I am going to break this down to the simplest form I can and try to render it as succinctly as possible:

Eating FAT will not make you fat. Eating SUGAR will.

But this is a very complex issue (a complex carbohydrate if you will). It’s a bit of a brain-pickler to say the least. I’ll do my best to share what I know (and I’ve done a lot of research on this in the last year), but I encourage you to look into it yourself and I will provide some good links at the end of the article. I want to state that although I have a qualification in Nutrition I am not a doctor or nutritionist.

I want to say at the beginning too that I don’t intend for this to be exclusively about weight loss. Yes- although it sounds counter intuitive it does boil down to the fact that fat does not make you fat, and that sugar does, and so if you cut out sugar and eat fat instead you will lose weight, maybe even a lot of weight (N.B. If you eat them BOTH together the exact opposite will happen!) But I am much more interested in optimal health than I am in optimal weight. Importantly, what I want to flag is that Eating fat will not make you ILL. Eating sugar can and perhaps WILL. You do not need to be even 1 lb overweight for this to be the case. And this article seeks to look at the key question: where exactly IS sugar in our diets? And the truth is that it is in so many more places than we realise.

(Before I get stuck in: Just a wee note to my veggie/vegan friends:  In my heart I am one of you; for a long time I was mostly vegan and ate a few eggs and the odd bit of fish here and there. I used to go to the Buddhist Centre and say to my fellow meditators ‘I know it’s only a matter of time until I go vegan, I keep telling myself “fish have feelings too”’. But, for health reasons, I HAD to start eating animal protein to help my body to recover from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ongoing) and to go vegan right now (which I intended to for both for ethical and environmental reasons) would be the worst nutritional health decision I could possibly make. Although eating meat has been a very hard thing for me to justify to myself, it is eased somewhat by knowing that even the Dalai Lama has to eat meat for health reasons. So I ask you to maybe read on, even though there is quite a bit of meaty content here, but it might just become relevant to you at somepoint, even if it seems anything but right now, as your current diet is so different. I will be writing something on the ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’: the wider meat eating/vegetarianism debate soon; it is a topic of great concern to me— and I try to be as conscious a meat-eater as I can: I might sometimes even thank the fields of cows and sheep when I walk past them for helping me to get stronger by eating their brothers and sisters!)

So, the Fat vs. Sugar debate is big mainstream news these days. Perhaps you watched the recent BBC documentaries about it? I did. Although they are undoubtedly  informative, I have a lot of issues with these programmes as they really only skim the surface of the nutritional health concerns that need to be raised to do with the impact eating fat vs. sugar has on our bodies. Yeah yeah, we all know that eating crisps, sweets, cakes, pastries, pies, pizzas, microwave meals, convenience foods, fry-ups and takeaways are bad for us. We don’t need to be told that. What annoys me is that these documentaries don’t even really break the top layer; they don’t chomp down enough to get through the skin to the meat, let alone down to the bones of the topic. So I want to share what I have come to know.

In order not to get caught ‘skimming the surface’ I’m going to make some (quite big) assumptions about your diet so that we can get to the juicy stuff quicker. The ‘assumptions’ I’m going to make for the sake of getting to the morsels we will want really chew over are to do with we all know is unhealthy and we don’t need anyone to tell us otherwise. So I’m going to assume that you do not eat any processed foods that we all know are filled with fat and sugar in a bad way: e.g. cakes, sweets, pastries, pies, takeaways laden with calories/salt/MSG/sugar, microwave meals, fried foods in vegetable/sunflower oil, biscuits, tomato ketchup and other sugar filled condiments, fizzy drinks, alcohol (pure sugar)….etc.

I’m actually going to go much further and assume that you eat a 100% wholefoods diet (that is, everything exactly as nature intended), so that means you eat no refined sugar and what you do eat is natural— e.g. an orange instead of orange juice, butter instead of margarine, homemade soups instead of tins of Heinz tomato soup, porridge oats instead of sugary breakfast cereal, natural yogurt instead of sugar filled Muller fruit corners (God, how I used to love them), fresh fish fillets instead of fish fingers, homemade baked sweet potato fries instead of packaged oven chips, honey or agave instead of sugar to sweeten your tea etc. And I’m going to assume that you get your 5 fruit and veg a day (at least) and I’m also going to assume that maybe you even try to buy organic when you can. A lot of assumptions I know (and maybe this might not match your current diet at all) but there’s a big reason why I am setting the baseline much higher: it means that we can properly tuck in to what the Fat vs. Sugar debate is really all about. Oh yeah- I’m also going to assume that you drink at least 2 litres of water every day and are sensible about caffeine in tea and coffee! So, all in all, I’m going to assume that by all intents and purposes you ‘eat really healthily.’

But surely if I eat a wholefoods diet, filled with lots of fresh fruit and veg (organic when I can) then I don’t even need to pay any attention to the Fat vs. Sugar debate at all as it is not relevant to me?

This is what I used to think. Then I got really sick with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and I had to start re-learning everything I ever knew about what I thought a healthy diet was; and this is coming from someone who has a qualification in Nutrition! My main learning was as a patient at the UK’s only NHS Homeopathic Hospital, taking part in the Wel Programme. I was shocked beyond belief at what I found out. It quite literally blew my tiny mind.

As a nation, as a species, we are getting sicker and sicker. In 2011 the United Nations declared that, for the first time in human history, chronic non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes (and we can also add obesity, depression, chronic pain, chronic fatigue to this list) pose a greater health burden worldwide than infectious diseases do. There is no ‘vaccine’ or ‘cure’ for these illnesses. In the Western world illness is now a whole new form of ‘dis-ease’ that incorporates both mind and body and demands what we take a holistic healing approach to maintain, or regain our health: looking to stress levels, lifestyle, exercise and diet, as well as going down the traditional medical route. The kinds of illnesses we suffer from today require a complete overhaul of how we live our lives, and instead of pills and procedures one of our main sources of medicine; both as prevention and cure is FOOD.

And the biggest nutritional cause of these illnesses is— you guessed it— SUGAR. Not fat, not red meat, not salt, but sugar. And as we all know, sugar is perhaps the most highly addictive substance on the planet: much more so than cigarettes, alcohol or drugs (the withdrawals are so bad to begin with, coming off it is akin to coming off crack- not that I know what that actually feels like; but ride it out!), and our consumerist culture is constantly marketing sugar filled products to us at every turn. Why is this so? Our consumption of sugar has changed radically since the advent of agriculture, industrialisation, and Capitalism. In 1700 the average annual sugar intake per person in the UK was just 1.8kg (4 lbs), by 2007 the average was 68 kg (150lbs) – that is a fair bit more than my own entire body weight. Excessive consumption of sugar drastically impacts upon our metabolism (the way in which we break down food) and causes dangerous spikes in insulin in our bodies. These changes in metabolism due to insulin spikes over time accumulate and cause inflammation in the body, and this inflammation is widely scientifically proven to be the primary cause of most illness: diabetes, cancer, heart disease and attack, hypertension, obesity and chronic illness. How can we help ourselves and prevent these chronic conditions in our own lives? We need to take action to reduce our insulin. How to we do this? By reducing sugar in our diets. But, importantly, research has shown that is it not just sucrose (refined white sugar) that is the culprit here, but it is specifically the increase in our intake of other sugars- such as the sugar present in grains and fructose (the natural sugars found in fruits and root vegetables) that are proving so detrimental to our health. (For scientific evidence please examine the research for yourself, I’ve based my own research on the teachings at the NHS Homeopathic Hospital.) And we have been completely taken for a ride when it comes to the benefits of eating a high fat diet. It was not unknown that sugar was so deadly in the 1970s- in fact John Yudkin published the book ‘Pure White and Deadly‘ on the topic in the 70s (it has recently been widely re-published)- advocating a high fat as opposed to a high sugar diet, but it was swept under the carpet, and by the medical establishment no less. This is a massive generalisation (forgive me, but I’m writing a blog not a medical journal) but basically in the 80s a group of ‘healthcare professionals’ with a capitalist agenda sat in a room and created the brand concept of ‘low fat’ and the correlation was made between the fat we eat (in full-fat dairy, oils, meats, fatty fish, nuts and seeds) and the fat in our bodies– adipose tissue and internal body fat. So, to be ‘healthy’ the population started eating a diet high in carbohydrates (such as grains like rice, pasta and breads) and low in fatty meats/fish/oils and full-fat dairy. ‘Fat free yogurt’ and ‘skimmed milk’ etc. became leaders in the diet industry, and when ‘fat’ was removed, what was put in its place? Sugar and sweeteners. Throw into the mix the rise in convenience food (which is packed with sugar, excessive amounts of processed, refined salt and all sorts of other additives, preservatives and other hidden nasties) and we have the recipe for a nation-wide health crisis right there. If these two words had not been the same (the fat we eat and the fat that is the excess weight we carry in and on our bodies) then perhaps this epidemic crisis could have been averted. But for decades we have believed that if we eat fat, we get fat. But what if I told you that just wasn’t the case? What if I said: you eat fat you get thin? (Provided that is, you STOP eating sugar. As I said— if you start eating more far whilst continuing to eat sugar you are just going to get really fat, and more importantly develop a whole host of other health problems to boot.)

But sugar isn’t just in the granulated white stuff, chocolate and sweeties. Oh no. The biggest lesson I learned was to realise that sugar is also in all the ‘natural’ sugar substitutes (honey, maple syrup, agave nectar) too. Stevia is the only truly ‘sugar free sugar substitute’ available. And sugar is in ALL grains (rice, pasta, breads, in fact anything made from flour- cakes, biscuits, pastries- yes, even gluten free pastas and breads, this doesn’t make a difference. Switching from white to wholemeal [white pasta to wholemeal pasta/white bread to granary or rye] only means slightly less sugar, it still breaks down as sugar in the body in the end). And, the biggest shocker, it is ALL fruit and also root vegetables: carrots, turnips, parsnips, sweet potatoes, beetroot or squash. Yes, fructose (the sugar in fruit) is different from dextrose is different from sucrose is different from saccharin is different from high-fructose corn syrup, but they all are metabolised by our body as sugar. The system used to identify the level at which foods are metabolised by the body as sugar is the Glycaemic Index (GI). Every carbohydrate is measured on this scale.

They all look so different on the outside (a cake looks really different from a carrot, right?) but once we have chewed and swallowed them and they are digested in our gut, they all enter the bloodstream in exactly the same way: as SUGAR. Yes, they all produce varying amounts of sugar in the body, often drastically so, as you will see if you look into the GI of different carbohydrates– Of course between a carrot and a cake, there is no question that a carrot is miles better for you. But a carrot turns into sugar in the body, whereas a steak, which has 0 sugar, does not. A steak has no sugar whatsoever. To give you another example: an apple produces less than half the amount of sugar in the body as a bowl of white rice would. But did you know that eating a bowl of white rice equates to eating the same amount of refined white sugar to the level of 97%?! You could switch to brown rice? Yes, but this is still about 60% sugar when it is broken down in your body. When I first found this out about rice on the Wel programme, I almost cried, how could I live without rice?! I ate rice, in different forms, every single day!- rice porridge, rice cakes, brown and white rice, rice noodles, rice flour in gluten-free breads (I was a rice-aholic as I was gluten intolerant) What about sushi? How could I live without sushi?! But I gave rice and ALL GRAINS up entirely a year ago and I haven’t looked back since. Have you ever heard of cauliflower or broccoli rice? (Where you put the raw cauliflower or broccoli in a food processor until it looks like rice, then you fry it in a little water and coconut oil for a few minutes, and voila: a completely sugar free rice substitute) And no more bloating! (Oh, and you can use cauliflower rice to make sushi too).

Brain pickled yet? As I said, it’s pretty damn complex, hey?!

BUT– meat contains NO sugar, fish (and the best are the fattiest fish, rich in Omega 3 fatty acids- salmon, sardines, mackerel), eggs and seafood contain No sugar. Nuts and seeds contain No sugar. Good-quality nut and seed butters and nut flours and milks contain No sugar. (You can make amazing grain-free breads from nut flours and seeds like flaxseed FYI, see the Helmsley sister’s recipes in the link at the end). Full-fat dairy- milk, cream, cheeses (if you can tolerate them) contain No sugar. Butter and lard and goosefat (all of which can be used to cook safely at very high temperatures) have No sugar. Healthy oils like extra virgin olive oil (unheated) and coconut oil (which can be safely heated to very high temperatures) contain No sugar. Yummy coconut (in milk, oil, creams, yogurts, even ice creams, flours and desiccated and whole- try Co Yo products) contain No sugar. Raw cacao powder and cacao nibs (pure chocolate- try the Raw Chocolate Company) contain No sugar. And ALL the green veggies you can possibly gnaw away at- kale, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, spring greens, spinach, lettuce, asparagus, chard, sprouts etc. and all the anti-bacterial fighting veggies like onions, leeks and garlic you can eat have absolutely No sugar and next to no calories (you could eat 10 entire broccoli heads and still not be close to the number of calories in a Mars bar). All the tasty herbs and fragrant spices contain No sugar. Legumes contain very little sugar also (but there are issues around how well nutrients are absorbed by the gut when we eat legumes, which you can look into if interested, I’m afraid I don’t have space to go into it here.)

One thing I discovered when I began this journey in earnest: begin a vegetarian was no longer an option for me.

These days I eat a ‘Paleo’ diet. Paleo is short for ‘Palaeolithic’ which advocates going back to the diet of our pre-industrial ancestors, before agriculture. So the diet is mainly made up of good quality grass-fed meats (Paleo eaters do not eat meat where the animals have been fed grains/they have also often been pumped full of a whole load of growth hormones/soya/and other potentially toxic substances), organ meats like liver are favoured highly as these are the most nutritionally dense; wild fish (no farmed fish that has been fed soya pellets- farmed salmon and trout are the biggest culprits- soya messes with oestrogen levels and is a big issue, for women especially) and seafood, free-range eggs, nuts, seeds, vegetables and some fruits. Basically, anything our ancestral fellows could have hunted or foraged for or grown, and nothing else. It is grain free, and sugar free, it also tends to be legume free. (Paleo as a diet is also dairy free but Weston A. Price advocates adding full-fat dairy to this, and I would, if I could tolerate it. But I can’t as I am lactose intolerant.)

Weston A. Price is the daddy of this way of eating. I learned all about Weston A. Price on the Wel programme. In the 1930s Weston A. Price, a dentist, travelled the world in order to research tooth decay among different indigenous populations. He studied 13 tribes (from the Maasi to the Aborigines, tribes in the Peruvian jungle, Maoris in New Zealand and White settlers also in New Zealand, to traditional crofting communities on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland).  In 1938 he published his findings in the study ‘Nutrition and Physical Degradation.’ He compared tribes who ate either a traditional ‘Paleo’ hunter-gatherers diet (based on meat, fish, eggs, vegetables and fruits, notably WITH full-fat dairy, often raw and unpasturised) to tribes all over the world (indigenous populations and settlers) who had adopted the ‘White Man’s White Diet’ of refined grains and sugars. As well as finding enormous discrepancies in the dental health of his subjects (as you can see from the images those on a traditional diet have impeccable dental health- tooth decay was virtually unheard of- compared to those on the refined/sugar diet where tooth decay is highly prevalent, as well as growth

abnormalities). He also discovered that alongside the deterioration in dental health, adopting the ‘White Man’s White Diet’ resulted in the explosion of the diseases of industrialisation among the population- cancer, severe infections and degenerative illnesses. Cut to 2015, this list includes today’s epidemics: cancer, diabetes, heart disease, chronic illness, chronic pain, obesity and depression. The research more than speaks for itself.

But how do we begin to think about making changes in our own diets? Especially when the consumerist nature of the food industry wants us to do anything but that?

Perhaps by examining my own diet as a case study to finish I might be able to point to some of the changes that can help immensely.

A few years ago I thought I was ‘really healthy’ and a good day’s eating would have looked something like this (bear in mind that I was already gluten/lactose/soya/deadly nightshade [potato/tomato/aubergine/bell pepper] and caffeine intolerant).

Breakfast: homemade green juice made in my juicer (2 apples, a handful of spinach, kale, lettuce, celery, cucumber, fresh ginger, lemon juice, parsley and some honey) and rice porridge with a chopped pear on top, a few blueberries stirred in, some flaxseed and cinnamon on top. Maybe even a swirl of agave nectar if I was feeling particularly luxurious.

Mid-morning snack: some dried apricots and 7 almonds (yes I used to count them out and my boyfriend at the time would rip it out of me)

Lunch: Humous with 2 rice-cakes, carrot and celery sticks and an apple.

Afternoon snack: a banana

Dinner: boiled white rice with a fillet of baked salmon, steamed broccoli and spinach, lemon juice and parsley on top (no oil, no salt)

Dessert: A couple of squares of dark chocolate with a decaf tea with rice milk and a spoon of honey.

Sounds pretty damn healthy, right?

Well, let’s compare. These days a ‘healthy’ days eating for me is as follows:

Breakfast: 2 egg omelette with onion and courgette and garlic cooked in coconut oil served with rocket salad and sauerkraut. All sprinkled with pink Himalayan salt and pepper.

Lunch: A big bowl of steamed broccoli topped with a tin of mackerel (in olive oil), green olives, capers, parsley, pumpkin seeds with lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil and Himalayan salt and pepper.

Snack: a small handful of toasted sunflower seeds.

Dinner: Pan fried sirloin steak with a big green salad (lettuce/avocado/cucumber/spring onions) generously seasoned with salt and pepper and a salad dressing made from extra virgin olive oil and apple cider vinegar.

Dessert: A Co yo yogurt- a rich creamy, indulgent dairy free yogurt made from 100% full fat coconut milk, with a spoonful of raw cacao powder stirred in (my God I’m salivating even writing this) and a chai tea made with almond milk.

Which sounds healthier to you? If you’d asked me a year ago, I would have said hands down the first one. And I was completely shocked to find out how WRONG I was!

It is not an exaggeration to say that in the first day’s menu I am a SUGAR ADDICT. But how can that be? It’s all healthy stuff? There’s none of the granulated white stuff in there?

To see why more clearly, let’s break down the two days meals into the categories of FAT and SUGAR.

Diet a couple of years ago:

The apples and honey in the juice, the rice porridge, the pear, the blueberries and the agave at breakfast; the apricots, the rice-cakes, the carrots, and the apple at lunch; the banana, the white rice, the chocolate, the honey and rice milk in the tea: ALL = SUGAR

Compare that to my diet today:

0 = SUGAR. That’s right, absolutely none. Even the coconut yogurt and the raw cacao powder are 100% sugar free (and they taste amazing)

What about FAT?

Diet a couple of years ago:

Very little: The salmon, flaxseed = FAT

There is also a little bit of fat in the humous too (as it contains tahini- pulped sesame seeds, which are fat), but that’s all. That’s all the fat for the whole day.

And what about my diet NOW?

The coconut oil, the eggs, the mackerel, the olives, the pumpkin seeds, the extra virgin olive oil, the sunflower seeds, the steak, the avocado, the salad dressing, the coconut yogurt, the almond milk in the chai: ALL = FAT

So the BEFORE diet is high in carbohydrates, and low in protein and very low in fat. The AFTER diet is high in fat, high in protein and 0 carb.

(Now- 0 Carb is extreme, I am by no means advocating anyone reading immediately switch to a 0 carb diet,as I said I strongly encourage you to do your own research and make any dietary changes very slowly and cautiously: most people would function best on a LOW CARB diet, as opposed to a 0 carb diet (e.g. you would still get some carbohydrate from root vegetables and the odd bit of fruit), but the ratio of fat and protein to carbohydrate would still be drastically switched and you would derive most of your energy from fat intake.

I am listing my own person nutritional needs only as an example here, and they are extreme due to my numerous food intolerances and my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Candida (where yeast in the gut feeds on sugar so the only way to cure it is to starve the bacteria of ALL sugars- which means temporarily even cutting out things like carrots and beetroot, squash, sweet potatoes and all other root vegetables, oh and ALL fruits. Oh God, how I miss carrots, they were my equivalent of a slice of cake for so long, no joke!)

So yeah, I am on the extreme end, but the knowledge I can share by using my own eating patterns as a case study to highlight the difference between a diet high in fat or high in sugar impacts across the board— You might think of my diet as going the ‘whole hog’- although perhaps going the whole hog is more like the American guy in a recent  BBC documentary who ate a ‘raw Paleo’ diet where, far from eating raw veggies, he slaughtered and butchered his own animals (very humanely) and ate the animal nose to tail, RAW. Bloody hell! He was in recovery from Chronic Fatigue too. I am NOT going to do that. And he had a bowl cut and was wearing these Hicksville-like dungarees which made him look even creepier as the camera-man filmed him sat at the table, ready to chow down on his plate of raw lamb’s liver. Eeeeeeek!)

Ok, just before I wrap it up there are a couple of other interesting sugar related nutritional differences between the two diets I’d like to flag up while I’m at it:

There is a lot of FRUIT in the BEFORE diet, there is 0 FRUIT in the AFTER diet. Fruit = carbohydrate = sugar. My doctor at the Homeopathic Hospital, who founded it in 1990 and is one of the leading medical consultants in the country said to me once ‘people with weight problems often have to watch their fruit intake.’ Wow- who knew?

(Note- some fruit is much more sugary than others. The fruits with the least amount of sugar are as follows: lemons and limes have 0, berries (raspberries, blackberries and blueberries, strawberries) have very little. Green apples such as granny smith have very little, as do kiwis. Prunes are really good too; and great for digestion also: if you suffer from sluggish digestion try incorporating some flaxseed and prunes into your diet, it should help massively. Then the amount of sugar begins to creep up, up to bananas and your dried fruits like dates, raisins and apricots, which are really quite high in sugar. I look forward to the day that I can eat the odd apple/handful of berries again, fingers crossed by the time blackberry season comes around!)

Also, the BEFORE diet has very little protein: the salmon and the humous are really the only sources, the rest is carbohydrate (a.k.a. sugar) in the form of all the grains and fruits.

The AFTER diet is high in protein: the eggs, the mackerel, the steak are all great sources (not to mention the eggs and mackerel are high in Omega 3 essential fatty acids and the steak is rich in iron). Protein is widely acknowledged to keep you fuller for longer and to release a slow, steady amount of energy into the bloodstream, whereas carbohydrates (sugar) provide a quick release of energy which induces a ‘spike’ of energy, but this falls back down very quickly (often plummets into a trough) and then we get those cravings where we get shaky and irritable and feel we need to eat something sugary to ‘boost’ us back up RIGHT NOW before we SHOUT AT SOMEONE!!!… And then we have that chocolate bar/slice of toast/bowl of pasta and AHhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, that’s better. Until it dips again a couple of hours later and we need to satisfy the craving again; It is a vicious cycle.

In fact, if I find myself having a wobbly— ‘I need to eat something right now before I faint/cry/shout/hit someone’— moment these days I don’t reach for a banana or a biscuit, I often eat a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, or hemp oil, or another fat source- a handful of nuts or seeds, a spoon of tahini or nut butter. It really works. And you don’t get the dreaded energy dip shortly afterwards.)

A couple of other wee things: the BEFORE diet has NO SALT, the meals in the AFTER diet are seasoned with good quality pink Himalayan salt and black pepper, the body needs good quality salt to function optimally: note: GOOD quality natural salt, such as this or Celtic Sea Salt— not processed, refined table salt. Also, the BEFORE diet has no oil or salad dressings (trying to eliminate the fat), the AFTER diet is generous with oils and dressings– and they are made from extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, and NOT balsamic vinegar (which is pure sugar.)

So- after breaking that all down, can we really still say that the BEFORE diet is the most healthy when we now know how much sugar it contains?

No. No we cannot.

Brain sufficiently pickled now? Thought so. It’s a fatty sugary MINEFIELD out there, that’s for sure.

And can we still say that a carrot is healthier than a steak?

In my opinion, and following Paleo, Weston A. Price and the message from the Wel Programme at the Homeopathic Hospital, no, we cannot. And good: I love steak (and I will keep on thanking those fields of cows!)

Ok. That’s it. I hope you have found some of this illuminating. As I said, amassing this knowledge over the past year quite literally blew my tiny mind. I encourage you to take your time with it.

Lots of love for finding out everything you can to eat a diet that will help you maintain or regain optimal health x

Here are some resources that I recommend if you want to start doing some of your own research.

Books:

– ‘Pure White and Deadly‘ by John Yudkin

– ‘Fat Chance: The Hidden Truth About Sugar, Obesity and Disease‘ by Robert Lustig

–‘Grain Brain’ by David Perlmutter

– ‘The Paleo Cure‘ by Chris Kresser (I like to think of him as the King of gut health!)

– ‘The Art of Eating Well’ by the Hemsley Sisters (great mostly paleo/grain free cookbook- uses some ‘pseudo-grains’ such as quinoa and buckwheat)

And excellent online resources:

– http://chriskresser.com/ (this guy really is the best when it comes to your gut)

– http://www.westonaprice.org/

– http://thepaleodiet.com/

– http://nomnompaleo.com/ (loads of great paleo recipes)

– http://m.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/20/sugar-deadly-obesity-epidemic

And here you can access ALL the resources to enable you to do the Wel Programme that I participated in at the Homeopathic Hospital by yourself at home: http://www.thewel.org/theWEL/Home.html