Eight ways to eat better in 2026

A practical guide for our practice members.

If your body feels heavy after December, you are not imagining it. Food choices shift fast during the holidays. The good news. Small changes often change energy, hunger, and mood within days, sometimes within hours.

ZOE’s Professor Tim Spector and Dr Sarah Berry shared eight simple principles for 2026. I have translated them into a user-friendly plan you can use this right away.

1.      Mindful eating. Pause before you eat. Mindful eating means thinking before eating. Slow the start. Notice what is on the plate. Then notice how you feel after the meal. Prof Spector frames this as the antidote to mindless eating driven by highly processed foods designed for speed and overconsumption. 

Try this today. Put food on a plate, not in a packet. Sit down for the first five bites. Check hunger again halfway through.

Why this helps your health. You make fewer autopilot choices. You snack less out of habit. Sarah points out many people snack because it is routine, not hunger. Interrupting the routine changes the outcome. 

2.      30 plants each week. Count variety, not servings. This principle shifts the target from “five a day” to plant diversity. Plants include fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts, herbs, and spices. Aim for variety across the week. 

Why ZOE focuses on variety. Your gut microbes thrive on diverse inputs. A wider range of plant fibres and plant compounds supports a wider range of microbes. Tim and Sarah link this diversity to better gut function, immune signaling, and metabolism. 

Easy wins. Add mixed seeds to breakfast. Add herbs to salads and eggs. Use spices in soups and mince. Add a side of beans or lentils twice per week. 

3.      Reduce high-risk processed foods. Use simple checks. Processed food sits on a spectrum. Some processing helps. Some harms. Sarah describes that intake in Australia, the USA and UK at around 60 to 70% of our energy is from processed food. ZOE’s message is not “avoid all processing.” Focus on the high-risk group. 

A key point many people miss. ZOE’s work suggests only about 25% of energy intake comes from foods they classify as high risk, even though the overall processed share looks much bigger. This reframes the task. You do not need perfection. You need better choices in the highest-risk category. 

A simple filter at the supermarket. Short ingredient list. Food still resembles the original whole food. Avoid “low fat” products with long lists, and avoid products built around additives and sweeteners. 

Straightforward swaps discussed in the episode. Fruit yoghurt or kids yoghurt to plain yoghurt. Add berries and nuts yourself. White bread to wholegrain bread with a shorter ingredient list. Most breakfast cereals are a high-risk area. Reduce reliance there.

4.      Focus on quality, not calories. ZOE’s central theme. Food quality drives appetite, energy, and longer-term habits better than calorie counting. 

A useful example from ZOE’s work. They compared a low-calorie breakfast of a plain bagel with low-fat spread versus the same breakfast plus a protein source such as cheese or nut butter. The higher-calorie, higher-quality breakfast led to better energy and alertness, and less hunger across the day. People ate less overall later. 

What “quality” looks like on a plate. A mix of protein, fibre, and healthy fats. Foods closer to whole-food form. Meals, not isolated nutrients. Sarah uses potato versus avocado to show whole foods still differ, and meal context matters. 

ZOE also mentions a randomised trial called METHOD where the ZOE approach used zero calorie counting, yet participants still lost weight and reduced waist circumference. 

5.      Have an eating window. Keep it realistic. An eating window is the daily period where you eat. Many people stretch this to 12 hours or more. ZOE highlights benefits from tightening it. 

Key numbers from the transcript. Reducing the eating window often lowers daily energy intake by about 300 to 500 calories without tracking. Aim for an overnight fast of 12 to 14 hours, which gives an eating window of 10 to 12 hours. A 10-hour window was used in a two-week ZOE study setting. Many people did this five days out of seven and still saw benefit. 

How to start. Pick a finish time for dinner. Delay breakfast slightly, or stop evening snacks. Keep timing steady on most weekdays.

If you train early, adjust gently. A shorter window still works if you front-load food earlier in the day. Consistency matters. 6.      Eat the rainbow. Chase colour and bitterness. “Eat the rainbow” means colourful plant foods. ZOE links colour to polyphenols, natural plant compounds that feed gut microbes. Tim gives an example: purple carrots contain far more polyphenols than white carrots. 

Bitterness matters too. Slight bitterness often signals polyphenols. Tim lists olive oil and black coffee as examples. The goal is variety across colours and tastes. 

A simple weekly aim. One deep colour per day, such as berries, purple cabbage, beetroot, dark leafy greens, or red capsicum. One bitter note per day, such as extra virgin olive oil on vegetables.

7.      Protein quality. Choose the source, not the label. The current protein trend often pushes quantity. ZOE pushes quality instead. Sarah defines quality in two layers: amino acid profile, and the food package those amino acids arrive in. Whole-food protein sources deliver fibre, healthy oils, and other nutrients alongside protein. 

Plant proteins belong on the list. Whole grains, pulses, nuts, seeds. With variety, plant proteins supply essential amino acids across the day. 

Practical examples from the transcript. Beans, peas, lentils are “powerhouses” because they bring protein plus fibre. Fish, especially oily fish, rates as a high-quality choice due to protein plus omega-3 fats. Be cautious with “high-protein” processed snack foods with a health halo.

8.      Eat fermented foods. Aim for variety. Tim describes results from a ZOE ferment study with 9,000 people who added three portions of fermented foods daily for two weeks. Many participants reported less bloating plus better mood and energy within days. 

Variety matters because different ferments contain different microbes. Yoghurt offers fewer strains. Kefir offers more. Kimchi and kombucha often offer many more. 

Everyday ferments to try : Kefir. Live yoghurt. Sauerkraut. Kimchi. Kombucha. Real cheeses, avoid processed “slice” cheese style products. 

Your 2026 starter plan. One week. Day 1 to 2. Add a balanced breakfast. Greek yoghurt, nuts, seeds, berries.  Day 3 to 4. Add plants and colour. Add herbs, spices, mixed seeds, one deep-colour plant.  Day 5 to 7. Tighten timing and add ferments. Set a 10 to 12 hour eating window. Add one fermented food daily, then build toward more variety. 

If you want help translating this into your normal routine, bring your food questions into your next visit. Your spine and nervous system do best with steady energy, better sleep, and lower systemic stress. Food choices shape all three.

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Dr Mark has a special interest in helping recreational athletes of all ages perform better and prevent injury. Correct breathing and postural alignment are critical for top performance and injury prevention and is an integral part of “The Over 40 Athlete System” that Mark has developed.

Dr Julie has a special interest in helping mothers and “mothers to be”. Her Post Graduate qualifications in Paediatric Chiropractic and as an ex-midwife give her a unique ability to help pregnant women, new mums and their young children.

Yours in Health,

Dr's Mark & Julie