Tim Spector, an epidemiologist and co-founder of the ZOE nutrition study, wants to change the way people think about food. His 2015 book The Diet Myth popularised the idea that each of us has a unique and constantly changing gut microbiome that is crucial to our health. Spoon-Fed, in 2020, exposed diet misinformation. Food for Life, at over 500 pages, overlaps with these but offers more information than ever before. It aims to think about food for “our individual health, the health of our society and the health of our planet”. It’s complex, hard to digest and obviously good for us, like an enormous portion of fibrous vegetables, well balanced with spices.
Once you wrap your head around the microbes in our guts, which need a varied diet themselves in order to process the food that makes us healthy, much of it seems like common sense. Eating a wide range of plants keeps you well – 30 a week is ideal, including seeds, nuts, herbs and spices. “Ultra-processed foods” (UPFs) – a “heady, addictive mix” that makes us “fatter but less nourished”, are bad. Anything that claims to be a “superfood” is probably a con.
