Something to Chew on

Professor Mike Gibney is Director of the Institute of Food and Health at University College Dublin. He has a global reputation for research on food and nutrition and he has served on all high-level advisory committees of national, EU and UN agencies. He is the author of a popular book Nutrition, Diet and Health (Cambridge University Press).

'Gibney offers an introduction to the issues that will shape our future. It is a bold attempt at demystification. The mechanics of human nutrition, diet and health are clearly explained alongside important developments in plant science, climate change, water supply, and global agriculture. Gibney takes aim at what he considers misconceived propaganda about agri-food science, such as emotion-based hostility to genetically modified (GM) crops and those who put fashionable organic farming above high-yield fertilisers in developing countries. His position as a scientist who has co-ordinated European-funded research projects with food and chemical companies is explained at the outset, along with his role as an adviser to Nestle. The book's richness lies in its wealth of detail. We learn that human intervention in plant genetics goes back 10,000 years. Indeed, it is human behaviour that emerges as the oddest phenomenon. Gibney highlights a 20-year study in the UK which found an increase in car ownership correlates precisely with the rise in obesity. A study of 50,000 American nurses from 1976 onwards found that those who viewed the most television had a 94% increased risk of becoming obese, and a 70% higher risk of diabetes.' The Sunday Times 'Professor Gibney brings his vast scholarship to the subject, pulling together reports and studies from around the globe filtered through his own argumentative and common sense approach to one of the most important subjects in the world today.' Sunday Independent 'Gibney writes in fluid prose which makes pleasant and interesting reading.' Books Ireland

• With Regard to Food; Sugar and Spice and All Things Nasty; Modified Foods: Genetic or Atomic?; The Metrics of Food and Health; Personalised Nutrition: Fitting into your Genes; Plastic Babies: The Phenomenon of Epigenetics; Your Inside is Out: Food, the Gut and Health; A Tsunami of Lard: The Global Epidemic of Obesity; Greying Matters; Food and Health: The Science, Policy and Politics; My Food, Your Poison: Who Sees What in Food; How the Other Half Dies; Mankind and Mother Earth; Projections and Reflections; Notes; Index.