Welcome to Trick and Treat

The Second Opinions website started as a collection of articles. For about 10 years, I had been researching the role of foods in a number of 'diseases of civilisation' — mostly heart disease and obesity at that time — and it had become very obvious that what our governments, as well as doctors, dieticians and nutritionists were telling us had very little basis is any coherent body of evidence; in fact all the evidence tended to point the other way. This meant that the conditions the dietary recommendations were meant to benefit, would probably get worse rather than better. And that is what did happen and that is what is still happening as the numbers of cases of diseases such as obesity and diabetes have risen dramatically since 'healthy eating' was introduced in the 1980s.
It seemed that the only way to reach a lot of people and let them know what was going on, was either to write a book or to write a website. I have ended up doing both.
I started writing my latest book, Trick and Treat: How 'healthy eating is making us ill, in 1989. I called it Diet and be Damned. The publisher, Hodder Headline, told me they thought it was too important a book to publish as I was then an unknown author; they advised me to write a 'diet book'. I have written three since then, as well as other, more technical works.
Now, 19 years after I first conceived it, the health situation has become so bad in western countries, as 'Big-Pharma' and 'Big-Food' have assumed control of our health for their profit, that I decided I must finish what I had started almost two decades ago. 2008 also marks the 60th anniversary of the British National Health Service (NHS). What better time could there be for such a book as Trick and Treat.

Trick and Treat
This title is a play on words with the title of the American children's 'extortion with menaces' game, trick or treat. But where trick or treat gives its victims a choice, the modern 'health industry' does not. With them it is both Trick and Treat. The health industry needs us to be ill so that it can profit fby it. For this reason, they trick us into an unhealthy lifestyle so that they can treat the resultant illnesses.

Stop Press
The problem with a book like this is that it is finished quite some time before it is published. The purpose of this blog is to list some of the supportive studies and evidence published after Trick and Treat was finished.