Trying to understand why one twin is sometimes overweight and the other skinny; one gets diabetes or cancer and the other doesn’t, has been a major theme for the past 20 years,” Spector says. In twenty short, myth-busting chapters, Tim Spector reveals why almost everything we’ve been told about food is wrong. He opens his allergy chapter with a discussion of a study of Americans, showing that only half of those self-reporting as allergy sufferers had a demonstrable food allergy. He is highly dismissive of one-size-fits-all diets, and the notion that weight loss is all about calories in v calories out: “It is complete nonsense,” he says.

He hopes to stop the food scare and remind us that nutrition isn’t a one-size-fits all and government food advice is often misinformed as you’re unlikely to be average. The gluten chapter similarly describes much interesting work investigating the actual prevalence of gluten intolerance: a study in Italy of 392 self-reported sufferers revealed that 8 in 10 had no adverse reactions to gluten or wheat.Some of the positive effects of missing breakfast in the morning may be due to simply extending time in the fasted state.

In his new book, Tim Spector creates a unique, thorough, evidence-based guide to the real science of eating. Your best bet is to judge a food on the quality and variety of ingredients rather than calorie count or grams of fat from the label.Tim Spector is a professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London and honorary consultant physician at Guy's and St Thomas’ Hospitals. The best that can be said is that ‘a few studies have shown that if taken with zinc supplements, vitamin C might reduce cold symptoms by an average of about six to twelve hours’.

There are a number of recurring themes in the book, the most salient being that, because we all have different genes and, more importantly, differing biomes, we differ in our responses to diet - total calorie-intake, composition of our diet, even the timing of our meals - and also in our response to exercise. That said, it would serve as a good introduction for someone new to the subject as it is concise and accessible. This is one of the clearest and most accessible short nutrition books I have read: refreshingly open-minded, deeply informative and free of faddish diet rules.As a reading experience, though, I'd recommend Michael Pollan (especially The Omnivore's Dilemma) and also How to Live, by Robert Thomas. It doesn't matter at all whether you have breakfast or not and it is certainly not an absolute 'most important meal of the day' for everyone.