I was excited to recently receive my copy of Tim Spector’s The Food for Life Cookbook,1 which was a timely prompt for me to revisit what I understood about nutrition. Two years ago, my wife, also a GP, and I overhauled our diet. We recognised we were in our mid-30s, were conscious of our health, and felt a sense of responsibility to better educate ourselves, not only for our patients, but with a view to starting a family.

My keen interest in nutrition began 20 years ago during medical school, when I simultaneously competed in athletics across varying distances and terrains including road-running, cross-country, mountain-running, and track. I considered myself a serious athlete, competing internationally and achieving lifetime bests of 14 minutes for 5 km and 65 minutes for half-marathon. It was abundantly clear to me that I needed to take nutrition seriously, and I educated myself through the performance nutrition literature available at the time.

Beyond what I learnt in medical school, my sports nutrition knowledge, and the Eatwell Guide, I didn’t revisit the nutrition literature again until 2022. As a busy clinician pursuing a clinical academic career and trying to keep active through triathlon, I thought I was eating ‘healthily’. Arguably I would take as many shortcuts as possible to save time, for example, purchasing smoothies and juices, believing I was getting the essential nutrients I required, without much thought to the degree of processing and possible additional sugar I was consuming. Likewise, I would purchase lunch, usually a sandwich on whatever bread was provided, not giving a second thought that this may actually be ultraprocessed, but consciously considering the filling, attempting to achieve a small quantity of salad to accompany whatever meat I selected that day. I would even convince myself that the occasional …