hedding and regaining weight is a national pastime. Would-be slimmers blame themselves for lacking willpower and self-control, but might the explanation for failure lie elsewhere? Dr John Briffa is the most sensible nutrition authority around, and his erudite yet highly readable new book, Escape The Diet Trap, mounts a detailed, science-based challenge to orthodox advice to ‘eat less and exercise more’.

Dr Briffa mounts a deeply persuasive, evidence-based critique of the notion, fostered for decades by the nutrition establishment and the self-interested processed food industry, that it’s total calories that matter, not the form in which those calories come. In fact, he says, different types of food have different fattening potential because of their impact on fat storage hormones.

Dr Briffa performs a great service to legions of ‘failed’ dieters by marshalling evidence for how conventional dieting emphasises foods that actually encourage the body to lay down fat. When food is restricted, the body compensates over time by down-regulating the metabolism.

A controlled, forensic sense of outrage permeates Escape The Diet Trap, with justification. Dr Briffa illustrates convincingly how governments and health professionals have dispensed duff diet advice for decades, promoting a formula that dooms many to a life of excess weight. “I have met countless determined and disciplined individuals who just can’t seem to crack their weight issue by ‘doing the right thing’” says Briffa. Why? They have been sold a pup, dutifully cutting back on the amount they eat and upping their exercise in a fruitless, often counterproductive effort to shed pounds.

Briffa is no less withering when he considers how peddling weight loss ‘solutions’ that are destined to fail is good for big business. Processed food manufacturers, he says, have exploited the idea that it’s excess saturated fat that is fattening - in order to sell us an array of ‘low-fat’ or ‘fat-reduced’ foods. Based on sugar and grain, they are cheap to produce, but bad for health.

Escape The Diet Trap is a masterly, forensic deconstruction of current nutritional gospel, a long overdue dish to relish.

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