I thought the book was excellent apart from the recipes. Many were so complicated and time consuming. Where is one supposed to find raw cashew nuts? I could find no explanation as to the relative merits of raw over the usual ready prepared cashews. I bought some sauerkraut to try but it just tasted of vinegar which I dislike. Then I discovered the sauerkraut has to be unpasteurised and the stuff that I bought was pasteurised, so that is now on its way to the compost heap. I do not enjoy cooking so I am not prepared to spend hours in the kitchen preparing weird recipes with weird ingredients. If somebody could come up with sensible recipes that include ingredients that I can buy locally I would be glad to try them. I think that I eat sensibly anyway. For breakfast I make my own muesli from oats, flaked almonds, coconut flakes, raisins and broken brazil nuts. This is delicious with natural yoghurt and a couple of fresh strawberries.

Agree entirely, Maureen, and am using instead the set of Paleo foods listed by Robb Wolf on his site; they allow you to mix and match normal foods in your own way but aim at the same change in the biome as Dr Mosley. I’m cross-reading the books ‘Clever Guts’ and ‘Wired to eat’!!

The ‘Clever Guts’ book is written for a broad audience: different generations, countries, cultures, food availability, health conditions. For that reason it would help to define ‘wierd’, ‘sensible’ and ‘local’ as they apply to you.

The basis of CG is a reduced carb Mediterranean diet. Plenty of unprocessed wholefoods *as humans and our gut flora evolved to ‘eat’*. Things like flaxseeds/ linseeds might not be familiar to some of us, but archeology has revealed flax to be amongst a handful of staple crops of the very first farmers!

Sea vegetables are widely consumed in east Asia, and very likely eaten by early Britons and coastal Europeans since many of our seaweeds are edible. Much as the numerous decendents of sea kale (brassica/ cruciferous family) and marsh samphire are eaten in Britain and mainland Europe today. But, if you are eating foods from most or all of the other listed groups and you don’t much like east Asian cuisine, I would not worry about seaweeds.

Ready made foods –
such as roasted/ flavoured nuts – often have a laundry list of ingredients that are not CG friendly so do read the ingredients list. For example refined starches, flavourings derived from soy or gluten grains, certain oils/ fats, excess sugar and salt.

In the UK raw or plain nuts (inc. cashews) can be found in the home baking, wholefoods or world foods sections of most supermarkets. Also health food stores, some indoor markets, south Asian or Middle Eastern grocers.

Amazon stocks an enormous variety of health foods, and can deliver to your home or a local collection point (as you prefer). I don’t run a car so find this invaluable for heavy or bulky items. Delivery is free over £10 books or £20 other items. You can also subscribe to some foods for free delivery – set to six month frequency then postpone next delivery. 😉

Do you currently consistently meet or exceed ALL your government’s healthy eating guidelines? This covers serving size, serving number, eating a really wide variety of different foods, reducing salt sugar and added fat intake. If you do you may well only need to switch out some foods for others, and to increase variety. Dr Mosley recommends 20 to 30 varieties of fruit and veg a week, and seven servings a day. If you don’t want to follow the suggested recipes, follow the principles set out in chapter 5 (p.101-160) and the first section of part 2 (p.186-196).

To save time and/ or money look at frozen fruit and veg (the usual suspects plus butternut squash, sweet potato, leeks, roasted Mediterranean, soup and stew mixes, baby broad beans, curly kale, mixed berries and currants, cherries, various tropical fruits, rhubarb, sliced apple) plus canned or jar foods (wild pink salmon, tuna in water or brine, sardines or pilchards in tomato sauce, mackerel, herring, anchovies, plum tomatoes, beans, lentils, some pasta sauces, some canned curries, roasted red peppers, pink or red grapefruit, pumpkin puree, unsweetened apple sauce, lemon and lime juice, mild red chilli, various herbs).

Depending how ethnically diverse your area is you may be able to find frozen cubed crushed garlic, crushed ginger, mixed garlic/ ginger, whole peeled cloves of garlic, hot green chilli.

I have successfully frozen for soups, curries or smoothies: cooked brown rice, canned beans, grated carrot, chopped celery, red onion, sliced apple (tossed in lemon juice), chopped banana, citrus juice and peel. I tend to do occasional long prep sessions in front of the TV.

To save time Nigella Lawson advocates marinating meat portions immediately before freezing. I cook eggs six at a time: either semi-hard boiled or as a vegetable frittata. As well as canned oily fish, shrink wrapped refrigerated smoked mackerel fillets are pre-cooked.

I highly recommend a cheap slow cooker and stick blender for speedy meals. Jamie Oliver (15 Minute Meals) is a big fan of his food processor for super fast grating, fine slicing and shredding veg.

I am more low tech with my trusty potato peeler, julienne peeler (pound shop) and mandoline (Lidl). I loathe and detest cleaning my box grater, so make ribbons of citrus peel or salad veg with the potato peeler.

HTH!

SORRY for the wall of text! This forum wouldn’t let me split it in the five minutes allowed for editing, and double lines separating paragraphs doesn’t work either.