Is it safe to eat breakfast?

One man’s search for a healthy diet

Michael Allen

Everyone wants to be healthy. And we want our children and grandchildren to be healthy. And most of us, these days, are aware that staying healthy depends to a large extent on what we eat. We could hardly fail to be aware of it, given the constant barrage of newspaper articles, TV programmes, lose-weight-quick schemes, and so forth. So, what are the best foods to eat? And the ones to avoid? This essay tells the story of one man’s forty-year attempt to sort out the facts from the folklore, and the reliable information from the outright lies. It may be useful to you. It’s free, and you can send it to your friends if you wish.

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CONTENTS PART ONE: EVIDENCE Introduction 4 1. Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit 6 2. Sugar Blues 14 3. Food Combining for Health Cookbook 20 4. Diet Trials – How to Succeed at Dieting 23 5. Body by Science 29 6. Trick and Treat; Natural Health and Weight Loss 34 7. In Defence of Food 44 PART TWO: CONCLUSIONS 8. Is it really safe to eat breakfast? 52 9. Mr Rumsfeld’s conundrum 58 10. A personal strategy, likely to be of little interest to 61 anyone else 11. Spread the word 75

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Part One

EVIDENCE

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Introduction Do you find food confusing? I certainly do. There are so many conflicting opinions. And that’s why I’ve written this essay: it’s an attempt to sort out my own ideas. And I’ve posted it on Scribd, as a free document, in the hope that it might be useful to other people too. There is only one certain fact about food: if you don’t eat anything, you will die. You may not die quickly, because your body will consume itself to keep going – and let’s face it, some of us have a lot more body to consume than others. But eventually, if you don’t eat anything at all, you will starve to death. That much is certain. Everything else seems to be controversial. Some books/scientists/doctors/diet experts say one thing, some another. Some say sugar is harmless, and some say it’s poison. Vegetarians don’t eat meat, but advocates of the hunter-gatherer diet eat lots of it. And so on. It’s all very confusing, to put it mildly. In this essay I’m going to describe my forty-year effort to find some reliable information which would help me to decide what to have for my own breakfast, not to mention lunch and dinner. I’m going to do this mainly by describing the contents of a series of books which I have found particularly useful over that forty-year period. Since this is a record of my own non-scientific research into food, I’m going to have to refer to myself quite a lot. This may be tedious, but I think it’s unavoidable. Sorry about that. Because I live in England, the context of a lot of my remarks is English, but food is much the same everywhere these days. This is not a scholarly publication, so I have not provided footnotes giving the source of every statistic and fact. But you have my assurance that I have not quoted a figure unless it comes from what I regard as a reputable source, rather than from some wide-eyed ranter.

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At the end I offer some conclusions. For what they’re worth. Which, frankly, may not be a lot. If you find the essay a bit long-winded in places, you can jump straight to the conclusions if you wish – they begin on page 52 – but you might miss some interesting stuff on the way.

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Adelle Davis: Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit 1.1 Summary Nearly forty years ago, Adelle Davis’s book Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit solved a serious problem for me. She showed me how to stop feeling tired all the time. Perhaps more importantly, Adelle Davis exposed the fact that, even in the 1940s and ’50s, the major food-processing companies were pursuing profit at the expense of public health; and she was brave enough to criticise them for it. And guess what – in the last sixty years or so, nothing much has changed! 1.2 Publishing history Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit was first published in 1954 (1961 in the UK), so bear in mind that most of the author’s research would have been done about sixty years ago. Various revised editions of this book subsequently appeared, but the author died in 1974, aged 70, so she wasn’t around to revise anything after that date. The book is now out of print. 1.3 Food? Why fuss about it? To begin with, I think it’s worth recording how I came to read Adelle Davis in the first place. In the early 1970s I found myself in the same position as many young men. I was married, with a mortgage and two small children. I left home before eight in the morning, caught a train to work, got home (if I was lucky) about six, and spent some time with the children. Then I had a meal,

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cooked for me by my wife. And then… well, most of the time I just slumped in front of the TV. Because I was tired. Excessively tired. What is more, I was tired during the day. I had never, at any point in my life, been what the Americans call a high-energy guy. But surely, I said to myself, this level of fatigue could not be normal. It certainly wasn’t ideal. So I cast around for some ideas as to what was wrong. Perhaps, I thought, it was because I was eating the wrong things. So I went down to the local library and began searching for books on diet. After a while I came across Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit. After dipping into it, I bought a copy for reference, and I have it still; though it’s so old and well thumbed that it is, in fact, falling to pieces. 1.4 Adelle’s golden rules For me, the most important chapter in Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit was the first: ‘Breakfast gets the day’s work done.’ Adelle’s advice was that, by eating the right sort of breakfast you could cure fatigue in one day. And if you went on eating the right breakfast, you could remain energetic for the rest of your life. ‘The general rule,’ she said, ‘is to eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.’ In other words, a slice of toast and a cup of coffee, first thing in the morning, aren’t going to do much for you. More specifically, chapter 1 introduced me to the mysteries of the body’s blood-sugar level, and it provided a clear prescription for an energy-giving breakfast. You need, she said, a high protein content, some fat and carbohydrate, and a small amount of sugar. To keep your blood-sugar at a satisfactory level for three hours, eat at least 20 grams of protein; and for five hours, eat 50 grams. Snacks between meals were encouraged, but not candy bars and the like. A glass of milk and an apple, perhaps.

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Adelle recommended that you should avoid coffee, white-flour products, white rice, packaged cereals, and commercial desserts. You should prefer fresh food to frozen or canned; and unrefined anything is better than refined. She was keen on milk, liver, yogurt, wholegrain breads, and wheat germ. Well, that’s really not bad, you know, is it? Forty years after I first read that advice, I don’t find a lot to quibble with there. She identified most of the main problems in our diet: refined flour and rice, all processed foods, and anything which comes from a supermarket in a glossy cover. 1.5 Too refined for our own good This is probably as good a place as any to talk about that word ‘refined’, as used in terms such as refined flour and refined rice. Particularly in England, the word ‘refined’ suggests improved, pure, better quality, and altogether nicer to know. And the big firms which process flour for retail purposes would no doubt be delighted to have you think those thoughts in relation to their product. But in fact refined flour is anything but an improvement on the original. The principal reason for subjecting flour to the industrial process of refining is to extend its shelf life. This provides considerable commercial advantages for the wholesalers and retailers. But the refining process removes many of the valuable nutrients. The needs of the human eater, you see, are different from the needs of capitalism; and capitalism punches much harder. All this was known about in the 1930s, but we’re still doing it because food with the nutrients removed is so much easier to transport and store. Bacteria, insects, and rodents are all interested in nutrients but they don’t bother when the nutrients are removed. Even by the end of the nineteenth century, one sixth of the calories in the English diet were coming from sugar, with

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much of the rest coming from refined flour. And many authorities have noted that the use of refined flour (from 1862 onwards) has been matched by a steady rise in heart disease, cancer, and other ailments. During World War I, the Danish authorities forbade the milling of grains, for reasons of economy, and the death rate fell by 34 per cent. In her book Let’s Cook it Right, written over fifty years ago, Adelle Davis says that she hadn’t had refined flour in the house for about twenty years. It is worth noting, for those who like rice, that when the Engelberg milling machine was introduced, nutrients and minerals were removed from the original brown rice, leaving a virginally white product. This polished white rice could be sold as new, modern, and civilised. Unfortunately, in countries such as Japan, it soon became clear that those who ate it became ill; the illness was named beriberi, after the Senegalese word for weakness. When people returned to eating whole rice (what the French call riz complêt), they became healthy again. The prevalence of refined foods is, in the judgement of many, a primary cause of obesity. In England, 25 per cent of adults are obese, up 10 per cent since 1994. The consequent problems cost the UK’s National Health Service (i.e. the taxpayers) some £7 billion a year. In the refined world, there are calories aplenty, but nutrients are in short supply. Thus we contrive to be both overfed and undernourished. So much for progress. 1.6 Adelle’s famous Pep-up Towards the end of Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit, Adelle Davis gives the recipe for a concoction which she called Pep-up, or fortified milk. This is a drink made up of eggs, lecithin, cold-pressed oil, calcium lactate, yogurt, brewers’ yeast, and a few other things. This drink, she claimed, provided all the necessary nutrients in one dose.

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To the great amusement of my family, I drank this stuff for years. Every two or three days I mixed up a quantity of it, and drank some every morning. I found it quite pleasant, but to others it looked, and tasted, quite disgusting – a muddy brown sludge. Well, I didn’t mind if people laughed. Adelle’s recommendations for breakfast, plus a glass of pep-up, gave me a splendid foundation for the day’s work. And while I never became a particularly active person, out playing tennis or golf at every opportunity, I did have enough physical and intellectual stamina to do an enormous amount of work. I owe Adelle Davis a great vote of thanks. The only drawback to reading Adelle Davis is that the facts which she set out are somewhat depressing. As you go through her book, she identifies all the nutrients which are absolutely essential to good health, and then demonstrates how these nutrients are so often missing from modern food. Often the nutrients are deliberately removed, in order to extend the shelf-life. One typical chapter, which has stuck in my mind all these years, is entitled ‘Which Apricot? Grown Where?’ Apricots are a useful source of Vitamin A, without which you may suffer all kinds of skin problems and damage to your eyes. In fact, the lack of adequate Vitamin A can lead to a long list of ailments, both major and minor. And, as so often when reading Adelle, you end up feeling that it’s a small miracle that any of us ever have any semblance of good health, and that, if we do, it can only be temporary. Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit is out of date in certain respects, and you should certainly not take all the vitamin supplements that the author recommends without medical advice. All in all though, the author was remarkably perceptive. Her chapter on breakfast is an absolute eye-opener.

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1.7 How to make enemies and influence people Adelle was a respectable scientist. She did postgraduate work at Columbia University and the University of California at Los Angeles, and was awarded an MSc degree in Biochemistry by the University of Southern California. She also held some important posts, such as supervisor of nutrition for Yonkers Public Schools. None of this protected her from being bitterly criticised, and you can find an online discussion of her critics here. It was said that she ‘didn’t really understand the science’, and that she ‘only read the abstracts’, i.e. the brief summaries of the scientific papers. Underlying all these criticisms there was, of course, an unspoken and implied sneer. She was ‘only a woman’. To add insult to injury, she was even criticised for dying of cancer at the age of 70. ‘If she knew so much about healthy eating, how come she didn’t live longer?’ Adelle Davis was, of course, writing for a non-scientific public. The very title of the book reveals that: any fool can tell what it’s about. And her books sold in large numbers. That background in itself was enough to make many scientists critical of her. Scientists don’t like books on scientific subjects which any reasonably educated person can read: such books ‘distort the facts’ and ‘oversimplify’. However, what really generated attacks on Adelle Davis was the fact that she dared to criticise the mass processing and distribution of food. These very powerful commercial companies are sometimes referred to as Big Food. For example, this is what she says in Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit:

The enormous power of the food processors is almost beyond comprehension. Millions upon millions of dollars spent for lobbyists sway state and federal lawmakers to the food refiners’ advantage…. Tremendous wealth can

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still be made annually at the expense of our health and the health of our children.

After reviewing official statistics on the tens of millions of people in the United States who were suffering from afflictions such as arthritis, allergies, heart disease, and cancer, Adelle Davis concluded that, ‘This is what’s happening to us, to America, because there is a $125 billion food industry who cares nothing about health’. Now if those aren’t bold statements I don’t know what would be. And the lady was under no illusions about what attacks those statements would bring her. She pointed out that the food processors had arranged for ‘the blacklisting of books which would in any way harm their colossal sales…. Name-calling, derogatory articles and adverse propaganda are other methods used to belittle persons refusing to recommend refined foods.’ All of that happened about sixty years ago. Judging by actions (rather than pious statements and advertising slogans), Big Food is still not seriously interested in what impact the products have on your health, just as long as the Yummy-Scrummy Candy Bar – or whatever it is – doesn’t actually poison you in a way which will enable you to sue them. They would certainly be worried about that, because it could cost them millions. 1.8 You could learn more There is another book by Adelle Davis that I definitely think is worth buying. It too is out of print, but there are plenty of copies on the secondhand market. Its title is: Let’s Cook it Right. Few people have ever known more about cooking than Adelle Davis, and this must be one of the most thorough cookbooks ever written. It’s worth buying just for the section

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on making gravy. It isn’t as famous as Mrs Beeton, but it deserves to be. Opening the book more or less at random, I find the following: ‘Eat the superior meats most often. The meats which are most important nutritionally are liver, kidney, brains, thymus (sweetbreads) and heart.’ Now – question: When did you last see brains on a restaurant menu? Or heart? Why is liver so cheap? The fact is that the most nutritionally valuable meats are the ones that hardly anyone buys. Go figure. The last time I asked a butcher about sweetbreads, he told me he hadn’t seen any for years. They are regarded, he said, as slaughtermen’s perks, and they never reach the shops. So obviously there’s no demand. Glancing through my copy of Let’s Cook it Right today, I regret that I haven’t used it more often over the years. It covers all the old favourites, of course, plus much relatively obscure stuff, such as how to cook kidneys and six methods of serving brains. Adelle Davis was no modern-day celebrity cook, flashing her tits at us and whipping up sugary rubbish (I will mention no names). She was a stunningly learned woman, and it’s a great shame she isn’t around to offer guidance today. If what I have said about Adelle Davis interests you, can find out more about her here: Wikipedia entry The Adelle Davis Foundation Adelle Davis revisited

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William Dufty: Sugar Blues 2.1 Summary William Dufty persuaded me that refined sugar (or sucrose, the white stuff that you put in your coffee) is thoroughly unhealthy. He also demonstrated to me (as Adelle Davis had) that Big Food is very far from being an unqualified force for good. However, the macrobiotic diet which he adopted was not one which I would wish to follow myself. 2.2 Publishing history Sugar Blues was first published in 1975. The publishers claim that 1.6 million copies have been printed, and they will still sell you one. They issued the latest edition in 2002. 2.3 Dufty the crusader The first thing to be said about Sugar Blues is that it is not an academic work. No self-respecting university scientist would do anything with Dufty’s book except drop it in the waste-paper bin and then piss on it. It comes into that category of work which is referred to in academe as ‘mere journalism’.

‘Mere journalism’ is a phrase which has to be spoken in a tone of extreme contempt – as if there were nothing worse on the face of the planet. But you and I, of course, know better. We know perfectly well that top-class journalism is one of the few things that keep the world sane. Well, as sane as it ever is. Top-class journalism includes the Watergate investigations by Woodward and Bernstein, Ed Murrow’s wartime reports from London, Randy Shilts’s reporting on

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AIDS, and the Daily Telegraph’s exposure of the MPs’ expenses scandal.

A top-class journalist knows how to do his research. He (occasionally she) knows how to ferret out the facts that people don’t want him to know. He knows how to hold the reader to the page, and he can recognise a bullshitter at fifty paces. Dufty does all of this, and a lot more.

After World War II, Dufty entered the newspaper business in New York. He soon became a leading columnist, specialising in exposés, including one of J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover was then one of the most powerful (and vindictive) men in America, and few had the courage to stand up to him.

Dufty also specialised in ghost writing, i.e. producing the autobiographies of famous people which would be published as if they had written the book themselves. Dufty’s most famous subject was the jazz singer Billie Holiday. 2.4 Sugar Blues: the two-page version Dufty begins his book with some personal history. His work regularly brought him into contact with celebrities, and one day he arrived late at a meeting and found himself sitting next to Gloria Swanson, one of the most famous film stars of the day. He was served coffee, and was just about to put sugar in it when Miss Swanson hissed in his ear: ‘That stuff is poison. I won’t have it in my house, let alone my body.’ Well, Dufty didn’t take a lot of notice, but he certainly didn’t forget. His diet up to that time had been about as unhealthy as it is possible to imagine, and his various illnesses got worse. Thoroughly miserable, he trailed from doctor to doctor, seeking a cure. ‘I cannot recall a single doctor,’ he says, ‘who ever displayed the slightest curiosity about what I ate and drank.’ One day he came across a book which stated that sugar was more lethal than opium and more dangerous than atomic fallout. He then remembered that Gloria Swanson

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had warned him that everyone had to find out the truth about food for themselves – the hard way. And he certainly had. Dufty there and then made the fairly drastic decision to give up sugar, and all other ‘drugs’ such as aspirin, caffeine, and all the chemical additives in food which he had hitherto consumed unthinkingly. He found the next few days very difficult. Going cold turkey made him extremely ill, but then he began to improve. In five months he lost 70 lbs in weight ‘and ended up with a new body, a new head, and a new life.’ Dufty then gives us a history lesson. He describes how sugar was first introduced to the human diet, and how, from the very beginning, it was seen to have damaging effects on health. However, as the sugar trade generated ever greater profits, the harder it became to criticise the use of sugar. Powerful business interests were involved, and, as usual, they didn’t like losing money. The government also took taxes, so there was little incentive for politicians to curb its use.

For me, the most interesting parts of Dufty’s book are the chapters in which he documents the growth in the consumption of sugar, and compares that with the increase of disease, particularly diabetes. For example, sugar consumption in Denmark rose from 29 lbs per person per year in 1880 to 113 lbs in 1934. Over the same period, the death rate from diabetes rose from 1.8 per 100,000 to 18.9 per 100,000.

Of course, correlation is not the same thing as causation, as any scientist will be quick to tell you. In other words, figures such as these (and there are many other examples) do not prove that sugar causes diabetes. In fact, to this very day, the official Party Line of the medical establishment is that we do not know what causes diabetes. If you go to official sources of information – try the BBC, for example, since it still has some reputation for telling the truth – you will find that the cause of diabetes is ‘not clear’. Could be a virus, or chemical toxins, or cow’s milk.

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If you try the UK’s National Health Service web site, you will find that there is no real attempt to identify a cause of the disease, in terms of anything outside the body. The NHS states simply that diabetes is brought about by too much glucose (sugar) in the body. Turn to the pages on treatment and diet, and you will find no suggestion that you should cease to consume even the white refined stuff, let alone other sources of sugar. In 1911, the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on diabetes stated that ‘The excessive use of sugar as a food is usually considered one of the causes of the disease’, but science has moved on since then. The web site of the UK Sugar Bureau is quite clear on the issue. Diabetes, they say, ‘is certainly not caused by eating too much sugar.’ So that’s definite then, isn’t it? Well, maybe. It just so happens, of course, that the Sugar Bureau is ‘supported’ by British Sugar, which is the leading supplier of sugar to the UK market. Not exactly a neutral observer. Far be it from me to sow doubts in your already troubled mind, but it is my view that, when looking at reports of research into anything relating to food and health, it is always a good idea to ask yourself: Who funded this research? Such caution applies to the research on drugs in particular. Doug McGuff, whose book Body by Science I shall discuss shortly, says bluntly: ‘If, for instance, a pharmaceutical company or a [food] supplement company funded a study, any data derived may be suspect, and serious doubt will have been cast on its conclusions.’ This is true, but is not often so baldly stated. The only reason why McGuff can make such a statement is because he works as a hospital doctor and his career does not depend on obtaining research funding.

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2.5 William Dufty assessed Sugar Blues is well worth reading, even today, and because Dufty was a writer by profession it’s a very easy read, entertaining and thoroughly enlightening. Yes, he was definitely a man with a large bee in his bonnet, and he sometimes overstated his case. But, as he reveals repeatedly, there were very few people around who were prepared to tell the truth about sugar, and of those that were, few could get their voice heard. Dufty, fortunately, was a well known journalist, which gave him many friends in the media. This is a great asset if you find yourself under attack from the forces of Big Food, which he assuredly did. He was also brutally critical of the US medical establishment. In due course Dufty married Gloria Swanson. (He had become such a good cook, she said, that it was easier to marry him than employ him.) Both he and Swanson were advocates of a macrobiotic diet, which is a low-fat, high-fibre diet of whole grains, vegetables, sea algae, and seeds. This is definitely not something that I could live on myself, but it has had its enthusiasts, among whom were the pop-star John Lennon and his Japanese wife, Yoko Ono. 2.6 Gloria was right My immediate response to reading Sugar Blues, in the late 1970s, was not quite as dramatic as the author’s own overnight conversion to the complete elimination of the substance from his own diet. However, it was blindingly obvious to me that I would do well to cut out as much sugar as possible. That proved to be quite difficult. Yes, I could stop adding sugar when I stewed fruit, for instance. I could stop taking sugar in tea and coffee; after a week I didn’t miss it, and after two weeks, if I did have coffee with sugar in it, it tasted

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disgusting. But when you start to read labels in supermarkets, you soon discover that sugar is loaded into damn near everything. Buy a can of soup, it’s got sugar in it. Tomato ketchup, ditto. It’s in bread. Bacon sometimes. Peanut butter. And so on. And on, and on, and on. (Dufty reported that an average of 5 per cent sugar was even added to cigarettes, if you please, with up to 40 per cent in pipe tobacco.) In 2002, the Guardian reported that one UK ‘weight-loss’ drink was 61.9 per cent sugar. The same Guardian article stated that, in the UK, the average consumption of sugar, per person, was 1.25 lbs a week. In retrospect, I regret that over the past thirty years or so I haven’t tried even harder to cut down on the sugar. Note to self: must do better in future.

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Jean Joice & Jackie Le Tissier: Food Combining for Health Cookbook 3.1 Summary Food Combining for Health Cookbook is one of many books that you can find on the Hay diet (of which more in a minute). It gives a short history of the ideas which Dr Hay expounded, covering all the key points; and it then provides, as the title suggests, a large number of recipes which conform to the Hay principles. This book was first published in 1994. The second edition appeared in 2000 and is still in print. 3.2 A one-minute guide to the Hay diet When my father died, in 1982, I found a book on the Hay diet among his papers. I took a brief look at it, but it seemed to me to involve a great deal of effort for not much benefit. Nearly twenty years later, however, I came across other references to it, and this time I paid a bit more attention. The first thing to note is that the Hay diet has nothing to do with eating hay, i.e. the dried grass which is used for cattle food. (But, if you adopt it, this will not prevent your friends from asking you how you are getting on with the nosebag.) Neither is it a diet in the sense of being presented as a way of losing weight. The Hay diet is simply a way of making sure that, at every meal, you eat foods which do not disagree with each other in your stomach. By this means, you not only ensure that you suffer from less indigestion, but, more importantly, you also give your body a chance to digest the food properly and thus

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obtain the maximum nutritional benefit from what you are eating. The name of the diet derives from the fact that it was developed by an American doctor, William Howard Hay, in the 1920s. Hay himself suffered from a great deal of ill health, which he cured by eating only natural foods. In other words, he gave up all the mass-produced, messed-about-with stuff with which we are now all too familiar. Hay also did some research, and concluded that the digestive system works best if we avoid, for example, eating starchy foods with protein. He recommended that you should avoid serving potatoes or pasta with meat. He was strongly in favour of vegetables, fruit, salads, wholegrain bread and cereals. He recommended that all refined flour and sugar should be eliminated from the diet. I should point out to you, without further delay, that there is absolutely no scientific evidence in support of Dr Hay’s theory of food combination. As a researcher he seems to have been a bit of an amateur, and insofar as modern science has taken any notice of him at all, which isn’t much, his ideas about how the digestive juices work seems to have been wrong. However… Dr Hay was clearly on the right lines about some things. He was an early recommender (in the 1920s, remember, before things got really bad) that we should avoid heavily processed and refined foods, and stick to the fresh stuff. And there is lots of anecdotal evidence, from people who have applied his food-combination theory, that they have benefited from it. The English actor John Mills, for example, was invalided out of the army in World War II with stomach ulcers. He was advised to observe the Hay diet, did so, and was rapidly cured; thereafter he became a lifelong enthusiast, and he lived to be 97. My interest in Hay theory was aroused because my own digestive system has never been wonderfully effective (I will spare you the sordid details). In general, I think I have

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benefited from following the Hay principles, in particular the one about eating starchy foods – potatoes, pasta, bread – at different times from protein dishes such as fish, meat, et cetera. And anyone who is just eating normal supermarket fare at present could hardly fail to benefit from the advice to give up all the stuff in glossy packaging, cut out white flour and sugar, and concentrate on unprocessed natural foods. If the Hay diet sounds even remotely appealing, you could buy the Joice and Le Tissier book and give it a try. If you feel better as a result, fine. If not, give it up. Dr Hay himself said that it was important not to get obsessive about food. I mention this book here because, if nothing else, it confirmed in me the opinions which I had already gathered from the likes of Adelle Davis and William Dufty – namely that, to stay healthy, you should ignore all the white-flour and sugary shit which is so attractively offered on the supermarket shelves. And I can’t help wondering… If Dr Hay had figured out some fairly obvious principles of how to stay healthy, ninety years ago, how come we’re still making the same mistakes? Well, that of course is the problem. History suggests that the human race goes on making the same mistakes, over and over again. It’s a depressing but inescapable conclusion. Poor old Dr Hay. If there is an afterlife he must be very distressed.

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Lyndel Costain: Diet Trials – How to Succeed at Dieting 4.1 Summary Diet Trials is a thoroughly unsatisfactory book in many ways, but it is useful because it summarises much of the official thinking about food (what you might call the Party Line), as of the turn of the century. I find it a useful reference work to have on my shelf. 4.2 Publishing history In 2003, the BBC broadcast a series of documentary programmes about slimming. This book was written and published to accompany the series. It is now out of print but you can buy it on the secondhand market. 4.3 Flawed but useful In 2004 I wrote a short review of Diet Trials which read as follows:

This book bears all the signs of something cobbled together in great haste to meet a deadline. The material is less than perfectly organised, contradicts itself in places, and would have benefited from more careful editing. The index is pitiful. However – and it’s a big however – the book does contain some very useful information, if you have the patience to burrow for it.

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The BBC programmes took 300 volunteers, divided them into four groups, and persuaded each group to follow one of four major weight-loss schemes. One of these was the Atkins diet, which was then all the rage, and another was the well known Weight Watchers method. (Weight Watchers, by the way, is owned by Heinz, a food company which markets, naturally, a range of special slimming products with the Weight Watchers brand name.) The page giving the full results of the BBC’s comparative test of slimming programmes has now been deleted from the BBC web site, but if you’re comfortable with scientific papers you can read the scientists’ version on the BMJ web site. My recollection is that only a small proportion of the 300 participants actually lost any significant weight and kept it off, something which is not immediately obvious from the published data. For our present purposes, however, the detailed results of the BBC’s programme don’t matter. What does matter is that the author of Diet Trials is a UK state-registered dietician, who for six years acted as official spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, and was named Health Professional of the Year in 2001. In other words, as I mentioned above, I think we can assume that her book is, as the politicians say, on message. 4.4 The Party Line In a section headed ‘What is a healthy diet?’ we are told that ‘there is widespread international consensus on what makes up a healthy diet… The American guide is shaped as a food pyramid, while in the UK a plate-shaped guide called the Balance of Good Health is used.’ The UK’s Balance of Good Health has recently been updated into the Eatwell Plate, which was produced by the UK Food Standards Agency ‘following consultation with consumers and health professionals’. Well, it’s nice to know

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that consumers are consulted, I suppose, but why they should have any direct input into a guide to healthy eating I am not sure. As far as I can see, The Eatwell pie-chart (no pun intended) does not give any precise advice as to whether we are talking about proportions by weight, calorific value, or some other criterion. But perhaps it’s unfair to expect it to, because it’s a broad-brush recommendation. And for our purposes it illustrates the official thinking of the day. If you look at this UK guide, you will note that fruit and veg constitute about one third of the pie, and bread, cereals and potatoes another third. Protein, dairy foods, fat, and sugar constitute the remainder. The US food pyramid, which you can also find online, is similar. When we come to consider Barry Groves’s books (see section 6, below) it will be relevant to note that fruit, veg, bread, cereals, and potatoes are all technically carbohydrates. Thus the Party Line, in both the US and the UK, is that carbohydrates should constitute about two thirds of a ‘healthy diet’. This seems to be the firmly entrenched view of the scientific and medical establishment. It would be nice to think that this consensus has been worked out by objective scientists whose motives are pure and noble, and who intend to do nothing but set out the truth as far as it can be discerned. But you would be naïve to think so. As far as I can tell, the US version of this consensus is a political hodge-podge, the culmination of deals done in (formerly) smoke-filled rooms by men with either powerful commercial interests to protect, or scientific careers to promote, or both. For details, see Marion Nestle’s famous 2002 book, Food Politics. I see no reason to suppose that the UK version is any different. I wish I had total faith in it. I don’t. As we shall shortly discover, there are some highly intelligent, well informed, and sensible people who disagree

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with that consensus view. And I am in no rush to accept that consensus, unquestioningly, myself. 4.5 Don’t lose weight, lose fat For years and years I had no idea how much I weighed. If you had asked me, I would probably have guessed somewhere between 12 and 13 stone (168 to 182 lbs, if you think in American). I was actually about 190 lbs. But the precise figure didn’t interest me. How I felt, and how much energy I had to spare, certainly did interest me, and the time came when I began to feel too heavy. After retirement I started going to a gym two or three times a week (more about exercise in section 5, below). And one day, while I was doing some gentle jogging on a treadmill, I decided I was overweight. Not by most people’s standards, but by my own. I had the beginnings of a beer belly, which I could feel swinging around as I jogged; and I had a pair of emergent bosoms which would have thrilled some twelve-year-old girls to bits. Just as an experiment, I later filled a couple of buckets with stones and carried them up and down the garden a few times. It’s quite an instructive thing to do, and after this experiment I decided that I could certainly lose about 30 lbs of fat without doing myself anything but good. I went in search of a good book about ‘dieting’. At that time (around 2002/03) the fad for the Atkins diet was at its peak, so I read the latest edition of the manual. Dr Atkins, of course, had been around a long time. His first diet book was published in the UK in 1973, and in the late ’70s he found new readers by plugging a ‘super-energy diet’. That sounded interesting to me, and I had a look at it then. But I certainly didn’t feel inclined to act on his recommendations.

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In 2002 the latest book expounding Dr Atkins’s theories was called New Diet Revolution. This is an interesting book, with quite a lot of science in it; I suspect that you need a degree in biochemistry to understand it fully, and it includes 24 pages of scientific references, which is unusual in a mass-market paperback. I read most of this book twice, and it certainly made me think, though in the end I decided that the Atkins diet was definitely not for me. The main thrust of Atkins’s argument, if you aren’t familiar with it, is that carbohydrates are what make you fat, and that you should well nigh eliminate them from your diet. At about the same time as I was familiarising myself with Atkins, the BBC began its series of programmes on slimming, so I bought a copy of Diet Trials and had a look at that. Which proved useful. Beginning on page 102, there is a description of a ‘weight-control guide’ which is, Lyndel Costain says, ‘frequently used in large clinical studies into obesity. It is also widely used by dietitians and doctors working with people who want to control their weight.’ I can testify from personal experience that this method of losing weight (specifically, losing fat) does work. I lost about 30 to 35 lbs. And if it’s any help, let me add that, in my opinion, no method of losing weight is going to work if it depends on ‘will-power’. It will only work if you have the right attitude – in other words, you have to genuinely want to be lighter. Why did I want to be lighter? First, I was convinced that I would just feel better. (And I do.) Second, I found some data in Diet Trials which gave me some very strong incentives. For an overweight person, the benefits of losing even 5 to 10 per cent of body weight could result in at least a:

• 20 per cent reduction in the risk of dying from any cause

• 30 per cent reduction in the risk of dying from diabetes-related problems

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• 40 per cent reduction in the risk of dying from obesity-related cancer

• And other benefits, including less risk of heart disease and lower blood pressure.

For me, these benefits provided more than adequate motivation. I didn’t have to resist temptation because I wanted the benefits more than I wanted the sugary bun. There are people, however, who prefer the short-term pleasure of the sugary bun to the reduction of a risk which seems an awful long way into the future. And I’m not going to say that these people are foolish, ignorant, stupid, lacking in will-power or anything else. But you just have to decide which benefit you want: short-term or long-term. Because you probably can’t have both.

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5

Doug McGuff & John Little: Body by Science 5.1 Summary Body by Science is not a book about food at all. It’s a book about exercise (and an excellent one too: see my discussion of it on Scribd). However, after describing how anyone can markedly improve their overall health and fitness by a course of resistance training, McGuff and Little then consider what else you can do to improve your quality of life. Diet is discussed, briefly, in that context. 5.2 The paleo guys appear There are two reasons for including Body by Science in this essay. One is that exercise clearly (to my mind) affects health, and the other is that the authors favour what they call the hunter-gatherer diet. Some time ago, well before I read Body by Science, I began to come across internet references to something known variously as the paleolithic diet (spelt ‘palaeolithic’ if you’re English), the hunter-gatherer diet, the stone-age diet, or the caveman diet. For reasons of brevity I shall refer to it as the paleo diet. The paleo diet was first described in the mid 1970s by a gastroenterologist named Walter L. Voegtlin. The essence of the theory is that mankind is millions of years old, and for almost all of that time human beings lived a nomadic life. They ate what they could catch and kill, together with whatever they could take off the trees and bushes, which wasn’t much.

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Then, barely 10,000 years ago, stone-age man discovered how to cultivate crops. This discovery resulted in huge changes to the human diet and way of life. Instead of eating very little except meat, the formerly nomadic tribes now settled in one place and began to eat largely the crops which they grew. They invented (or discovered) bread, pasta, and various other cereals. Today, as we have seen, the Party Line is that two thirds of our diet should be food which is cultivated through agriculture. More recently still, in the last 200 years, the industrialised nations have imported foodstuffs from other countries, making them available all year round rather than just seasonally, and we have learnt how to refine and process foods, and have pumped vast quantities of sugar into everything. From a genetic point of view, 10,000 years is no time at all, and the advocates of the paleo diet argue that the human body has not had time to adapt to the new way of eating. Biologically, they say, we are still equipped for eating meat, rather than wheat and other cereals. Consequently, we would do well to abandon the ‘new’ diet and go back to the old one. As with the Hay diet, there are numerous different versions of a modern paleo diet, but generally speaking it consists mainly of meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, and nuts; it excludes grains, dairy products, and anything refined or processed. The key point, I believe, is that this diet usually involves giving up eating almost all carbohydrates and eating a lot more protein and fat than is recommended in the Party Line. 5.3 Hmmm – not quite sure about that I think my first acquaintance with this diet came through the blog of Arthur De Vany. De Vany is primarily an economist, but in early life he was a professional baseball player, and he has maintained a lifelong interest in fitness and health. His

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ideas on diet are fully described on his web site, but if you want access to all his thoughts you need to pay a subscription. (Professor De Vany is not an economist for nothing, you know.) It’s worth noting that Arthur De Vany has a book on diet scheduled for publication in 2011. The advance publicity suggests that it is going to be marketed as just another quick-fix lose-weight book, which is a pity, because I suspect it will be rather better than that. In Body by Science, the adoption of the paleo diet is recommended, but it is only briefly described, and there isn’t even a great deal about it on the book’s web site; but, in an article entitled ‘Internal Starvation’, Doug McGuff outlines how he came to favour it – eventually. McGuff is a hospital doctor by profession, working in A&E, and it was his experience with obese patients which showed him the perils of the Party-Line diet. He then came across a reference to Arthur De Vany, and it was that which converted him to the potential benefits of the paleo diet. The conversion process was, he admits, rather slow, but he got there in the end. Since the paleo diet is essentially a low-carb diet, it has much in common with the famous Atkins diet. Well, as I mentioned earlier, I read the good Dr Atkins’s book very carefully, getting on for ten years ago. Atkins, of course, doesn’t mention the stone age. Of course not. His diet is NEW! And it’s REVOLUTIONARY! Nothing old-fashioned about him. Well, new or old, I considered his recommendations in some detail, and I was ultimately unconvinced. Then I too came across Arthur De Vany, and other references to the paleo diet. Once again, I took a long hard look at the underlying theory, and I remained unconvinced. Stated crudely (and perhaps unfairly) the idea is that, in the stone age, man lived in a kind of paradise. He was perfectly adjusted to the available food, and as a result lived a

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comfortable life free of the modern diseases which plague our civilisation. This struck me as most unlikely. It had overtones of the eighteenth-century Noble Savage concept, which has few supporters these days. For my part, I thought it more than likely that primitive man lived in conditions of almost permanent discomfort, suffered from high child-mortality rates, was infested with parasites, and generally lived a life which the political philosopher Hobbes characterised as ‘nasty, brutish and short’. So I wasn’t in any hurry to adopt this creature’s diet. Neither was I wholly convinced by the ‘10,000 years is too short for genetic change’ argument. It seemed to me that it could be argued that mankind has actually done rather well on the new agricultural diet. The human race has vastly increased in numbers, child mortality is down, and so forth. Yes, we suffer from a large number of nasty diseases, but are we any more diseased than were our ancient ancestors? I doubted it. As a result of these doubts, and others, I three times considered and three times rejected any thought of converting wholeheartedly to the paleo or low-carb diet. Atkins? Interesting, but no thanks. De Vany? Ditto McGuff and Little? Yes to the exercise programme, no to the full-blown paleo bit. I take note of the fact that many of those who run gyms and/or are involved in the personal-training business, are enthusiasts for the paleo diet or something like it. In addition to Doug McGuff, examples include Drew Baye and Fred Hahn. These are men whose livelihood depends on producing results; and they have each had literally thousands of face-to-face dealings with clients. So we can be quite certain that they would not be sticking with the paleo thing if it didn’t work for a high percentage of trainees. And I do know that it has produced impressive results for some

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people. And yet, I retained my doubts – more instinctive than based on science. But then I came across someone who forced me to reconsider. Barry Groves (see next section) did not convert me to the paleo diet as such. But he has written two well argued books which led me to conclude, rather reluctantly, that for some people the best chance of living a full life to a great age might, in principle, lie in a low-carb, high-fat diet. 5.4 Later note Some time after I had written the above, McGuff and Little published The Body by Science Question and Answer Book, a follow-up to their first book. This second work includes a section on diet – or, to be precise, on nutrition. The new section is much longer and more informative than the brief references in Body by Science. The key point, perhaps, is this: McGuff and Little don’t recommend cutting out carbohydrates altogether, but they do suggest restricting carb intake to fruit and veg, and avoiding carbs which are grain-based and refined in nature. They argue that eating refined carbs ‘produces not just increased insulin levels, it also produces other negative side effects in terms of systemic inflammation.’ By contrast, consumption of natural foodstuffs, or ‘real food’, ensures that humans can tolerate widely variant macronutrient mixes without ill consequences. This is an important point for anyone, like me, who just finds the whole paleo thing a step too far. Finally, it’s worth noting that the two authors admit that there were periods of years during their lives when their respective diets were ‘absolutely terrible’, but they didn’t get fat or develop diabetes because of the beneficial effect of their high-intensity physical training. For details, read the book.

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6

Barry Groves: Trick and Treat Natural Health and Weight Loss 6.1 Summary Trick and Treat runs to about 500 pages, and it was published in the UK in 2008. Its subtitle is ‘how “healthy eating” is making us ill’. The book is primarily a wide survey of scientific research into diet over the last century: there are extensive references to the underlying scientific literature. As such it is an impressive piece of work, if polemical in tone. It represents the culmination of many years of hard work, and there can be few people around with a similar grasp of the relevant literature. The thrust of the argument in Trick and Treat is that the Party Line on food, hammered into us over the last thirty years in particular, is all wrong. The UK establishment’s Eatwell pie-chart urges us to eat at least five fruit and veg portions a day, avoid fat, and eat lots of bread, rice, and pasta. But Groves believes that the establishment-approved advice on healthy eating is ‘directly responsible’ for the alarming increases in the killer diseases of modern civilisation, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. The remedy for this dire situation, says Groves, lies in the direct reversal of the official eating recommendations and in the adoption of a low-carb, high-fat diet. Individuals who think for themselves and take this step will, he argues, experience a marked improvement in health. Groves and his wife have been eating according to this credo since 1962, several years before Voegtlin came up with the paleo-diet

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theory. And, as Groves reminds us, the value of a low-carb approach was first demonstrated by William Banting nearly 150 years ago. Groves’s central assertion is, as he recognises, highly controversial, and if you read the book you will have to form your own view as to its validity. Fortunately, for my purposes, it is possible to separate out the dietary information and advice in Trick and Treat from the accusations of plots and ruthless money-making schemes. Once that is done, the book becomes more useful and interesting; at least to me. The other book by Barry Groves which is listed above, Natural Health and Weight Loss is rather calmer in tone. This was published in 2007, by a different publisher, and it is a much shorter and more practical book than Trick and Treat. Not surprisingly, because that’s where the money is, this one concentrates on showing people how to lose weight. Consistently with Trick and Treat, the book urges you to adopt a low-carb, high-fat diet. There is a great deal of overlap and duplication between these two books, and you can certainly absorb all the main arguments that Groves puts forward on healthy eating by just reading the second one. Both books, sadly, lack a decent index. And that is putting it mildly. A book with a poor index loses 50 per cent of its value (imho), and the more you try to find a reference which you remember reading in Groves’s books, the more irritating and unsatisfactory these indexes become. A less generous soul than I would describe them as useless. Compare, if you will, the index of Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit, which is a model of perfection. Finally, one typo distressed me. In both books the author manages to misspell both parts of Adelle Davis’s name.

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6.2 Introducing the author Groves tells us that he and his wife were overweight from 1957 to 1962, at which point he came across the low-carb, high-fat approach to weight loss. It worked for them, and subsequently he became deeply interested in diet. In 1982 he took up full-time research into diet and the ‘diseases of civilisation’, and has been writing and lecturing about the subject ever since. We are told that Groves has a PhD in nutritional science, but we are not told (in either book) which institution awarded the degree. This made me suspect that his degree was not from the University of Oxford but from somewhere less prestigious. I learn from his web site that it was in fact awarded by an American distance-learning university. Although he has written numerous books, and lectures and writes widely, I think it is fair to say that, at the moment, Barry Groves has a low public profile. But if he were to become famous for fifteen minutes, as a TV guru perhaps, then we can be quite sure that Big Food would turn its guns upon him. The food processors would start, no doubt, with the same sort of criticisms that were used against Adelle Davis. He ‘isn’t a proper scientist’. He ‘couldn’t get a PhD in the UK’. He ‘doesn’t really understand the science’. Groves also leaves himself exposed to attack through his tendency to utter sweeping statements. For example: ‘We have known for over 70 years that diabetes is caused by excessive intake of carbohydrates.’ And, in similar vein: ‘Both obesity and diabetes are caused by the same thing: a low-fat, high-carb “healthy” diet.’ I am inclined to agree with him on these points; but, as we saw above (para 2.4), the establishment, not to mention British Sugar, do not agree with him. For his part, Groves states that the contents of Trick and Treat are not his original ideas at all, but are simply reports

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of recognised and respected scientific research. It’s just that, so far, the Party Line has not been adjusted to take such uncomfortable and unwelcome findings into account. Too much loss of face is involved, not to mention the upset caused to powerful commercial interests. Those will be those who find Groves worryingly under-qualified, and will prefer to seek an overall view of the scientific findings on nutrition from a ‘proper’ scientist – perhaps a Professor of Nutrition at Cambridge. But they will, I fear, have a long wait before they find one. The fact is that scientists have to specialise; often they have to focus on one tiny aspect of one small area of a narrowly focused subject. Consequently few of them have the time or inclination to survey a large field of study. Even if they had an overall view, they would lack another important skill, which is writing about science in a way which can be understood by the layman. That is a skill which is possessed only by a writer of popular science with a large amount of experience and talent. If I characterise Barry Groves as a first-class polemical journalist, therefore, I am not insulting him. On the contrary, I am paying him a compliment. He is in the William Dufty class – someone who can read and master vast volumes of information on a desperately complicated issue and convey the sense of it to anyone with enough application to read his books. And he is courageous enough to present a view contrary to the Party Line, which is never comfortable and often thankless. 6.3 Can that really be true? As always with food, individuals in search of reliable information will find it necessary, in the end, to make a judgement of their own. And there is a well known danger of being most influenced by the book that you have read most recently. But I started reading Groves’s books with, you will

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recall, my mind set against the low-carb or paleo diet. And it is a tribute, I think, to Groves’s thoroughness in listing and discussing a huge amount of scientific literature that I ended up being persuaded that there is indeed a case for the adoption of a low-carb, high-fat diet. At times, when reading Groves, I experienced exactly the same sensation that I had when reading Adelle Davis, forty years ago. He presents so much information about the toxic nature of the modern supermarket-based diet that you wonder how on earth we manage to survive at all. In fact, it’s worse than that: I found myself getting quite depressed by the exposed record of greed, stupidity and deliberate lies. Reading about the damage which a poor diet does to babies still in the womb, let alone when born, is enough to make anyone weep. Take, for instance, the simple matter of milk. Now you wouldn’t think there was much wrong with milk, would you? Wholesome stuff, right? Best to drink the skimmed version, so that you don’t damage your heart, right? Oh no. Wrong on every count. At least Groves believes so, on the basis of the research which he quotes. Like Groves, I am old enough to remember when milk was delivered to many peoples’ door, fresh from the cow. It came, naturally, complete with cream. Today, the food processors pasteurise it, separate the cream from the milk, and then blend the cream back in to produce (a) ‘whole milk’, which actually contains less cream than it originally did, and (b) skimmed milk, which contains only a little cream. (The ‘excess’ cream is sold as pure cream or used to make butter.) While the milk is being treated, it is homogenised, to prevent such cream as is there from rising to the top. The milk is then heat-treated again and finally cooled before being packaged for retailers. At every stage, the processing makes the milk less and less nutritious. It is this stripping of the cream from milk, to make it ‘healthier’, which has been found to increase the risk of

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prostate cancer. Low-fat milk has also been implicated in ovarian cancer in women. And it’s linked to low rates of fertility. And to acne. And allergies. And more. Groves’s conclusion is that processing milk in this way ‘has ruined it as a healthy food at this time.’ He drinks cream. Perhaps you might decide that, since milk has these question marks over it, you will switch to soya milk. I’ve been using it for years on my porridge, because it seems to digest better. Well, the soya bean is now widely used in ‘all manner of foodstuffs from meat sausages and fish fingers to salad creams and breakfast cereals.’ You will be hard pressed, apparently, to find any bread which does not contain soya flour. Unfortunately, soya beans ‘contain large quantities of natural toxins.’ These are only destroyed by fermentation, a process first introduced by the Chinese. Unfortunately again, ‘many of the products sold in supermarkets… contain unfermented soya flour and soya milk.’ The consumption of unfermented soya exposes you to certain risks. These include over-stimulating the thyroid, which can cause goitre and undesirable side effects such as constipation and fatigue. Soya also contains substances which have been linked to numerous disorders, including infertility, increased cancer, and infantile leukaemia. The effect of the isoflavins in soya is particularly serious in children. ‘An infant exclusively fed on soya formula receives the oestrogenic equivalent of at least five birth control pills a day…. An American study found that one girl in every hundred had started to develop breasts or pubic hair before the age of three…. The effect of the female hormone on boys is potentially far more serious.’ The Americans have 72 million acres of soya bean under cultivation, and you can bet that the growers have a man in Washington to make sure that no one gets any silly ideas about banning anything.

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Well, I’m going to give up soya for a start. And the list goes on. Groves has unpleasant stories to tell us about almost every item you can think of on the supermarket shelf. In fact he believes that no more than 2 per cent of supermarket products are fit for consumption. Oh, and if you’re short of something else to worry about (which I doubt), bear in mind Groves’s conclusion on ordinary flour. ‘The flour from which our bread is made is probably more highly contaminated than anything else to be found in the food industry.’ 6.4 Back to the stone age As we have noted, Groves and his wife adopted a low-carb, high-fat diet even before the term ‘paleo diet’ was introduced. But he does have quite a lot to say about the rationale behind the paleo concept. He presents a great deal of both archaeological and anthropological evidence, much of which I had not come across elsewhere. There is also the usual argument about genetics, and how the body has not had time to adjust to the consumption of plant material. This evidence will, I dare say, be sufficient to convince many readers of the strength of Groves’s case. Personally I do still have reservations, but my own doubts need not necessarily worry any other reader. And I did find that the overwhelming body of evidence which Groves has assembled is impressive. 6.5 Here’s a surprise – not everyone agrees! Groves’s suggested diet is, of course, markedly different from that recommended in the UK’s Eatwell plate and the US government’s food pyramid. But he takes the view that the official Party Line is over-influenced by industry and commerce. So if you want the view of another large-scale organisation, which might be more objective than Big Food,

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you might perhaps consider the findings of the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF). In 2007 the WCRF issued a report on diet. In preparing the report, over 500,000 scientific studies were reviewed. From these, 7,000 were determined to be the most relevant, and these were considered by a team of 200 scientists. The result of this survey can be summarised in one sentence: in order to reduce your chance of getting cancer, WCRF recommends that you should ‘Choose mostly plant foods, limit red meat and avoid processed meat.’ This advice needs to be contrasted with another of Groves’s sweeping statements: ‘All the evidence suggests that carbs should be replaced with fats, and those fats should be mainly from animal sources.’ All the evidence? The WCRF would not agree. More specifically, the WCRF advice is to eat a diet of at least two thirds vegetables and other plant foods, including cereals. You should limit meat consumption to 750 grams (raw weight) each week; by my calculation, using imperial measures, this is about 4 ounces a day. And the definition of processed meat (to be avoided) includes ham, bacon, pastrami, salami, hot dogs, and some sausages. For those unfortunate enough to be already suffering from cancer, the Penny Brohn Cancer Centre, in England, offers similar advice. Patients should adopt:

…a diet composed of whole foods, by which we mean foods that are minimally processed…. It is recommended that people consume a diet composed mainly of plant foods, with vegetables and fruit as the primary source but also including whole grains, pulses, nuts and seeds, herbs and spices. For a complete and balanced diet, animal products are also recommended. There is no perfect diet that suits everyone as we all have individual, ever-changing nutritional needs. It is recommended that people use the guidelines as a starting point but then

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experiment and adapt the recommendations to suit themselves.

Those last two sentences surely constitute one of the keys to the whole matter. 6.6 Lemme see now… So, am I going to switch to Groves’s version of the low-carb, high-fat diet? No, I am not. At least, I’m not going to switch to the full-blown version of limiting carbs to 50 or 60 grams a day, with unlimited fat. Why not? For several reasons, all of them strictly personal and relating to what the Penny Brohn Centre calls ‘individual, ever-changing nutritional needs’. The first reason is that, when I come to do the sums, I find that I am already on a relatively low-carb diet, without having to change anything. I confess to being slightly surprised by this discovery. As related in this essay, I have been much influenced over the last forty years by the likes of Adelle Davis, William Dufty, and Dr Hay. Consequently I have for a good many years tried to limit the amount of processed food that I consume, cut out sugar, avoid eating carbs with meat, and so forth. These relatively simple steps have, almost as a side effect, reduced my carb intake quite substantially. Using data supplied by Groves, I find that on a typical day I now consume no more than 130 grams of carbs from all sources. On a 2,400-a-day calorie intake, that is about 22 per cent; which compares with Groves’s recommendation to limit carbs to no more than 15 per cent of calories. Occasionally – about once a month – I might have what for me is a high-carb day. I might, for instance, have a piece of cake in the afternoon, plus pasta for one of my main

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meals. The maximum amount of carbs that I can imagine myself eating on any such day is some 275 grams, or 45 per cent of calorie intake. And 45 per cent is way below the diet of two thirds carbs which is the standard daily recommendation of the Eatwell plate and the food pyramid, not to mention the WCRF. OK, I hear you say. But if you’re already within spitting distance of the Groves target, why not make the minor effort to get down to 50 grams a day? And the answer involves several factors. To begin with, I am not convinced, intellectually, that there would be any great benefit. Is it really necessary to be quite so fanatical about omitting carbs? There are so many unknown factors involved that not even the most rigid adherent to the Groves formula (or the paleo diet) can guarantee continued good health until the age of 99. Would that it were possible. Next, and rather more important to me, I don’t think that 50 grams of carbs a day would suit my insides. If I were 25 years old, and had a perfectly normal digestive system, then I would be prepared to give Groves’s suggested diet a full trial. Let’s say three to six months. Because, as noted earlier, some people seem to do very well on it. But I am not 25. I am 71. I carefully considered, and then rejected, the extreme low-carb concept three times before (Atkins, De Vany, McGuff and Little); and although I find Groves’s overall argument impressive, I am going to trust my instincts on this one.

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7

Michael Pollan: In Defence of Food 7.1 Nearing the end This is going to be the last book that I discuss in this essay. Honest. But it’s a good one; too good to leave out. In Defence of Food was published in 2008, and if you’re looking for just one book to read about food, nutrition, and the modern Western diet, this is the one. Michael Pollan is a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been researching the food business, and interviewing many of those involved, for some twenty years. He is the author of several previous books, one of which (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) was listed by both the New York Times and the Washington Post as one of the ten best books of 2006. So he is no fool. In Defence of Food is calm, well balanced, and avoids the tone of barely restrained hysteria and outrage which is so common in books by modern food activists. Which is not to say that he doesn’t have some very powerful points to make. 7.2 Summary Pollan tells us (reminds some of us) that the human body is very adaptive in terms of the food it can cope with successfully. In ‘primitive’ societies people lived off a wide variety of foods, depending on what was available in their home territory. But it seems that the one thing that the human body cannot cope with is the modern Western diet, which consists largely of refined foods with a large amount of sugar. Wherever such a diet is adopted, obesity soon appears, and high rates of diabetes and cardiovascular disease ‘are certain to follow’.

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Now the Big Food processors will, of course, insist that there is ‘no evidence’ that it is their products which bring about disease. British Sugar, as we have noted, declares firmly that sugar does not cause diabetes. But we do not need to waste our time arguing the point. It is well documented that when a western diet is adopted by a population which had hitherto been healthy on some more ‘primitive diet’, the diseases of civilisation soon appear, and often in the same order: obesity, followed by type 2 diabetes, followed by hypertension and stroke, followed by heart disease. In plain English, the modern Western diet is making us sick, and eventually, after some seriously unpleasant experiences and probably expensive medical treatment, we die; often before our time. So the question is, how do we avoid this fate? It’s a question which faces both individuals, and Western societies as a whole. Pollan has provided an answer, which he elaborates in his book. It can be boiled down to seven words: ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’ He makes a distinction between real food, which is what your (great-great) grandmother would have recognised as food, and modern, pseudo, fake, refined, processed, and packaged junk, which Pollan refers to as ‘edible food-like substances’. Sugary shit is what I call it, when I’m feeling particularly disillusioned. These edible food-like substances may look, smell, and even taste wonderful, but as a means of maintaining your body in good health they lie somewhere between useless and lethal. US food processors offer us a staggering 17,000 new such products, every year. Most of these never catch on with the public, and are abandoned, to be replaced by yet more new mixtures of sugar, refined flour, hydrogenated oils, corn sweeteners, and salt. Pollan’s basic rules for survival in this mad world are explained in some detail, together with practical advice on surviving in supermarkets. E.g., avoid products which make a health claim, and shop around the peripheries of the

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supermarket, staying well away from the middle. You need to read the book to obtain more detail. In fact, don’t just read it, buy it. 7.3 The thirty-year experiment One of the most interesting sections of In Defence of Food is that in which Michael Pollan describes how, over the last thirty years, society has been subjected (often unknowingly) to an attempt to transform our diet in the light of what he calls the ‘lipid hypothesis’ – that is to say, the US and UK governments have acted upon the belief that dietary fat is responsible for much of our obesity and ill health, notably heart disease. Thirty years ago, government advisers in the US, soon followed by those in the UK, began to recommend a low-fat diet. Eat less fat, they said, and you will reduce or eliminate your chances of becoming obese and dying of heart disease. Big Food had no difficulty in endorsing this campaign: they just tweaked their margarines and yogurts a bit, labelled them NEW! LOW FAT!! HEALTHY OPTION!!!, and carried on as before. In 2001, however, a group of scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health undertook a critical review of all the relevant research. After which they came to the following conclusion, which even a layman can understand:

It is now increasingly recognised that the low-fat campaign has been based on little scientific evidence and may have caused unintended health consequences.

What this means, in even plainer English, is that government advice to give up eating butter, for instance, was wrong. Many people who gave up butter ate margarine instead, and margarine contains substances known as trans

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fats. And by about 1990 it was beginning to be clear that trans fats actually increase the risk of coronary heart disease. So, as Pollan succinctly remarks, the effect of ‘thirty years of official nutritional advice has been to replace a possibly mildly unhealthy fat in our diets with a demonstrably lethal one’. But hold, I hear you say. You’ve never heard a word said about this. And the supermarkets are still full of low-fat this and fat-free that. How come? Well, my dears, it’s all so embarrassing, that’s why you haven’t heard about it. If the government suddenly admitted that all that low-fat stuff was crap, you might decide that you were never going to listen to a nutritional scientist or a politician ever again. And we can’t have that, can we? Back in the 1980s I had a friend whose wife was very worried about protecting his heart. So she served him margarine and skimmed milk for breakfast. Fat-free everything else. My friend hated all this, but he didn’t like to argue, and his first act on leaving the house each day was to buy a pint of Jersey milk, which is the richest, creamiest, most fat-laden milk you can buy in the UK – or anywhere else for that matter. That kept him going till dinner-time. It turns out my friend was right all along. And he hasn’t had a heart attack yet. 7.4 Snippets of Pollan Pollan, like Groves, has things to say about soy (or soya). The average American now takes 20 per cent of her calories in the form of soy. I wonder if she knows that? Ten years ago I’d barely heard of soy, but having looked at the index to Sugar Blues I see that William Dufty predicted in 1975 that its use would grow. Why? Because it’s cheap to grow, and you can feed it to cattle. But do we really want to take 20 per cent of our calories from soy?

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Then there’s fruit. Your granny had fruit of course. And my father grew apples, which I ate. But the apple that I buy in the supermarket today is not the same as the one which grew on my father’s tree. Modern apples have been selectively bred for sweetness, because most of the population is hopelessly addicted to sugar. So the nutrient content of apples – together with that of 43 other crops – has fallen. Specifically, you now need to eat three apples to get the same amount of iron as you would have got from a 1940 apple. And you need to eat several more slices of bread to get your recommended daily amount of zinc. By now you are surely getting the point. Modern food is designed to be sold. Nobody in big Food sits down and tries to figure out how to produce food which will generate the maximum health in those who eat it. They sit down and figure out how to make the maximum profit from those who buy it. Michael Pollan gives a very specific example of this process at work. In the 1980s, scientists began to understand that the omega-3 fatty acids which are found in plants are vitally important to human health. But for years before that, plant breeders had unknowingly been selecting plants which contain fewer omega-3s, because such crops don’t spoil so quickly. And now that we know all that, did Big Food rush to restore the situation and sell plants which contain lots of omega-3s? No, sir and madam, they did not. Pollan reports the words of a spokesman for Frito-Lay, which is a division of PepsiCo and sells a huge range of snack foods. These all sound faintly disgusting to my ear, with names such as Baken-Ets pork rinds, Funyuns Onion Rings, and Munchos; five of the company’s products each generate over a billion dollars in sales each year, so evidently some people are dumb enough to eat this rubbish. The Frito-Lay executive stated firmly that, because of their tendency to oxidise (i.e. go bad) ‘omega-3s cannot be used in processed foods.’

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You could not hope to have a clearer statement of how Big Food operates. 7.5 Should we be outraged? All of which leads us to a question which (I suppose) has to be faced sooner or later. Is what Big Food is doing immoral? And should it, perhaps, be made illegal? My own attitude to this may perhaps surprise you. I take the view that different types of institutions exist for different purposes. For example, universities exist to provide higher forms of education, monasteries exist to worship God, and charities exist to do good works. Limited companies, however, exist to make a profit. That is what they are for. They have a responsibility to their shareholders, and to those who are known as stakeholders. It seems to me unreasonable, therefore, to complain when a large company does exactly what it is set up to do. Ah yes, you say, but these people are doing harm. They must be monsters. Hmm. I doubt it. If you were get to know, let us say, the manager of a supermarket, or the regional manager of a big flour-milling firm, or someone who maintains a vast factory-farm of chickens, you would probably discover that they are perfectly ordinary middle-class people, decent enough for you to like them as neighbours and friends. If you were to suggest to them that their products were damaging public health, they would probably deny, rather vehemently, that they are doing any such thing. That having been said, we could ask another question. Let us suppose that the Big Food firms were universally staffed by psychopaths and sociopaths. Would those firms be doing anything worse than what they are doing today? I suspect not. Big Food firms maximise their profits by getting as close to the edge of the law as possible, and they design their products to occupy a space just short of the point at which a

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firm could be successfully sued by, say, the obese or the diabetic. In any event, I’m afraid we are stuck with the world the way it is, and we lack any means to change it fast or significantly. As always, the principle of caveat emptor applies. If you have read this far you can be in no doubt about the nature of the modern Western diet. And you just have to decide whether you care to go on eating it in all its glory, or not.

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Part Two

CONCLUSIONS

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8

Is it really safe to eat breakfast?

8.1 Here’s the answer (and about time too) You’re probably thinking that it’s about time this essay came to an end. Well, we agree on that. In fact, I think it is high time my forty-year search for a healthy diet came to an end. What I would really, really like to do is settle on a few simple rules for eating which would (a) give me a fighting chance of achieving my maximum potential for longevity and good health, and (b) serve me for the rest of my days so that I don’t have to bother about this problem any longer. So, let’s go back to my original question. Is it safe to eat breakfast? Hell, no. Don’t be silly. It’s bloody dangerous. Let us just suppose, for the sake of illustrating my point, that you have accepted the argument of Barry Groves and others that you should go for a low-carb, high-fat diet. And you cook yourself a traditional English breakfast of bacon and eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, and maybe a sausage. Sounds OK in principle. But if you take my question about food safety seriously then you are immediately faced with another question, one which Adelle Davis raised all those years ago. Which apricot? she asked. Grown where? What did they do to it on the tree? And what did they do to it after it left the tree? These questions could be, and in theory should be, asked about every constituent part of what is prima facie a healthy breakfast. Who grew the mushrooms and the tomatoes in our traditional English breakfast? Did they use fertilisers and

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bug-killers? If so, what kind? What chemicals did those treatments contain? How often were the damn things squirted? What effects do said chemicals have on a human body? What about the eggs? Whose chicken, which farm? What conditions did the birds live in? What were they fed on? And what was done to the chicken feed before it was eaten? It just so happens that I cooked this very breakfast for myself and my wife on the day that I first drafted this chapter of my essay. And I had a look at the label on the bacon packet – bacon which I bought, incidentally, at the local farmers’ market, in the pathetic hope that it might be better quality than that obtainable from the supermarket. Under English law this label has to describe the contents: pork 87 per cent; water; salt; and two preservatives, E250 and E301. Damned if I know, frankly, why anyone has to add water to bacon, unless it’s to make it weigh more and increase the profit margin. And am I being unfair if I suspect that the ‘preservatives’ are added solely for the benefit of the wholesaler and retailer? So that the stuff can sit on the shelf longer without going off? The E numbers identify these ‘preservatives’ as food additives which have been approved for use within the European Union. No lay person has any idea what they are. You can look them up, of course, and I just did. Wikipedia has a list. I find that E250 is sodium nitrate, and E301 is sodium ascorbate. Am I any the wiser? No. So I look up sodium nitrate, again on Wikipedia. And it gives me a useful quote, just to help me digest the meal a little better. ‘This would be at the top of my list of additives to cut from my diet,’ says Christine Gerbstadt, MD, MPH, RD, LDN, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. ‘Under certain high-temperature cooking conditions such as grilling, it transforms into a reactive compound that has been shown to promote cancer.’

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Wonderful. So now, as part of my never-ending search for a healthy diet, I’ve just eaten something which was cooked under precisely the right conditions to ensure that it gives me and my wife cancer. I don’t think I’m going to bother looking up E301, sodium ascorbate. It might tell me my dick is going to drop off. Bacon, by the way, is classified as a processed meat by the World Cancer Research Fund, i.e. something to be avoided; and I’m beginning to see why. Most people of my acquaintance are vaguely aware that food additives might be a problem. But while the 396 additives which are sanctioned by the EU do have to be listed on the packet, there is no requirement to list the enzymes, catalysts, and any other chemicals used in the processing of the product. Big Food says they are safe. And we believe everything they say, naturally. 8.2 Make your mind up time So you see, he says with a deep sigh, the nature of the problem. And the question is, where do we go from here? Well, I think there are at least three rational strategies which the poor bewildered eating person can adopt, plus one strategy born of blissful ignorance. Let’s start with the latter. 8.2.1 Ignorance It seems obvious to me, if I look at people walking down the street, and if I peek into their supermarket trolleys, that a large number of individuals live in sublime ignorance of even the simplest concept of nutrition. It’s not their fault. These are people who have passed through the UK’s educational system without even touching the sides. The experience has left no mark upon them. They have trouble reading a newspaper, and are incapable of absorbing any of the books listed in this essay. All they have to go on is rumour, hearsay,

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and gossip – what they are told by friends, the television, and their grannies. I would like to have a magic wand to transform their lives, but I don’t. I feel very sorry for those who, often through no fault of their own, are imprisoned in a mountain of fat. But, if you are fortunate enough to have had an education, then living your life on the basis of ignorance is not, in my opinion, a helpful way to proceed. You need to find a few facts – if you can. 8.2.2 Panic Orthorexia (orthorexia nervosa, in full) is a relatively new term, coined in 1997, to describe an excessive and obsessive concern with healthy food. An example of a sufferer of this condition is a young lady who was reportedly found in floods of tears outside a motorway service station because she could find absolutely nothing within that was fit to put into the holy temple of her body. Well, yes. And then again, no. I understand her concern. But there are times, I feel, when you just have to buy a hot dog and live dangerously. After all, who knows – three miles down the road you might get crushed by a big truck. So you may was well die with a full stomach as an empty one. Endless obsessing about healthy food is not the mark of a well balanced person, as Dr Hay pointed out all those years ago. It is a condition to be avoided. 8.2.3 Yoko, meet Lord Strathcona As we have seen, anyone who puts even a toe into the lake of information about food soon discovers that there are wildly conflicting theories and many apparently contradictory research findings. One week the Daily Mail will tell you that drinking coffee will kill you, the next that it will extend your

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life. Not that the Daily Mail is a very reliable source of information, but you get the point. Even if you go to reputable web sites and books by eminently qualified authors, you will find much the same thing. After a certain amount of reading such material, scratching your head, and wondering what to make of it all, it is mighty tempting to throw your hands in the air and say to hell with it. It sometimes seems as if everything on the supermarket shelf is poisonous to one degree or another, so you might just as well eat what you like and leave your fate to whatever gods may be. I have christened this the Ono/Strathcona strategy, in honour of two very different individuals who came to this kind of conclusion. The Japanese artist Yoko Ono was married to the pop-star John Lennon, and together they favoured a macrobiotic diet. When their son Sean was born, he was brought up to be extremely careful about what he ate. However, when John Lennon was shot by a deranged fan, Yoko Ono changed her mind. She was said to have told her son, ‘From now on, Sean, eat whatever you like.’ This initial reaction was born of despair. What was the point of being ultra-careful about what you ate if fate was going to deliver such unexpected and meaningless blows? Lord Strathcona also ate exactly what he liked and nothing else. At a certain point in his life he decided that he was unhappy about eating five or six courses of stuff that he didn’t much care for. So he sat down and had a think about what he did like. It turned out that what he liked was eggs, milk, and butter. So from then on that’s what he ate, every day. And nothing else. Whenever he entertained guests for dinner, they would be served a succession of dishes, as usual, and at a certain point in the evening he would be served a bowl of soft-boiled eggs and a separate dish of butter, together with a jug of milk. He enjoyed good health and died in 1914 at the age of 93.

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8.2.4 I’m a man of principle – I always compromise What little remains of my reasoning powers prompts me to hope that there might be a fourth strategy in relation to food. It surely ought to be possible to formulate a set of practical and realistic working rules, for the day-to-day guidance of each individual. Michael Pollan, as we have seen, suggests a seven-word strategy, and the World Cancer Research Fund has one sentence. But I’m thinking of something a little more detailed than that; and my personal take on such a set of rules follows shortly. But first, a brief discussion of the problems attending the formulation of such working rules.

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9

Mr Rumsfeld’s conundrum 9.1 It makes sense if you think about it You will probably remember that the one-time US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, once caused some amusement and bemusement with the following statement:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.

This statement applies just as much to the question of healthy eating as it does to any defence issue. The number of known knowns seems to me to be remarkably few. One is, that if you don’t eat something you will eventually die. The known unknowns are legion. For instance, what is the true likelihood of the additive E301 (which I found in my bacon) giving anyone cancer? Has any work been done on its effect on humans, as opposed to, say, rats? This information may be known to someone, but it’s not known to me. Here’s another example. Forty years ago, Adelle Davis pointed out in one of her books that non-stick pans, if allowed to overheat, will give off highly toxic sodium fluoride gas. Do they still do that? Or has the design improved? Has some new non-stick surface been invented, and if so what happens to that if you misuse it? As for the unknown unknowns – well, by definition we cannot guess at what these might be. Adelle Davis suffered from one of those during her lifetime. In her recipes she

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made extensive use of powdered milk, which she later came to distrust. In fact, she thought it might be involved in the development of her own cancer. But clearly there were many years when she thought it was perfectly healthy. Similarly, she found that sun creams containing para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) were wonderfully effective in preventing burning, but in recent years PABA has come under suspicion of causing cell damage. 9.2 It follows, therefore… Perhaps this is as good a point as any to insert the fact that, the more I read about modern food, the more depressed I become. I have tried very hard to make allowances for ordinary human fallibility, but my conclusion is that the history of food in the last two hundred years is largely one of greed, stupidity, ignorance, and deliberate deception; corruption and a lack of concern for anything but profit often masquerade as ethical business. Nobody knows what we are doing to ourselves and our children, and very few people seem to care. Those that do are often thought of as cranks. I am not by nature a pessimist, but it seems to me that the position is, in all likelihood, worse than anyone cares to contemplate. Theoretically, science should be our salvation, but science needs money, and much of the money comes from industry and commerce. It is not, in my judgement, going too far to say that the outcome of much food research is determined in advance, by the firm which commissions it. As a result, you can’t believe half the results. At least. Maybe 90 per cent. That leaves us with a big pile of unknown unknowns. And because of these unknown unknowns, let alone anything else, I think it would be a serious mistake to assume that any amount of reading or individual research can establish an absolutely ideal diet. Even in theory. Finding food which conformed with the principles of that ideal diet would be

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another problem. Consequently there is no point in becoming too rigid about any set of rules. Something or other is certainly going to finish you off in the end, and all you can do in the meantime is try to do the best for yourself and your family.

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10

A personal strategy, likely to be of little interest to anyone else

10.1 Introduction Enough already. More than enough. I’ve looked back at the books on diet which, out of the numerous ones I have read, seem to me to be the most interesting and relevant. Now it’s time for me to try to figure out what I am going to do and not do for the rest of my life. I speak here in the first person singular, but since I am a married man, and we take our meals together, I have to take my wife’s dietary requirements and preferences into account. Fortunately we usually seem to agree without too much difficulty. Everything that follows is a purely personal set of conclusions and is not a set of recommendations for anyone else. Though if you have read this far we must hope that you do at least learn something from it. 10.2 Let’s put our finger on it

It is always possible that I have misunderstood the scientific explanations given by the various authorities who are referred to in this essay. In fact, not even the scientists understand all of the physiological processes which are involved. But if you were to ask me to put my finger on the absolutely central issue in what constitutes a healthy diet, I would say this: The key to health and well-being – both short-term and long term – lies in controlling the body’s blood-sugar level. (Adelle Davis, as usual, got this right.)

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10.2.1 The benefits of self-control Making sure that your body has the right blood-sugar level has numerous benefits. First, you will have adequate energy to work efficiently and enjoy life. Second, you will be calm and relatively clear-headed, and thus better able to deal with the emotional stresses of life. Third, if you avoid the sudden spikes in blood-sugar level which result from high intakes of refined carbs, you will not put on weight. And fourth – perhaps most important of all – by avoiding those high glucose spikes you will not over-stress your insulin mechanism and therefore you will reduce your risk of diabetes. Diabetes shortens your life by twelve years, on average; and it involves medical costs (US figures) of $13,000 a year. Whether this is paid for by the individual, through insurance, or through the UK’s taxpayer-funded National Health Service, it’s still a cost which is incurred, and it would be nice to avoid it.

10.2.2 Cancer, anyone? Like everyone else, I am anxious to avoid contracting one of the major killer diseases. But cancer seems to me to strike randomly, for the most part, and I don’t personally believe there is any diet which can guarantee to keep you cancer-free. Michael Pollan points out, however, that there is evidence that in countries where people eat a pound or more of fruits and vegetables a day, the rate of cancer is half what it is in the USA.

10.2.3 How dicky is the ticker? My father died of heart disease when he was a little older than I am now, and my maternal grandfather died from ‘a

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weak heart’ when he was 54. This background may affect me, as it seems that there is some genetic component in most forms of heart disease; but obviously I can do nothing about that. Neither can I rewind history and eat a different diet for the past few decades. So, if there is any genetic or dietary damage to my heart, that damage is already done; all I can do to protect my heart now is try to stay fit and healthy in general terms.

10.2.4 Sugar unblues On the diabetes front, however, there is a great deal I can do in whatever years are left to me. In particular, I can avoid over-stressing my insulin-producing mechanism. The human body has an intricate system (still imperfectly understood) by which the hormone insulin regulates the metabolism of carbohydrates and fats in the body. Carbs, whether they come from sugar, bread, pasta, muffins, doughnuts, rice, et cetera, all convert quite quickly to glucose in the blood stream. Too much glucose is bad for you, so your pancreas produces insulin to deal with it. Insulin first converts glucose into glycogen and stores it, and then, when the glycogen stores are full, the glucose is turned into body fat. This is how people gain weight. Unfortunately, the pancreas goes on producing insulin after the blood-sugar level is back to normal, so we then feel hungry; we grab something convenient to eat, which is usually a carb-based sugary bun or some such, and the vicious cycle continues. If you abuse your body by dumping huge loads of refined carbs into it, you will certainly survive in the short term. But, after a few decades of flogging itself to death, the insulin system rebels and stops working. Then you become diabetic, with potential consequences which include blindness and amputations.

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According to Pollan (US figures), the incidence of type 2 diabetes has risen 5 per cent annually since 1990, going from 4 per cent to 7.7 per cent of the population (which is more than 20 million Americans). Two thirds of adult Americans are overweight or obese, and 55 million are prediabetic. So this isn’t something that just happens to other people who live a long way off. We all know people who are diabetic. And by the way, if diabetes really is caused by a virus, as has been suggested, it seems to be a lot more successful a virus than the one which causes AIDS. It is estimated that more than one million people are living with HIV in the USA, and that more than half a million have died after developing AIDS. But these are low figures when compared with diabetes. All in all, therefore, maintaining a stable blood-sugar level seems to me to be an objective worth working for. 10.2.5 How’s it to be done? You don’t need to be an expert in biochemistry to be able to keep your blood-sugar level within sensible bounds. I have no idea what the ‘best’ blood-sugar level is, in terms of milligrams per litre, or whatever; but I do know that both Adelle Davis and Barry Groves maintain that, in order to achieve the desired level, you need to start the day with a good breakfast. It need not be a big meal, but you should take in at least 20 to 25 grams of protein. It is interesting that, in coming to this conclusion, both Davis and Groves refer to the same piece of research which was carried out at Harvard and the results of which were published in 1943. So this is scarcely some new revelation, is it? After getting a decent breakfast inside you, regular intakes of food of the right kind during the rest of the day will avoid the undesirable highs and lows of both energy and mood.

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Protein (in meat, fish, eggs, and cheese et cetera) reduces glucose, but also increases insulin. Groves argues that it is therefore smart to take in fats to replace the carbs which you have abandoned or reduced. Fat not only prevents violent fluctuations in blood-sugar but also takes a long time to digest and prevents you feeling hungry. In addition, fat acts as a stimulus to the gastrocolic reflex if constipation is a problem. That, at least, is my understanding of the facts. Consequently, the ‘specific intentions’ listed below are all intended to cater to both the short-term and long-term management of my blood-sugar level. 10.3 I hereby resolve and declare… 10.3.1 Don’t mention the gym Since there is clearly (in my mind) an interaction between exercise and health, I shall continue to follow the Body by Science exercise routine. I began this six months ago and I believe it is doing me good. Apart from the obvious improvement in strength which it brings, Dr McGuff states that high-intensity exercise also produces adrenalin, which facilitates fat loss and restores insulin sensitivity – a sensitivity which in many cases has been damaged by excess glucose, mainly from carbs. Those who don’t like exercise, particularly the high-intensity kind, can take comfort from the fact that Barry Groves doesn’t think it’s necessary, and McGuff and Little believe that you can harm your body by too much exercise or overuse. 10.3.2 Water, water, everywhere… I shall continue to drink about four (UK) pints of tap water every day, something I have been doing for a good many

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years now. (For details of why this is a good thing, see Your Body’s Many Cries for Water by F. Batmanghelidj.) 10.3.3 If we don’t have a plan we won’t have anything to

change later on Ever since reading Adelle Davis and books about the Hay diet I have tried to follow a number of basic rules as regards food, most of which are endorsed by Michael Pollan. These include:

• Eat real foods, as opposed to processed. The key point here is the degree to which the food has been processed. Most things (milk, for instance) have been buggered about with to some extent. But is the tinkering minor, or major?

• Avoid: soft drinks; white rice; packaged cereals (the package is often more nutritious than the contents); refined oils and fats; commercial desserts; and virtually anything which comes from the supermarket in a shiny packet.

• Prefer: fresh to frozen or canned; unrefined to refined; anything with dirt on it to the nice and inky-pinky.

I shall continue to observe these basic principles. It does, however, require constant vigilance; it is easy to slip into careless ways. Shall I occasionally have a piece of chocolate cake or an ice cream? Certainly. It’s just not a good idea to make them staple parts of one’s diet. 10.3.4 It all comes back to breakfast Without being obsessive (on this or any other point), I shall make sure that I bear in mind the time-honoured advice:

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breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dine like a pauper. To repeat: this does not mean that breakfast need be a large or elaborate meal. It just has to include the right amount of protein. Of course, you can make breakfast a major meal if you wish. Adelle Davis tells us that, if fatigue is a problem, your solution is to eat four ounces of liver, with some vegetables, before you leave the house. Plus, of course, a glass of her Pep-up. I don’t think I’m going to eat liver for breakfast very often. But I might make some Pep-up. And certainly it is true that common-or-garden brewers’ yeast, mixed with milk, is an excellent source of B vitamins. 10.3.5 Not sugar again, surely I shall continue to eliminate from my diet as much sugar as possible, in all its various forms. Of course, it is not possible to eliminate sugar entirely, and you will go mad if you try. But just avoiding the more obvious forms of sugar-laden supermarket junk will go a long way towards improving your health. 10.3.6 High Hay principles Where practical, I shall continue to observe the Hay principles of food combining. This is not because I believe they have any scientific validity (they don’t), but because this practice seems to suit my digestion. It also, incidentally, has the effect of reducing carb intake, which I am sure Barry Groves would approve of. The other part of the Hay recommendations – to avoid anything refined and to concentrate on real foods – has already been mentioned.

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10.3.7 Fat and loathing I shall abandon my fear of fat. Not that I ever was ‘afraid’ of it, but the Party Line for several decades has been to cut down on fat, for the benefit of one’s heart, and it has become almost an instinctive move when shopping. However, as Michael Pollan has shown us, the low-fat diet recommendation was a major error in public health; and Dr McGuff states that coronary heart disease is a downstream effect not of fat consumption but of loss of insulin sensitivity. And of course Barry Groves has put forward a case for adding fat when carbs are reduced. Fat, he argues, gives the best control over blood glucose and insulin levels. So, I look forward to having a bit more cheese and cream. If it turns out that I am accumulating unwanted body fat around the middle, I shall think again. There are, of course, fats and fats. You would do well to avoid trans fats if you possibly can; but if you ever eat in a restaurant I suspect that may be difficult. As for fast food outlets… well, you need treatment for suicidal tendencies. Trans fats are not banned in the UK, though they are in Austria and Denmark, and they are believed to cause 7,000 premature deaths a year. There is nothing new in thinking that fat, as a food, is a good thing. You may remember hearing something about the fatted calf being slaughtered for a celebration. I don’t actually know how to fatten a calf, but I do know how to fatten a pig, courtesy of Fred Hahn: you feed it lots of corn and skimmed milk. Which is, of course, precisely what a lot of people have for breakfast, together with large amount of sugar, thoughtfully added by that kind Mr Kellogg. 10.3.8 Milky ways Ever since getting rid of 30 lbs of fat, a few years ago, I seem to have got out of the habit of drinking milk. And Groves’s

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description of the modern ways of processing the stuff doesn’t do much to encourage consumption. However, St Adelle, of blessed memory, took the view that if you weren’t drinking a (US) quart of milk a day, you probably weren’t getting enough protein. Slightly over the top, perhaps, but worth thinking about. 10.3.9 Vegetable soup There is a large body of opinion that vegetables should form a substantial part of a healthy diet, though I have never been tempted to go the whole hog here. I know two people, one male, one female, who suffer from serious hair loss (as opposed to ordinary baldness), and they’re both vegetarians. Well, fair enough. I have no problem with vegetables. The leafy ones are better than the solid hard ones, apparently. As usual, however, you find that modern vegetables are less good than old ones, and there’s less variety. Half the broccoli grown commercially in America is of the Marathon variety, the reason being (of course) that it provides a high yield. God forbid that we should ever grow anything for quality. 10.3.10 Fruit pastilles Fruit needs some consideration and care. The paleo guys are much concerned about fructose, which is the sugar found in fruit. And modern fruit is selectively ‘bred’ to make it as sweet as possible; you don’t have to be told that, because you can taste it. Dried fruit in particular seems to have a high glycaemic index; and, given the desirability of avoiding spikes in the blood-sugar level, dried dates and apricots (for example) are, I think, best taken in small quantities. Fruit juice is disapproved of by some of the paleo guys (should you care), and small amounts are preferable to large.

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Just to illustrate, yet again, the constant difficulty of the ‘on the one hand this, and on the other hand that’ dilemma, Groves says that fructose is transported to the liver and does not stimulate insulin secretion. On the face of things, therefore, it’s healthier than, say, pasta. But life ain’t that simple: fructose, he says, may increase the risk of heart disease, it may damage the immune system, and so on…. Take your pick. Me, I’m going to eat fruit. The best fruit and veg are reportedly those with the brightest colours.

10.3.11 The dreaded carbs

Ah yes, the dreaded carbs. What should one do about all the various carbs, so feared and despised by the paleo guys? Well, after taking into account all kinds of warnings and theories, I’m going to carry on as I have for a good many years now. I shall avoid refined flour and white rice, eat minimal quantities of pasta and brown rice (which I don’t much like anyway), and stick to wholemeal bread. Porridge I can cope with, especially of a winter morning. If you need any convincing of the connection between high carb consumption and diabetes, read any account of Sir Steven Redgrave’s diet as an Olympic athlete, for example this one. McGuff and Little believe that a high-intensity training programme, as outlined in their book, provides the body with a bit more latitude in coping with carbs; in fact, overall, such training creates a metabolic environment which favours lean tissue over body fat. All of which is another good reason for following such a programme. McGuff and Little also point out that if we consume natural foodstuffs (real food, and not edible food-like substances), then the body can cope with a wide variant of mixes. They recommend avoiding grain-based carbs, but with that proviso the carb intake can vary between 0 per cent and 60 per cent of calorie intake without ill consequences.

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10.3.12 The meat of the matter It’s easy to forget, as the years pass, Adelle Davis’s advice to eat liver and kidney at least once a week in order to maintain good health. But I shall try to do that in future. As for other meats, the paleo guys are very keen on ensuring that their meat comes from animals which have been grass-fed, rather than factory-farmed and pumped full of chemical- and antibiotic-laden corn. All of which is sensible, though one has to ask, as usual, which grass? And grown where? Since I live in a small town with a farmers’ market and at least two old-fashioned butchers, I have at least been able to find a butcher who sells bacon which has no additives. And obtaining good quality meat should not be as difficult in my home town as it is in some places. Although, come to think of it, I wouldn’t bet on that. Why? Well, according to Groves, UK law actually forbids pig farmers, even organic ones, from feeding their pigs with anything other than denatured pellets made from low-grade grains and soy. (Got to help the Americans get rid of their 72 million acres of soy somehow, haven’t we?) So the food used to breed your meat has to be included among the long list of known unknowns. God only knows what the soy is doing to the pigs or us. Although the meat that I buy sometimes comes with the farmer’s name on it, it would be impossible to trace it back and identify every chemical that might have entered the animal’s body at some stage. So you have two choices. Don’t eat meat or take the risk. I choose the latter. Should you care about minor differences between the various advocates of the paleo diet, Arthur de Vany recommends that you cut the fat off meat. The average American, by the way, consumes an average of 200 lbs of meat a year (and industrial meat at that), which is over half a pound a day. This, says Michael Pollan, is

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probably not a good idea, especially when you take into account the strange things that cattle are fed on these days. But I’ve never been anywhere near that big a meat eater; haven’t got the teeth for it, for one thing. Fish isn’t meat, exactly, and most people won’t need any prompting to eat some; I certainly don’t. But if you buy and eat any farmed fish, be aware that it’s probably been fed on grain. And you are – or become – not only what you eat but also what you eat has eaten. 10.3.13 Oily issues I shall try not to use the standard supermarket cooking oils and instead use the cold-pressed variety. Groves says that the last thing to do with cooking oils is cook with them; and sixty years ago Adelle Davis was very unkeen on the hydrogenated versions. Ideally, cold-pressed oils should be refrigerated. 10.3.14 For those who really need to go The reduction of trace elements in our diet, which has resulted from the continual emphasis on quantity rather than quality, has some minor but troubling side-effects. It turns out that a shortage of magnesium can play a part in bladder weakness. Some gentlemen of a certain age have prostate problems which require surgery, and this in turn may lead to difficulties with bladder control. I fall into that group. Some elderly ladies (and even younger ones, judging by the television adverts), have similar problems (despite having no prostate). In her chapter on magnesium, Adelle Davis points out that this nutrient can assist with bladder problems, so I googled to find out the current view. It turns out that magnesium is a recognised treatment in this department, usually 300

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milligrams a day, which you can buy in pill form. Adelle recommended 200 to 500 milligrams, which she said was a quarter or half teaspoon of Epsom salts. I’ve been trying this myself, and it is not a miracle cure, but preliminary results are encouraging. 10.3.15 Don’t worry Groves makes a good point: relax while eating. Adelle Davis (inevitably, since she knew everything) says so too. And Michael Pollan emphasises the pleasures of real food eaten at actual meals. As opposed, of course, to a ready-made meal slammed in the microwave and then eaten in front of the telly. Says Adelle: ‘…If fatigue is too great, if unpleasantness occurs during the meal, if worries are carried to the table… the flow of digestive juices is decreased or inhibited…. Relaxation and graciousness should reach their height before any meal.’ 10.3.16 A motto to live by For my money, Adelle Davis is the great heroine of the food business. You may have gathered that by now. The more I read her, the more brilliant she seems. And I think it is always worth remembering what she said to an interviewer from an English newspaper. When he arrived at her home, the reporter was seated in a comfortable chair in Adelle’s living room, and she brought in two cups and a large jug of coffee. Not unkindly, the reporter challenged her on this. He reminded her that she said, in her books, that coffee should be avoided, because it causes the loss of B vitamins through the urine.

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‘Well, yes,’ said Adelle with a smile. ‘That’s true. But I like coffee. And besides, everyone is free to go to hell in their own sweet way.’ 10.3.17 Vale Good luck, everyone! A long life to you all.

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Spread the word 11.1 Tell your friends Whenever I write something I hope to find readers... So, if you find this document useful, please remember that you are free to send it to a friend, print it out, use it as a teaching aid, re-publish it in an online magazine – do more or less whatever you like with it, – provided, please, that you attribute the work to Michael Allen. Please be aware that if, for any reason, you want to have a copy of this essay in booklet form, you can get one by using Scribd’s high-class printing facility. If in doubt about what you can and cannot do with this document, please bear in mind that it is posted on Scribd under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution licence 3.0. Please click on this licence link for more details. 11.2 If all else fails For any other information, please contact me, Michael Allen, via mikel01@globalnet.co.uk. 11.3 About the author Michael Allen’s principal career was in education, first as a teacher and then as a university administrator; he has a PhD in education. Michael is the author of some twenty books, mostly novels (under his own and several pen-names). His best known non-fiction works are The Goals of Universities, The Truth about Writing, and On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile. The latter two works are listed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the bibliography of The Black Swan.