Evolution to Devolution

The author of this book has spent nine years researching the rise of the diseases of civilisation, which he characterises as the seven deadly whites; these are sugar, milk, flour, fats/oils, salt, rice and finally white lies. He sympathetically quotes Rousseau in his last chapter as saying 'the greater part of our ills are of our own making, and we might have avoided them, nearly all, by adhering to that simple manner of life that nature prescribed.' In a nutritional sense, so-called advanced societies have radically departed from a natural way of eating as researched in depth by Weston Price over 80 years ago. Similar research was carried out in India by Sir Robert McCarrison, who demonstrated the adverse effect on rats of refined flour, sugar and rice. As it happens, this research is not mentioned here although it does reinforce the argument.

The underlying thesis is that we need to restore the natural order of oikonomia that has been distorted by commercial interests in food and agriculture, who control not only the current system but also governments and institutions with their financial clout. 80% of deaths in the industrialised world are due to heart disease, cancer and iatrogeny, that is medical interventions, while 80% of the modern diet is made up of these six deadly food whites, both in terms of weight and calorie content. The effects of the modern diet can be seen all over the world, but more especially in China and India as the population adopts Western practices. Each chapter gives a history of the white in question, highlighting scientific research that has been largely ignored; one example is the work on sugar of John Yudkin, which has only recently been highlighted although he wrote the book in the early 1970s and became the sugar industry's number one enemy.

The book is written in an informal, if at times laborious style with a few grammatical issues such as 'bare' rather than 'bear' with me. It is clearly well researched, but the fact that it is not properly referenced does somewhat undermine its authority – there are no notes and the bibliography is not alphabetical. However, this does not detract from the main message of the book, with which I entirely agree. Having spent over 300 pages on diagnosis, the conclusions indicate that we should reconnect with the planet, regenerate our soil, change the distribution of farm produce and adopt a natural diet based on the 50 key nutrients that he lists - avoiding processed foods. Such a revolution would have dramatic medium-term effects on our health service whose costs are spiralling out of control.