I had a huge number of my own beliefs challenged and I loved how clear he was in some of his writing. As a reading experience, though, I'd recommend Michael Pollan (especially The Omnivore's Dilemma) and also How to Live, by Robert Thomas. He opens his allergy chapter with a discussion of a study of Americans, showing that only half of those self-reporting as allergy sufferers had a demonstrable food allergy. Moving away from misleading notions of calories or nutritional breakdowns, Food for Life empowers us to make our own food choices based on a deeper understanding of the true benefits and harms that come from our daily transactions with the foods around us. All that said, I have to say my faith in the author's reliability took a very steep dive at the point he suggests the British could eat sloes in the winter instead of imported mangoes ahahaha mate have you ever eaten a sloe?

Although I appreciate and share his excitement, by the fourth or fifth mention it does begin to feel like little more than a plug. Especially not eg 'women should eat 2000 calories a day', which very much depends on the woman, and also ignores that calorie labelling is shatteringly inaccurate, etc etc). We generally aim to do it earlier so the results of the SCT and virology screens are back by 10 weeks at the latest. In general, I liked it, though I would: the basic principles are "ignore fads and alarmism, don't trust marketing, don't bother with supplements or fake-healthy food, have a varied diet with a lot of plants, be moderate with the treats". Tim pays special attention to the scandalous lack of good science behind many medical and government food recommendations, and how the food industry holds sway over these policies and our choices.

One of the great points about this book is the author's willingness to tell the reader about studies and describe their pros and cons. I could not argue with Spector’s science — he is after all a professor at King’s College and a consultant at St Thomas’ and Guy’s — but my issue with Spoon-Fed was that it often reads too much like a middle class manifesto. Most of the chapter is concerned with the fact that, on environmental grounds, we should all “consider being flexitarians”, eating very little if any grain-fed beef because “meat is not essential” – not exactly bringing back the bacon.

I have long resisted what I think of the ‘faddy’ belief systems and it turns out that if you eat moderately of a wide variety of minimally processed whole foods you are probably going to be okay. Bestselling author and scientist Tim Spector offers clear answers in this definitive, easy-to-follow guide to the new science of eating well. Yet he actually agrees that mortality is somewhat increased in processed meat eaters, though he makes no mention of the nitrites that are considered the problematic aspect of bacon.Trying to understand why one twin is sometimes overweight and the other skinny; one gets diabetes or cancer and the other doesn’t, has been a major theme for the past 20 years,” Spector says. The event that prompted this change was suffering a mini stroke at the top of a mountain in his early 50s, after an energetic day of skiing in the Alps. Food manufacturers, notes Spector, “love the current guidelines based on general dietary proportions, as they give them great flexibility and distract from the steady rise of ultra-processed foods”.