(Bean Salad)     

  I started speaking about cancer – how to prevent it and how to correct it - in 2002. Speeches have taken me all over the world; Japan, the USA, Australia, Russia, Germany, the UK and more. But then, I live in Thailand and France.

  Inevitably, when I came off stage people would ask “But what’s the best diet to fight cancer?” So, in 2004 I made up my mind to conduct my own ‘Meta-study’ looking at as much hard research data as I could find. In 2004, Western Health Authorities recommended a low fat, high carbohydrate diet, while the media was full of how healthy the South East Asian diet was. I went through research study after research study, but then originally I was an Oxford University Biochemist. And the truth? Both the Western Health Authorities and the mass media were wrong. Very wrong.

  In 2005/6 there was only limited research on the ‘colourful Mediterranean Diet’ and that was mainly from Harvard Medical School. Even they confused the North shore with the Southern. The diet of Tunis is a lot different to that of Toulon. But one thing kept recurring – The French Paradox. Perhaps it was my years in advertising where you look for a grain of truth and then test it again and again to see if it fact or fantasy. Here, in the French Paradox, was a grain of truth that Health Authorities kept sweeping under the carpet. You see, it didn’t fit at all with the mass health theories of the West.

  What is the French Paradox? The French eat more fat and drink more alcohol than any other nation, but they have less heart disease and less cancer. My house faces St. Tropez. I know the colourful Mediterranean Diet well. I learned to speak French just south of Tarbes, the birthplace of D’Artagnan, in Gascony. On one trip there, everyone was discussing the newspaper headline. The French had conducted their own study into the Paradox. And guess what? The epicenter was exactly where we were, just south of Toulouse. The home of foie gras and cassoulet. A place where people enjoy their sausages and cheese, all washed down by Madiran, the local red wine, and a glass of Armagnac, from Gers. Here they eat even more fat and drink even more alcohol than the rest of France. And they have even less cancer and even less heart disease!

The four main ingredients of health

  So, I started to look into ‘the colourful Mediterranean diet’ and its commonalities with this area 150 kms inland. It wasn’t hard.

  Neither population consumes much carbohydrate – and when they do it tends to be whole, not refined.

They do consume a lot of fat. It may be cows’ dairy in Gascony, but the cows are outdoors eating grass as nature intended; in the hills along the coastline of Spain, France and Italy it is more likely to be from goats, with the occasional flock of sheep – think Roquefort. But the overwhelming source of fat is from olives (extra virgin olive oil), and nuts like walnuts and almonds, or seeds like sunflower.

  Next, there’s an indefinable ingredient. They enjoy their food. In the West, too often that is said about someone who is blatantly overweight. Not so in France, Italy or Spain. In France, I have seen grown men have a hissy fit because the lentils weren’t from Le Puy, the cheese wasn’t runny, or the vinaigrette didn’t have enough garlic in it. Watch the women at the market squeezing this, sniffing that. Locally, 18 per cent of the food is organic; my barber bemoaned the arrival of McDonalds but with a shrug he added, “It’s alright though. My children won’t go there, they like their food too much”.

  I may be talking about France, but in truth, not a lot changes in attitude as you move into Spain, Italy or Greece. A meal in the shade of the olive grove behind the farmhouse is something to be savoured and enjoyed with the family. Never hurried, this isn’t food, this is nourishment; enjoyment; pride. Farmers are proud of their beetroot, leeks and peppers. The man who keeps the goats brings his offering of cheese, and another his own, hand-made olive oil. The gathering sips it like wine, and nod approval.

What defines good food? Taste.

What makes things tasty? Variety, freshness and fat.

  Variety is a crucial ingredient. The Mediterranean is bathed in a plethora of colour. With the prawns you may well see a large piece of concave bark containing at least red and yellow peppers, spring onions, fennel, cauliflower, mauve garlic, radishes, tomatoes and cucumber. Then we have the beetroot, salad, garlic, cornichons and raw carrot in herbs. Main course will be a magnificent fish, shown grilled on a platter to the whole table before it is prepared, complete with ratatouille (courgettes, aubergines, tomatoes, herbs, garlic, black pepper, olive oil). All washed down with wine and laughter.

  And, if the next day, the participants are feeling less than perfect, it will be dubbed ‘une crise de foie’, and they will eat artichokes and black raddish, drink Hepar (a magnesium-rich spring water), and take milk thistle, avoiding wine for a couple of days.

  And so, in honesty, I launched The Rainbow Diet in speeches in about 2004, and in a book in 2006, more as a theory with at least some research behind it.

  Since that time there has been a growing tsunami of research showing the theory is accurate and that The Rainbow Diet, (typically described as the colourful Mediterranean Diet) should be the diet of choice for everyone who wants to live a longer and illness-free life.

  Pan-European research on life expectancy showed that the British lived to their mid 75s, while Italians lived to their mid 77s. But what was more interesting was that British had their first chronic illness at 61 years of age on average, while in Italy it was 75. 

The Rainbow Diet indeed helps you ‘Live younger, longer’.

  By 2013, twelve heart specialists wrote an open public letter to British Prime Minister, David Cameron, urging him to adopt the colourful Mediterranean Diet as the norm in the UK. “The evidence base for the Mediterranean Diet in preventing all of the chronic illnesses that are plaguing the Western World is overwhelming”, stated Dr. Richard Hoffman.

Protect and Correct

  The theory was simple: Part I was that the official equation of fat and carbohydrates in the Western World was wrong. Fat is good for you, some fats exceptional. Carbohydrate, especially refined sugar, directly, or indirectly via insulin spikes, causes inflammation. And inflammation is the precursor to chronic illness – cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia and so on.

  American Heart Expert, Dr. Chauncey Crandall, explained it succinctly in 2012. Sugar consumption causes inflammation in the arteries. This causes the fat to stick. Without the inflammation, it wouldn’t. 

  Part II was that colour foods are most usually rich in bioactive compounds – for example, polyphenols (curcumin, pomegranates or catchetins in herb teas) or anthocyanins (the dark red of beetroot, plums, aubergines); carotenoids (in your ‘greens’, oranges, carrots and red and yellow peppers); indoles in broccoli, kale and cabbage; lycopene in tomatoes; allicin (in onions and garlic); piperine in black pepper. The list is endless.

  Please understand that science has gone beyond the simplistic understanding that good health is all about vitamins and minerals; the Science of Epigenetics, which only really started in the mid-nineteen nineties, but has boomed since 2006., shows how poor diet, environmental toxins, stress and other factors cause blockages around your ball of DNA inside your cells. The blockages prevent messages being sent out and this results in illness. However, the blockages are potentially reversible – indeed, there are over 65 bioactive natural compounds shown in research to be capable of helping in this reversal.

  But that is what happens in humans every minute of every hour of every day. The body is in a dynamic state, constantly correcting. And the inevitable consequence is that even when you develop a chronic illness, you are not doomed. American Dr. Young S. Kim of the National Cancer Institute talked of people in remission from cancer. If they ate badly, the cancer most likely would return; if they ate well, it most likely wouldn’t. And she went on to list bioactive compounds like sulforaphanes (greens), curcumin, piperine (black pepper), genestein (herbs and pulses) and EGCG (green tea) that could achieve this. There are more such compounds in the latest edition of the book ‘’.

By the way, sunshine, exercise and even gut bacteria can ‘correct’ too!

Live younger, longer

  One study from Harvard Medical School followed 10,000 middle-aged women for 15 years and showed those who consumed a colourful Mediterranean Diet were 40% more likely to reach 70 years of age, and be free of chronic illness, wherever they lived in the world (Annals of Internal Medicine, 2013). A further Harvard study, (BMJ, December 2014) showed that following a colourful Mediterranean diet was linked to longer telomere length and therefore a longer life.

Other diets simply don’t have this quality of research to support them.

Healthy, nourishing, tasty and enjoyable

But there is another factor that sets the Rainbow Diet apart from all other diets.

It is enjoyable!

Why is it that most diets are diets of restriction? Inevitably, people on a diet end up giving up their favourite foods, and drop out feeling restricted and bored with the diet.

The Rainbow Diet is nourishing, it is healthy and in this book we are going to show you that it is certainly not boring or restrictive.

It is tasty, fun and enjoyable.