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The Sunday Times reviewer claimed that ‘This could be the best diet book ever written’, referring to John Humphry’s The Great Food Gamble.  So true!

Read the chapter ‘Fear of Fish’ and you’ll shun that lovely rich-coloured salmon. I almost wept as I read his description of the sea bed where a fish farm had been a year before. His details of how the salmon live are terrifying.

Fish, chicken, meat, eggs, fruit … it all looks very different when his incisive and knowledgeable treatment is applied to the way we have changed our food production habits over the last century.

The paperback is heavy reading but I would put it on a ‘must read’ list and there are lovely light touches like when, for example, he describes his diving experience.

The last chapter, read alone, is sufficient warning. Humphrys, in effect, interviews himself – one voice the convinced man speaking for a new look at what we do to our food – the other a devil’s advocate coming up with and demolishing all the stock rejoinders. It is most convincing.

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