101dietbooks

I MADE the first TV programme about the Mediterranean Diet for Channel 4 back in the ’90s. The channel, which was not so dynamic then, was bowled over by the fact we had 260,000 requests for factsheets the next day.

I am not a nutritionist nor a doctor but I am a cook and can deduce who is talking inedible nonsense. Also I have read across the subject more than most and have followed the road crash that industrialised foods and a fast food diet has had on public health. Thi is a particualty difficult subject in the UK where opinions are blinded by faith in the NHS which in this regard is pretty misplaced. Even with improvements in the diet today no one is seriously suggesting the British diet has any of the benefits of say the Mediterrenean, Thai, Japanese either gastronionically or nutritionally or intellectually or medically which does not stop quack doctors coming up with rum old thoughts of their own…

Of all the diets in all the world…you could find a thread of agreement which would go back to the teachings of FX Mayr who was the first man to apply the science of medicine to what we eat back in the 1920s. It is an approach that has been borrowed by such plans as the PH Miracle, the Fast Diet, Honestly Healthy and others, even Paleo really, but Mayr’s original clinic on the banks of Lake Worthersee in Austria is still the leading centre on the subject of diet, probably in the world. Its director Dr Stefan Domenig practises what others preach.

I ghost wrote Stephan’s Alkaline series which have now sold in 14 or so different countries.  It is an explanation about food. In recent years medical opinion in the wider world has begun to swing behind these ideas with the Nobel prize going to Yoshinori Ohsumi for research on how the body’s cell machinery is akin to living yeast. Many modern diseases are symptoms of an unhealthy stomach, especially for example in people taking antibiotics. This followed up the 2013 Nobel Prize which went to James E Rothman, Randy W Schekman and Thaioms C Sudhof who managed to explain the logistic of cell transportation around the body. They wrote: “Disturbances in this system have deleterious effects and contribute to conditions such as neurological diseases, diabetes, and immunological disorders”. In short hand the relationship between the stomach and the brain is what keeps us well. Which was in part another motivation behind the Broth Bowl project because that is the most efficient and most gastronomically exciting means of getting the optimum nutrition into our bodies.

The other issue is sugar which interferes with this process. Essentially it makes your stomach lie to your brain, literally. The chapter and verse on that is in another translation, again from German, I did for Sugar Detox. Dr Kurt Mossiter is not that well known as a name but you will have heard of his clients like the USA and Bayern Munich soccer teams and currently with a Juventus and German international. His Myoreflex clinic is one of the leading sports injury and nutritionists in Europe. His work on getting rid of sugar in the diet of sportsmen and women is as radical as it is leading edge. It is probably the only book which details exactly how sugar is implicated in 21st century diseases and how to use alternatives with recipes.