Review: Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Food is Wrong, by Tim Spector

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Myth. Calories accurately measure how fattening a food is. Myth. All processed food is bad for us. Myth.

And so on. Tim Spector has identified more than 20 ‘myths’ about food and this book is his attempt to set things right.

Many of the ‘myths’ are familiar territory for me and for many of you. (For example, ‘all meat is bad for us’). One can read those chapters with a self-knowing grin, because we knew that all along.

The more challenging chapters are the ones where I’m not sure that Spector gets it entirely right — for example, he’s very skeptical about exercise as a way to lose weight. I think many of us who have lost weight know that it’s a combination of better eating and moving more than seems to do the trick.

He’s also completely dismissive of food supplements, such as multi-vitamins. Again, as someone who’s been taking these for many years, I’m not sure I agree with his arguments.

Reading those chapters was more challenging, which I guess is the whole point of a book like this.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting, evidence-based book that deserves a wide readership.