Spoon-Fed: Why almost everything we’ve been told about food is wrong

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Tim Spector v cca 200 stranách zhrnul svoj komplexný pohľad na stravovanie. Páčilo sa mi, že ako sľuboval, neponúka čitateľom žiadne univerzálne zázračné riešenia. Alcohol; The French drink a lot of alcohol (an average of 11.8 litres per person per year) and yet have the third highest life expectancy compared to other top-earning countries Scientific research is just catching up on fields if the microbiome proving that everyone is unique and there is no One True Diet that works for all

You can get enough vitamin D from 15 mins of sunlight exposure, or by eating a fillet of oily fish such as salmon, or a handful of vitamin D-rich mushrooms Suffers from coeliac disease need to eat gluten regularly for six weeks prior to medical tests for accurate results Our liver naturally produces most if the cholesterol in our bodies and cholesterol in food doesn’t alter its levels in the blood to any extent. Many foods we now think of as healthy contain large amounts of cholesterol, essential for the health of our cell walls and a number of key vitamins e.g. oily fish, eggs and yoghurt Coffee; (it’s not bad for you) An analysis of 36 studies found moderate amounts of coffee (3,5 cups per day) reduced the risk of heart disease, and even heavy coffee consumption was not associated with elevated risk of heart disease

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One of the big takeaways from this book - for me, at least - will be Spector’s confirmation that vitamins and food supplements are either a waste of time and money at best, or even dangerous at worst. Fish oils, vitamin D supplements, protein powder (just to name a few): Spector explains why he used to believe in these nutritional aids and has now rejected them as ineffective. It turns out that our bodies are adapted to absorb vitamins from food. It’s really not a surprise, is it? (It really is it too bad that I’ve just succumbed to buying an expensive collagen supplement.) I also found Spector’s advice on tap water vs bottle to be enlightening. If you just want the bullet point, it turns out that we are better off nutritionally, financially and environmentally to drink tap water. On the plus side, and given what the book set out to do, he does deconstruct some of the scare stories and outright myths behind headlines - specifically/persuasively by showing poor or limited experimental design, the practice of extrapolating results obtained with rats as subjects to humans, often with only tiny sample sizes, and the use of meta analyses to highlight how significant or otherwise a finding really is.

I also found out there is no link between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol (who knew?); and that almost no one in the UK is protein-deficient. And on a related note: even performance athletes require only 50g more protein per day than Joe Bloggs - making most of the huge quantity of protein supplements consumed a total waste of time, money and effort. Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’ Another central tenet is to explode the myth of the average person when it comes to food. We have our individual sensitivities and preferences and we'd be well advised often to simply just listen to our bodies and how they respond to our diet. Experimenting with meal times, fasting, and substituting out foods will do more for us as an individual than trying to find some miracle silver bullet answer on the internet to weight loss or other health concerns, because we will be engaging in what is going in to our body and thinking about it. Pregnant women do not need to eat for two. At most they require an additional 200 calories a day, and that is in the last trimester. A lot of pregnancy weight gain could be due to this myth being perpetuated.

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It's this sort of evangelical approach that detracts from any clear science-based message that Spector is trying to convey. It feels like he has selectively used research data to support his views, which is a criticism he levels at the food industry. For any reader with a degree of scientific literacy, this will come as a disappointment.