How does the world around us – our environment, our culture and our relationships – interact with our health? While we have become more affluent over the last 62 years, many Malaysians appear to have moved away from our traditional dietary habits. Now, with obesity and diabetes on the rise, we seem desperate to experiment with fad diets, forgetting that each of us has a unique microbiome (gut bacteria) with a particular response to what we eat. This is an edited recording of the panel discussion that was held at the BFM Health & Living Live 2019 by AIA Vitality. Members of the panel were: Dato’ Dr Mahendra Raj, Consultant Physician & Gastroenterologist, Pantai Hospital; Dr Azlina Ahmad Annuar, Neurogeneticist, University of Malaya; and Mary Easaw, Consultant Dietitian and former Chief Dietitian, Institut Jantung Negara