Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Food is Wrong

by Tim Spector

Other unquestioned advice included never swimming within an hour of eating, never eating just before bedtime and the importance of exercising to lose weight. Not one of these ideas is backed up by science, and many of them turn out to be categorically wrong, but they were repeated so often that I still find them hard to unlearn as an adult. We all inherit similar notions, and opinions about food – whether well-intentioned or not – only multiply as we get older.

Mud crab and monkfish have also been given makeovers and rebranded successfully in the USA. Rebranding is one thing, and can be beneficial if it serves to make discarded fish edible, but deliberate fraud is different.

Fish is tasty and nutritious and probably isn’t harmful for you and, if this chapter hasn’t put you off entirely, can form part of a healthy and balanced diet. But saying we should all have it and can’t live without it is crazy, as there’s little (if any) strong evidence to support its supposed health benefits. For years we’ve been led by the government and food industries to believe that fish and fish oil supplements are good for our health. But the hard data on the benefits of fish eating is disappointing and it is hard to find good evidence for the overhyped fish oil supplements. To date, there is no solid evidence to support the use of fish oil supplements in reducing risk of heart disease, and government guidelines have – unusually – changed to reflect this realisation.

Our demand for fish is becoming unsustainable, and if everyone were to follow government guidelines and eat fish at least once per week, we’d run out of stock and damage our precious oceans and their ecological systems and our planet even further.

Unbiased studies have shown that you don’t need any special drinks or supplements unless you are a professional athlete or exercising hard for over three hours.10

Weight loss is one of the few things exercise doesn’t help with, then, and for that most of us have to eat less and choose our foods better to match our metabolism and gut microbes. There are always exceptions to these rules, as we are all unique genetically and microbially. Our twin studies have shown that the choice to do exercise is strongly genetic and naturally some people enjoy it much more than others, who can find it quite unpleasant.

One recent study looked at 256 students exercising in a gym and compared their choices of snack before and after. Most people increased their preference for an unhealthy brownie compared to an apple after exercise. But one in five people actually felt less hungry after exercise and were more likely to change their minds and decline any snack.12 This means a few people both enjoy exercise and lack the usual strong compensatory mechanisms. Don’t count on it, though. I still wear my fancy 10,000-step monitor on my wrist, but as several large studies have shown that people wearing them for a year gain more weight than those without, I may remove it when I want to slim down.

Poor diet consistently comes out clearly as the main risk factor following populations who develop dementia. A

Most components of food, except for some polyunsaturated fats, can’t cross from the blood into the brain, so much of this effect is likely to be indirect via other chemicals produced in the gut.

A study in 2019 showed that patients having psychotic thoughts had abnormal gut microbes that when transplanted into lab mice could make them also behave psychotically and altered brain chemicals (such as glutamates and GABA).13 This suggests the wild idea that schizophrenia could even be partly infectious, and could explain why psychotic patients rarely suffer from viral illnesses and common immune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis.

course, many of the changes in gut bugs may well be related to the idiosyncratic diet habits of spectrum disorder kids.

Natural probiotics in the form of fermented foods like cheese, yoghurt and kefir (and kimchi and kombucha, if you are adventurous) are likely to be beneficial. As yet, neither yoghurt nor kefir have been specifically studied in mental health, but their microbe ingredients have been tested in randomised trials as part of commercial probiotics used in both mice and humans.

A diverse Mediterranean-style diet with a range of fermented foods to keep your microbes happy is looking like the best present you can offer your brain, both to cheer it up and keep it working well. 19.

Some Italian (San Pellegrino) and French (Badoit) mineral waters have decent amounts of calcium in them (over 180 mg per bottle) and I have recommended them to my vegan osteoporosis patients.

The evidence clearly shows that there is no need to drink more water than your body tells you that you need. Thirst is an extremely well balanced and effective signalling system that we should listen to. Eating fresh fruit and vegetables that are rich in water is a good way to hydrate as part of your meals, and drinking tap water or, if you fancy splashing out, glass-bottled spring water will be absolutely enough. The only exceptions are those who may have a reduced thirst response such as the elderly. If you are fit and healthy, trust your thirst.

So drinking a moderate amount of red wine daily (one to two glasses) is probably good for your gut microbes and could be a significant factor in explaining the health benefits.

Of the estimated 30 billion food miles associated with UK-consumed food, 82 per cent are generated within the country, and over half of these in 2005 were simply due to trips by car from homes to local food shops. So buying your food locally may indeed reduce the distance travelled from field to fork, but any environmental benefits are likely offset by the use of multiple trips of less efficient, smaller, petrol-guzzling vehicles.

You might be surprised to learn that buying a locally reared Welsh lamb in the UK is worse for the environment than buying a frozen one. Indeed, lamb which is imported 11,000 miles from New Zealand is, somewhat surprisingly, better for the environment and has a lower carbon footprint.

For example, transporting the finished milk product generates only 10 per cent of the carbon emissions compared with the milk production stage itself. Growing 1 kg of beef has been estimated to equate in carbon opportunity costs (which includes alternative land use) to one London to New York return flight.7 Even if these precise figures are disputed (which they are), the relative importance of food sources and diet choices on our planet cannot be ignored.8

We also need a global perspective where food production is built around a framework of five factors: climate change, biodiversity loss, land system change, freshwater use and nitrogen and phosphorus flows from fertilisers.

would be good to see governments and retailers promoting and encouraging people to grow their own foods and eat seasonally, with an emphasis on regional food-producing capacities. In countries like Italy and Spain, consumers accept that most fruit and vegetables come only at certain times of the year, but many other countries have lost this culture.

For example, stop driving to the supermarket, try to reduce your food waste, avoid single-use plastics, buy foods in season and freeze surplus amounts, and grow your own produce where possible. Even if you only manage to do two of these – it will help.