By Guy Chapman

Tired? Aching? Skin losing its lustre? Diarrhoea? Constipation? Bloating? Cramps? Congratulations, I just diagnosed you as wheat intolerant.

Oh don’t be fooled: there are plenty of expensive tests you could use to check it for yourself - iridology, applied kinesiology  and the like - but I am completely sure because, you see, I read this book, and all the symptoms you thought were due to candida overgrowth, adrenal fatigue, Morgellons  or chronic Lyme , all turn out to be due to gluten.

No, not really. 

By Guy Chapman

I wanted to write a general and topical post on diets, food fads and such, but in truth the subject is way too big to cover with one article. 

Every January the marketing machine cranks up the promotion of ways to shed the pounds. Miracle supplement, easy exercise, “weird trick” or whatever, the message is always the same: buy X and you will lose weight much more easily than if you don’t buy X. For multiple, sometimes mutually exclusive values of X.

January is peak Diet Woo season, but, in truth, scarcely a week goes by year round without some new diet or product being punted, debunked, yet continuing to phenomenal success anyway. Paleo, “bulletproof”, raspberry ketones (pretty much everything promoted by Dr. Oz for weight loss) and a good deal more besides.

There are two that really get my goat, though: "wheat belly" and HCG. Wheat belly because I have coeliac disease and my tolerance for nonsense about gluten is no better than my tolerance of gluten, and HCG because it was a fraud that nearly died out but was resurrected by an arch-fraudster in what was almost certainly a completely cynical move.