Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Food Is Wrong

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Spector provides pragmatic guidance on foods and diet that is based on real science.

This book is highly derivative and if you are even moderately well informed about nutrition it will contain no new information. It is simply a repackage if other people’s science, all of which has already been extensively covered elsewhere.

This book provides an up-to-date overview of the current state of nutrition research, by examining various food myths, including: Supplements, Meat, Pesticides, Labeling, Exercise, Salt, Alcohol, Bottled water etc. It is generally easy to read, interesting, informative, occasionally amusing, and certainly holds the reader’s attention.It attacks bad scientific studies (with inferences made from small sample sizes, no corresponding control group, and biased sponsors), and includes a much needed assault on the vested interests of the food industry, complicit/lazy governments, and even negligent science bodies.Since food science is complex, and much still unknown (e.g. effect on the gut microbiome), the author often tempers his advice with “probables” (e.g. fish is probably not harmful for you).If you follow nutritional research, much of the content may be familiar to you, additionally the author occasionally adds details from his Twin Studies research, as well as personal anecdotes. In some ways, the book sits alongside Michael Pollen’s Food Rules, and much of the content of the NutritionFacts website.The last chapter provides a useful overview of the whole book, and includes a clarion call to pester governments and institutes to implement helpful food strategies rather than be led be the various vested interests of food manufacturers.Overall, an excellent review of the current state of nutrition science, where we are, and why things need to change.

I was so looking forward to reading this but honestly I didn't learn much of practical use. There is some interesting information about the food industry, fish, water etc. but anybody with an interest in diet and nutrition will be aware of most of it already. I am non the wiser about an optimal diet for my health.

There's a biblical saying that there's more joy in heaven when a sinner repents than when faced with the already pious. On that score, Spector scores 5 Stars, being a top researcher who now rejects the 'food myths' he once believed. But, although it takes courage to make a stand against orthodoxy, Spector has bided his time before 'coming out'. Many of the food myths he says are news to him have been known about for decades. Nevertheless, this book is a valuable and lively expose of the nutritional establishment’s pseudoscience, which still dominates official health advice. Even more valuable is Spector's discussion of the importance of gut bacteria in everyday health, a field in which he is rightly acknowledged as a pioneer. So, again 5 stars. However, the book contains some jarring notes. He confines his myth-busting to nutrition, apparently supporting the establishment view that the pharmaceutical industry does not also peddle myths. Similarly, he spends a good 5% of his book on climate change – an irrelevance to his subject – and once again accepts the dogma that carbon dioxide and methane are the primary drivers of global warming. There a number of minor errors, such as that folate and folic acid are identical. They are indeed chemically the same but not biochemically, and thus affect people differently – a bizarre error in a book which rightly and importantly stresses the individual differences in people’s responses to what they ingest.

Having read The Diet Myth I was excited to read Spoonfed. It didn’t disappoint. It doesn’t tell you what to eat but gives clear advice so you can make your own informed choices about what you choose to eat whether it be fish or meat or just plant foods. I will certainly think twice before I buy fish in future and I’m going to stop taking Omega 3 fish oils. A must read for anyone interested in food and a healthy microbiome.