Grombles

Dr Michael Moseley, the BBC medical documentary presenter, invented a diet called 5:2 (there are inevitably also 4:3 and 6:1 versions), but the idea is to only eat a very limited number of calories for 2 days every week (600 for men, 500 for women - ha!). By doing this we can emulate how our bodies were designed to deal with the feast and famine existences of our hunter gatherer ancestors. On the remaining 5 days of the week, we eat normally. So there's nothing complicated about it, and while you're fasting you know tomorrow you can eat and drink whatever you like - unlike every other diet (that never ever work out). 5:2 makes good sense. Homo Sapiens have been around for at least 200,000 years (lets say 10,000 evolutionary generations). Our primate ancestors for a million or two more (say 100,000 generations). Waitrose and Sainsburys, on the other hand, have only been around for 2 or 3 generations. Our lifestyles, and nutrition in particular, are no longer dictated by survi...

There is a nuclear power plant at Onagawa in Japan. So what, there are lots of nuclear power stations in Japan. There are two interesting facts about the plant at Onagawa. The first is that it was apparently built faster than any other nuclear plant in the world - and that was in 1980. The second, and this should surprise you, is that it is on the coast and only half the distance from the epicentre of the March 2011 earthquake that caused the devastating tsunami that destroyed the Fukushima nuclear plant which sent the world into a tailspin of terror about nuclear power. Onagawa not only survived unscathed by the tsunami, it even provided a refuge that saved the lives of hundreds of local residents. Japan has now shelved it's plans to build 14 new reactors by 2030 and every unaffected reactor in the whole of Japan has now been shut down . Angela Merkel has declared that all nuclear power in Germany will be phased out. The UK's nuclear programme has been shot to ribbons as a m...

We love the whole restaurant thing. We choose from a list of deliciously described items and magically, only minutes later, it arrives in front of us. We eat, we pay and we go home. But what did we eat? What risks did we take? Nothing I'm going to discuss will be any great revelation to anyone, but we conveniently push all ideas about any possible health risks to the back of our mind in the same way that we treat global warming and the demise of the Euro. So far, so good, but sure as eggs is eggs, it will all end in tears. Call it paranoia, but I'm beginning to get nervous - and especially abroad. The dangers from eating food we can't see being prepared are: Contaminated ingredients 'past sell-by dates' (if the country you're in has them), improperly stored or cheaply sourced Incomplete cooking to kill bacterial pathogens Dirty hands, cooking implements and preparation surfaces Deliberate contamination by kitchen staff A country's economic health a...