Spoon-Fed: Why almost everything we’ve been told about food is wrong

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Let's take a couple of examples where the book really is at its best. Spector discusses the incredibly confusing and mostly scientifically ungrounded world of pregnancy food guidelines. He notes a range of incongruous contradictions in advice: in the UK and US, for instance, pregnant women are encouraged to avoid eggs, particularly raw eggs, at all costs while in the Philippines, meanwhile, they are actively encouraged to eat them. Similarly in Japan women eat sushi while raw fish is frowned upon elsewhere. Such examples, at a basic level, encourage a scepticism in the reader at blanket, dogmatic guidelines that is extremely valuable. Spector goes on to point out the things that do matter during pregnancy, notably the question of weight gain: far from being common that women gain too little weight (the 'eating for two' myth) excessive weight gain is more concerning. This leads to the conclusion that instead of focussing on a handful of foods that marginally increase the risks of already rare diseases, doctors would be better off taking a wider view of pregnant women's diet and focussing attention there. Even calorie counts, which I believed to be the most basic and indisputable of food-related facts, are shown to be hardly more than estimates, as well as largely irrelevant when it comes to their effects on individual consumers. Not only is it hard to carry out long-term nutritional studies on human subjects with any degree of accuracy, but our responses are so different that Spector is able to call the ‘assumption we are all identical machines’ the ‘most prevalent and dangerous myth about food’. There are a number of recurring themes in the book, the most salient being that, because we all have different genes and, more importantly, differing biomes, we differ in our responses to diet - total calorie-intake, composition of our diet, even the timing of our meals - and also in our response to exercise. Hence, dietary advice based on what is best for the average individual is of only limited value for any of us (which however begs the question of why it is worth bothering with the scientific literature, which inevitably reaches conclusions about average individuals!). And another thing, I haven’t heard a midwife advise a pregnant woman to “eat for two” for twenty years- if then. I can’t say no midwife says it, but that is definitely not standard advice nor would it be on any of the written information provided. But he references this saying that his friend was advised this by a midwife. That one-off anecdote does not evidence make.

A diverse Mediterranean-style diet with a range of fermented foods to keep your microbes happy is looking like the best present you can offer your brain

Dit boek is een tegengif tegen de sprookjes over voeding die we ingelepeld hebben gekregen en waardoor we alsmaar ongezonder en ongeruster zijn geworden. Het gaat over een andere manier van denken over voeding en dieet, en laat zien dat iedereen een individu is, in plaats van de ‘gemiddelde’ persoon voor wie de richtlijnen bedoeld zijn.

Tim Spector v cca 200 stranách zhrnul svoj komplexný pohľad na stravovanie. Páčilo sa mi, že ako sľuboval, neponúka čitateľom žiadne univerzálne zázračné riešenia. We should avoid highly or ultra-processed foods as much as possible - added chemicals, artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers and preservatives can interfere with our gut microbes and are likely to be bad for our long-term health Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’ I plan on re-reading select chapters including a very good chapter on pregnancy advice and how guidelines are over-restrictive and non-science based and that it is safe to drink some coffee, eat some sushi and have the odd sip of wine or beer.Coffee contains high levels of the antioxidant chemicals, polyphenols, which are likely to be beneficial due to their role in feeding our microbes. A mug of coffee also contains around 0.5g of fibre

O ne of the clearest and most accessible short nutrition books I have read: r efreshingly open-minded, deeply informative and free of faddish diet rules.' Bee Wilson, Guardian Empowering and practical, Food for Life is nothing less than a new approach to how to eat - for our health and the health of the planet.The book describes our physiological relationship with food to dispel many prevalent myths and pseudo-science surrounding faddish diets. Tim explains that due to the way we change our attitudes to food over the last few decades, we are no longer exposed to the very microbes that are an essential part of our physiology. Calorie counting is a useless way to determine food quality. Your best bet is to judge a food on the quality and variety of ingredients rather than calorie count or grams of fat from the label. The less ingredients, the less manipulated the product is likely to be The number and variety of different plants is essential - the more plant species we eat in a week (ideally 20-30) the healthier and more diverse our gut microbes become which helps to keep our bodies in good shape My main issue is with the tone of 'advocacy', and even the correct focus on the food companies, and their overreaching influence, can sometimes get in the way of the food science and nutritional essentials I suspect many will have been seeking.

I really started to love this book. So much information which is important nowadays. But then I came to the chapter about pesticides. This is so poorly researched it actually hurts. And it males me question all the other information in the book. Can I still trust the author after this?

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The gluten chapter similarly describes much interesting work investigating the actual prevalence of gluten intolerance: a study in Italy of 392 self-reported sufferers revealed that 8 in 10 had no adverse reactions to gluten or wheat. As in the chapter on pregnancy, the aim of such discussion is to encourage scepticism in the reader, both in advice they receive but also in what they perceive about themselves. Spector encourages the reader to experiment. If you think you are gluten intolerant, perform an actual test: remove gluten for three weeks and then reintroduce it for three weeks to test its impact. And repeat the test in future. As so often in this book, the message is to try not to limit your diet unnecessarily - particularly not to more processed foods like those in the free-from isle - so testing whether your allergy may have disappeared (as can be the case for milk and egg allergies for instance, which often disappear after a few years) is crucial to ensuring your diet remains as varied and rich as possible. Foods interact, and their calorific content varies when mixed, so the rate if energy released from a cheese sandwich may be different from the value of the bread and cheese measured separately This book gave me a serious case of 'stop the planet, I want to hop off'. Everything is ruined. By marketing, chemicals, plastic, globalisation, profits, selfishness and mostly: GREED.