Tuesday 2 June 2015

The Diet Myth review



Look what arrived a few days ago! I LOVE this book. It's packed with useful and incredibly interesting facts as well as providing a comprehensive reference section for further reading.
The author, Tim Spector, is a Professor and a Hon Consultant Physician and has published over 700 academic papers, many of them concerning nutrition and obesity. (And he is handsome!).

I skimmed through it first at high speed, so eager to take it all in at once and am now reading it more thoroughly to absorb some of the facts. Tim agrees that "trying to work out what is good or bad for us in our own diets is increasingly difficult..."  He explains why dieting is so hard and ultimately fails, why individuals respond differently, why exercise won't make the average person slim but is important for health. He shows how we have come to falsely believe breakfast is essential, how some foods are promoted without real proof of goodness and how cholesterol scares may not be accurate. He explains the fats, protein, carbohydrates and fibre and how we owe so much to our very own internal microbe communities.

In his conclusion he states that some facts about diet are true, the ones most of us have probably heard many times, you know it, vegetables and fruit are great, high sugar and processed foods are not.
He does recommend skipping meals and intermittent fasting for health and above all aiming for more diversity in our food choices. He has also set up the British Gut Project so if you are so inclined you can send a small stool sample (wipe a cotton bud on used toilet paper) and learn about your own microbes. Fascinating but maybe a step too far for the more sensitive among us. My 10 year old is keen! All I can add is if you have an interest in healthy eating for you and your precious ones then this book is required reading...

The diet myth

No comments:

Post a Comment