Food fads: my gut feeling is…

Cover of GulpHere's a hint: your flavour of the month had better not be bacon, sausages, fruit juices, melted cheese or cupcakes. All the fun stuff, I think you will agree.

In fact, the way things are going in the world of dietary advice and precautions, you'll be thinking you should stick to lettuce leaves. Well, you would be so wrong. According to the very latest from the food police, lettuce has absolutely no food value whatsoever and can in fact be harmful. Apparently, piling lashings of the green stuff on the side of your potential coronary just makes you FEEL better - and eat more junk.

Cover of The Diet MythHere's a selection of some trending foodie books that appeal to me - in some cases for all the wrong reasons:

Gulp by Mary Roach - it has a great cover and is about the "strange wet miracles of science that operate inside us". You'll find the answers to questions like: did Elvis die of constipation?

Books on microbiomes. OK, now take a deep breath before you read up on the latest in faecal transplants. A good place to start is the Christchurch Press article: Is clean living shortening our lives? (4 November 2015, B3). Cover of The TastemakersWe need to get down and dirty and restore the variety of microbes in our guts. And, unfortunately, that means we need to know more about "stool banks" and "faecal transplants". Tim Spector is your go-to man here.

There is also the possibility that we are just being manipulated by clever marketeers. The Tastemakers tackles this possibility by asking: Why does food have to be trendy? Why can't it just taste good? Like a toasted cheese sandwich used to taste, before it was gentrified with artisanal cheeses and ancient grain breads?

Cover of The Sex Life of FoodAnd finally, just because every blog is improved by the mere mention of sex, there is The Sex Life of Food. Maurice Sendak bills this book as being "Delicious, funny and - yes - sexy". And I checked, there is no mention of excrement anywhere here! But, best of all - I love the author's name - Bunny Crumpacker. I am not making this up!

Left to my own devices I would probably eat avocado on toast and cupcakes every day. Until I tired of it, that is. Maybe I should write a book on this!

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