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With a publication record of over 600 research articles in esteemed journals like Science and Nature, he is at the forefront of global genetic consortia and leads research on epigenetics. As an author and media presenter, Spector actively shares his expertise with both scientific and public communities.
If we are to combat the epidemic of obesity and health problems, we need a fundamental change in how we view food, diets, and the hidden microbial world inside our bodies. Comprehensive knowledge: The book is filled with a wealth of information about food, covering a wide range of topics. It provides in-depth insights into various aspects of nutrition, cooking, and food choices.His research career spanning over three decades has uncovered the genetic basis of various common diseases, challenging prevailing notions that attributed them primarily to ageing and the environment. Yet, taken as a whole, this is one of the clearest and most accessible short nutrition books I have read: refreshingly open-minded, deeply informative and free of faddish diet rules. Spector’s recommendations include subsidies for vegetables and restrictions on the voracious lobbying of the food industry. He would approve of the new restrictions on junk food marketing on TV before 9pm.
există nșpe mii de studii despre alimente “minune” care ar trebui să ne facă sănătoși 200%, însă studiile astea sunt făcute pe genunchi și concluziile lor nu sunt reale Other findings seem counterintuitive, but are often deliciously reassuring. Two cups of Americano coffee provide more fibre than a banana. 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”). Some sources of nutrition are more beneficial together, like corn with beans, or “a glass of red wine daily with friends”. Replacing sugar, salt, fat and gluten with weird and untested chemicals is usually pointless and probably dangerous, and the 1980s advice to change butter and cream for margarines and vegetable oils was “one of the biggest health scandals ever”. Practical tips: Each chapter concludes with bullet-pointed tips, offering concise and practical advice for readers. These tips make it easier to apply the knowledge gained from the book to everyday life. Using identical twins, Tim Spector shows how even real-life “clones” with the same upbringing turn out to be very different. 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.Why do so many people still fervently believe that margarine is healthier than butter? The great beneficiary of this belief has been not consumers but the margarine industry. Spector shows with great clarity that “the greatest obstacle of all” when it comes to getting accurate information about food has been the food industry. Like the pharmaceutical industry, the vast multi-national food companies have influenced nutritionists with gifts and sponsorship. Spector reveals that industry has also funded huge amounts of nutrition research, influencing the information that we receive on everything from the safety of artificial sweeteners to the question of whether we can eat large amounts of red meat with impunity. Food for Life is a feast of that knowledge. It contains so much information that it’s impossible to process by reading it from start to finish, but bullet-pointed tips at the end of each chapter and an appendix of food tables make it a valuable reference book to keep on a kitchen shelf.
A couple of essential takeaways were (1) we need to be careful about making generalisations about food and the effect of what you consume will be very specific to each individual, and (2) that we should be cautious of the claims made about the foods we consume without any supporting evidence. Spector is a medic turned professor of epidemiology, though his writing is always clear and hits that balance between not over-complicating the science, nor using language aimed at beginners. This stands well as a companion to Dan Saladino’s Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them, which won the Wainwright Conservation Prize last year, 2022. He constantly mentions many people get different results and will occasionally give averaged results as well as his own. But the issue I have is some people might treat this as gospel (its in a book and if it works for him it must work for me!). Most people reading this book would not be able to access this kind of personalised data and some of these results suggest certain foods (whole, unprocessed, fresh- like certain fruits or vegetables) should be avoided or at least reduced to occasional treats. I just cannot get enthusiastic about that. If you love bananas, eat the damn banana! It is a better choice than many you could be making like donuts, chips or chocolate. Likewise his attitude toward the use of pesticides in farming. Ok, I agree pesticides are not ideal however "Organic" does not equal no pesticides - it just means certain pesticides are not used. And again, eating non-organic fresh veg that you can afford is better than stressing yourself trying to afford smaller amounts of organic veg and filling up with processed foods. If you can afford it, great! Go for your life, but there is already so much stress and guilt around food (especially for women) why add more? Food has shaped the way we have evolved over the last million years. When we started to cook our food, our digestive tracts slowly became shorter as a result of the more easily absorbed cooked foods. Our brains became larger thanks to this increased nutrient intake, with a major part dedicated to our senses, in particular those neuronal areas related to food."There is so much noise on social media about nutrition it is as if new cults have emerged; low carbers, carnivores, plant chompers. They all have one thing in common - an utter zealous devotion to their own cause and a barely concealed revulsion of the others. A thoroughly well-researched yet digestible (ha ha) book that would be better described as a ‘bible’, as I will continue to refer to it religiously going forward.
From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada: However, there is a not so positive aspect revealed as Spector looks into studies and reports health impacts of foods with his epidemiologist hat on. There are still so many don't knows! This man is an expert in his field! Surely we can have some certainty! When we say to each other, "You know what they've come up with now? Only lab grown salmon! Only a theory that certain mushrooms can cure Alzheimer's!" this is who I am picturing for the mysterious "they": a research scientist conducting clinical trials and referring to peer-reviewed papers in trustworthy publications. Instead, we learn that yoghurt trials were funded by Danone, and other trials are too small, or unrepeatable, or fail to rule out other factors influencing the results. And some journals are not that trustworthy! Will actually help you decide what to add to your next grocery shop... This is one of the clearest and most accessible short nutrition books I have read: refreshingly open-minded, deeply informative and free of faddish diet rules. Bee Wilson, The Guardian - praise for SPOON-FEDI'm finally finished with this book. It's very long, and with a lot of information about pretty much every food type out there. Treat this less like relaxed, casual reading, and more like a sort of reference for tips on how to make food choices. The author is really comprehensive about all the food types and covers and evaluates the research on these as well. I have to admit that this book has singlehandedly made me change my eating habits to include more plants. I find his repeated advice that the effects of food on the body differ for everyone to be one that makes a lot of sense, and wish that the average person had access to tools that could measure their own responses to food. New Fitbit idea, maybe? 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. There are a couple of things I really like. At the end of the food chapters there are TLDR bullet points with some key takeaways on managing your intake of all the food groups. I also liked the debunking of many of the tabloid stories about superfoods and all the things that supposedly cause cancer (what Ben Goldacre used to refer to as the Daily Mail's "Oncological Ontology Project"). The pandemic should have changed many attitudes towards understanding biology, and Food for Life is the newly scientifically semi-literate person's post-Covid go-to food book... I trust the author and his work. The Times, *Book of the Week* The book’s main argument is that to find the best way of eating we need to ignore much of what we are told. Spector’s myths include the idea that fish is always a healthy option and the dogma that “sugar-free foods and drinks are a safe way to lose weight”. Spoon-Fed is a worthy successor to Spector’s earlier bestselling book, The Diet Myth, which focused on the powerful role that the microbes in our guts play in determining our health. This new book is broader, but he manages to distil a huge amount of research into a clear and practical summary that leaves you with knowledge that will actually help you decide what to add to your next grocery shop. He convincingly argues that coffee and salt are healthier for most people than general opinion decrees, while vitamin pills and the vast majority of commercial yoghurts are less so. He is in favour of vegetables – as diverse a range of them as possible – but does not rate vegan sausage rolls as any healthier than the meat equivalent. The greatest obstacle when it comes to getting accurate information about food has been the food industry
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