WHAT DOES ‘EATING HEALTHY’ REALLY MEAN?

Does your morning coffee protect you from cancer or contain a cancercausing agent? Should you stick to egg whites or just eat the whole egg? If you’re as confused as most of us by the parade of contradictory scientific findings about food, then Food: WTF

Should I Eat? is the book for you.

The author, Dr Mark Hyman, is an expert in functional medicine and believes food can be a powerful drug and can help control and even reverse chronic illness.“We know food can harm but how many of us believe that food can heal?” he asks.

In the book, Dr Hyman takes a look at

DR RAMAKANT DESHPANDE, chairman of the Mumbai-based Asian Cancer Institute hospital

each food group and breaks down the science behind good nutrition.

He calls his set of guideline on eating healthy the Pagan Diet, mostly as a spoof on the fanaticism of friends who swear by extreme regimens like the Paleo and Vegan diets. The book also explains why nutritional research is so confusing. Essentially, he argues, it’s very very hard to do it right.

“Ideally, scientists would take two groups of people, feed them different diets (making certain they do not eat anything else), and follow them for 30 years.” This is impossible in most cases, so studies end up with contradictory or confusing findings.

His Pagan Diet excludes no food groups, except ‘Frankenfoods’ — highly processed food-like substance high in fats and sugars.

“No part of this book involves deprivation and suffering. I want you to wake up ... feeling good, enjoying life, and ready to eat great food,” he says in the book.

Dr Hyman spends part of the book focussed on the kitchen — on preparing meals from the scratch, cooking and eating mindfully. He traces the journey of a family of five in which three members were obese, and explores how cooking right helped them lose weight.

His perspective is clearly American, with a focus on processed, tinned, and fast food. But his advice is relevant across the globe. As are the healthy recipes he has sprinkled through the book. Best of all are his mythbusters — oatmeal and orange juice for breakfast? You might want to think again.