Food for Life: The New Science of Eating Well, by the #1 bestselling author of SPOON-FED

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You can reheat rice; unopened mussels won’t kill you; and eating meat doesn’t give you cancer (though “replacing 30% of traditional burger meat with mushrooms or fungi would be the equivalent of taking 2m cars off the road”). The second part looks at various foods, including meat, seafood, fruits, vegetables, fungi and mushrooms, nuts and seeds, and more, outlining what we know about their benefits or not.

But it’s good stuff, much of new and has caused me to rethink some of the foods I eat — and don’t eat.Conceptually, he explains, our genes are not fixed entities but more like plastic, able to change shape and evolve, and these changes can be passed on to future generations. With his years of experience and engaging writing, he navigates the fascinating and complicated relationship between food and health.

Food for Life’ is a recommended read for those seeking a deeper understanding of nutrition and its implications for personal well-being and sustainability. 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. I found it a bit of a slog to get through the book as he goes through every food and their vitamins and polyphenols, which doesn’t make for riveting reading. Investigating everything from environmental impact and food fraud to allergies and deceptive labelling, Spector also shows us the many wondrous and surprising properties of everyday foods, which scientists are only just beginning to understand. Anyway, the book is quite clearly structured and to summarize the sheer amount of information he puts in, he includes 5 bullet points at the end of each chapter that reiterate the key points.Using identical twins, Tim Spector shows how even real-life “clones” with the same upbringing turn out to be very different. g. fish, good supplements) daily for at least 12 weeks to get to an optimal level for reduced risk of chronic disease, most notably cardiovascular disease. The USA standards I feel are a bit more realistic of 600 IU and over the age of 70 (which I am) of 800 IU. When we started to cook our food, our digestive tracts slowly became shorter as a result of the more easily absorbed cooked foods. The book covers a wide range of topics, including the gut microbiome, food choices, and the impact of food on the planet.