbs. I love having rice or pasta at night. It just makes me feel cozy.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What time?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: As early as I can. I’m very un-French in that way. If I could have dinner at 5pm I would, but I would have no more social life. So maybe after my baby’s in bed — so like 7:30, 8.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And are you having vinegar before that meal?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: It depends. If I don’t have a veggie starter, yeah. If I have a veggie starter, I’ll put some vinegar on the veggie starter.

What’s Next for Jessie

STEVEN BARTLETT: What else are you working on? What’s next for you, Jessie?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: One is mental health. Because I have a deep passion for mental health. It’s the reason I got into glucose in the first place. So I want to see if I can start putting together some mental health hacks based on studies. This is something that’s been in the back of my mind for a long time and I’m trying to find the time to go there. And I’m working on new types of content. I’m just endlessly inspired by what I’m able to do and how lucky I am to dream up something and be able to put it together. So lots of surprises coming.

The Closing Question

STEVEN BARTLETT: As you know, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next. And the question left for you is: if you could make the world a better place in one way, what would you change? How could you make the most impact?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: I would maybe outlaw food marketing, or maybe outlaw sugary breakfast foods. Something about making very bad foods that look healthy — making those illegal. It would be illegal to put any health claims on a product. For example, “no added sugars” or “vegan” or “gluten free.” I would outlaw all of those to help people navigate a bit better.

Or if I could have one magic wand to do one thing, maybe I would say no more fruit juice in schools. Even that would be really cool.

Nine Months That Count Forever — The Closing Message

STEVEN BARTLETT: Nine Months That Count Forever: How Your Pregnancy Diet Shapes Your Baby’s Future. What is the closing message, Jessie, for pregnant couples and anybody who has once conceived?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: The closing message is: pregnancy is complicated. The food system we live in is complicated and toxic. And this is a very simple four-step, trimester-by-trimester plan that doesn’t require a lot of money, that is going to help you give your baby the best foundation during development.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you think there are things from a legislation perspective that could be done?

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Yeah. The most important is for the system — the support system around the moms — to help make it really easy for them to eat eggs and sardines and vegetables and healthy fats. We have to all support moms because they’re creating the next generation, and they can’t change the food industry. Things have to shift around them to make it easier.

I think it’s also about education. For example, choline. I said 90% of moms are not getting enough. And when people run surveys to see whether doctors are talking to moms about choline, only 6% of doctors are talking to moms about choline during pregnancy. So there’s also just a big information gap somewhere. Things are broken in lots of different areas.

Maybe it’s that doctors are focused on very short-term, emergency things to manage. Maybe they don’t have time to talk about nutrition. I don’t know. But there’s a real gap and I’m hoping this book will fill it. I’m hoping — and this is pie in the sky — why don’t we prescribe Nine Months That Count Forever to every parent that gets pregnant? This will be a very good, very simple nutrition guide for them.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I have many people in my life that are currently pregnant, people that are very, very close to me. And it’s funny because you hear the conversations they’re having and it does sometimes feel like horoscopes and guessing. No offense to people that love horoscopes, but it does feel a little bit sort of pie in the sky.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: What’s your sign?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I know.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: F*ing — like you don’t know your sign.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m a Virgo, I think.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Okay, okay, okay, people.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m not really — I’m a Sagittarius. But it is confusing because there’s so much information out there. So it’s wonderful to have a manual like this that demystifies an area where there’s just so much conflicting information coming at you. And your book is so importantly based on scientific consensus, facts, and studies versus just experience alone. And I think that’s why it’s so important.

And whenever the time comes that me and my fiancée are fortunate enough, hopefully, to have our own baby, we’re both going to reread this book because it’s hard to find books on this subject that are so succinct, that break it down stage by stage. And you, as an author, have a wonderful way of making things accessible. Even in this conversation, I don’t need to ask you to define complicated words. And that’s reflected in all the work that you do and everything that you write.

So highly recommend. Great book to buy for someone if you’ve just found out that someone in your life is pregnant. But also a great book to buy for you and your partner if you’re going through your own pregnancy journey or thinking about getting pregnant soon.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: It’s also a good book to buy for your kids for all the grandparents to be out there. It’s a good book to buy for your kids if they’re going to have a baby soon.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Amen. Jessie, thank you.

JESSIE INCHAUSPÉ: Thank you so much for having me back, Steven. It’s always a pleasure.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Thanks. YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior. And the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It’s different for everybody looking right now. Check this video out and I bet you you might love.

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