Tim Spector
Tim Spector is an epidemiologist, the public face of the PREDICT research programme and a co-founder of ZOE, the company built on it. He is the last author on the 2020 Nature Medicine paper and a co-author on the 2021 paper about blood-sugar dips. This site uses both, with the commercial interest disclosed, and credits neither to him.
Who they are
He is the famous name, and he is not the first author on either paper used here. The 2020 paper is Sarah Berry's and the 2021 one is Patrick Wyatt's. This is the same error class this publication has already corrected for framing, for anchoring and for choice architecture: the nearest famous name collects the credit for work somebody else led.
Where he appears in prose at all, it should be to explain the commercial interest, which is a fact about the evidence and belongs in the open. ZOE sells personalised nutrition subscriptions built on precisely these findings. The research is real and peer-reviewed in Nature journals, and conflicted is not the same as compromised.
Key papers
Berry, S. E., et al. (2020). Nature Medicine, 26, 964 to 973. Last author. Commercially conflicted: ZOE authorship, employment and funding.
Wyatt, P., et al. (2021). Nature Metabolism, 3, 523 to 529. Co-author. Same disclosure.
Key ideas
Cite Berry for the 2020 paper and Wyatt for the 2021 one. That is the whole practical instruction this page exists to carry.
Disclosure is not an accusation. A reader is entitled to know that the people who established how much responses to food vary between individuals also sell a subscription premised on that variation.
Nothing in either paper is advice, and this site does not prescribe on food.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- Berry, S. E., et al. (2020). Nature Medicine, 26, 964 to 973.
- Wyatt, P., et al. (2021). Nature Metabolism, 3, 523 to 529.
- Vault record, 2026-09-11. First-author credit applied per house rule.