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

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We should resist the urge to be food snobs. Cheap does not mean unhealthy and whilst fresh, unprocessed whole foods are good tinned and frozen foods are also goos The chapter on meat is one of the best as it contains less of the hard-edged advocacy, and focuses instead on specific claims on reducing the amount of red meat either for its supposed health or ecological benefits.

Thirst is an extremely well-balanced and effective signaling system that we should listen to - no evidence to suggest forcing ourselves to drink more water is beneficial 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. This also gives some practical and useful ideas and insights into how you can do the best you can for your own nutritional health, without going into complicated label readingThe discovery, in 2014, that the composition of the microbes in people’s guts could influence their body weight, provided Spector’s first “Aha!” moment. But the blinkers really fell off when he and his colleagues measured twins’ and non-twins’ responses to identical meals, and discovered that they could vary hugely between individuals, influenced by both the microbiome and genetics.

Instead, the book suffered from covering a huge range of topics not very well, dipping into just enough science to lose your concentration, but not enough to properly explain things - before coming to a hastily drawn conclusion in each chapter where the author finally makes up his mind what he was trying to say all along. Gratingly, 'the food industry' is constantly referred to in the plural, as are countless individual companies - and just in general, the writing style does not flow. Veel van wat ons over voeding wordt verteld is misleidend, of zelfs gevaarlijk voor onze gezondheid. De drie boosdoeners zijn: slechte wetenschap, verkeerde interpretatie van onderzoeksresultaten en de voedingsindustrie. Voeding is ons belangrijkste medicijn. Het wordt hoog tijd dat we leren hoe we daar het beste gebruik van kunnen maken, niet alleen voor onze eigen gezondheid, maar ook voor de toekomst van onze planeet.One insight from the study is that people who consumed a greater diversity of plant-based foods pre-pandemic appear to be less susceptible to catching Covid-19, or becoming severely ill from it. While this doesn’t prove definitively that eating a diverse plant-based diet can ward off infections, Spector believes it could help: “Your immune system is compromised if you don’t have a good microbiome controlling it, and so it may either under- or overreact [to pathogens],” he says. “I don’t think eating for our microbiomes would stop pandemics, but I think it could make everyone less ill if they got infected.”

The nutrition revolution is well underway and Tim Spector is one of the visionaries leading the way. His writing is illuminating and so incredibly timely. -- Yotam OttolenghiDiversity cultivates a healthy microbiome – the micro-organisms living in our gut – which plays a vital role in digesting food, regulating our immune systems, and tweaking our brain chemistries through the chemicals they produce. “It’s that diversity of gut microbes that gives you a diversity of chemicals and, we believe, a healthier immune system and a better metabolism,” Spector says. “Once people start seeing that there is this link between the food we eat, our microbes and our immune systems, I think that changes the way we think about food. It’s not just fuel. It really is changing the way our body works.”