The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat

by Tim Spector

The increasing promotion and use of restrictive diets that depend on just a few ingredients will inevitably lead to a further reduction in microbe diversity and eventually to ill health. Intermittent fasting (such as the Fast Diet or 5:2) may be the exception, as short-term fasting can stimulate friendly microbes, but this is only as long as the other, ‘free eating’, days contain a diverse diet. Fifteen thousand years ago our ancestors regularly ingested around 150 ingredients in a week. Most people nowadays consume fewer than twenty separate food items and many, if not most, of these are artificially refined. Most processed food products come depressingly from just four main ingredients: corn, soy, wheat or meat.