For breakfast, Barry Groves had an extra large egg and a 3oz slice of liver, fried in lard. He washed it down with a cup of cocoa made with double cream.
At lunch, Barry (72) who lives near Oxford England with his wife Monica (70) will enjoy pork chops, with the fat left on, plus a few green vegetables in butter.
Finally, the couple will have a light supper consisting of cheese with a home-grown apple or pear, topped with cream, followed by more cocoa.
Despite following this shockingly high-fat diet for more than 40 years, Barry now weighs 6lb (2.7kg) less than he did on his wedding day in 1957 when he tipped the scales at 161lbs (73kg).

"The whole premise that eating saturated fat would lead to heart disease is based on two old reports," says Barry.
"The first, in 1950, showed that if rabbits were fed a cholesterol-rich diet, it would fur up their arteries. Yet, rabbits are only designed to eat plant life, which has no cholesterol. The clogged arteries were caused by feeding them an unnatural diet. It could have been an allergic response.

"The second study was in 1953 when an American called Ansel Keyes, who charted six countries' consumption of fat, compared with their rates of heart disease and found a perfect curve upwards when he started with Japan at the bottom (low consumption) and America at the top (high consumption). Of course, Keyes had access to data from 22 countries, but simply ignored that from 16 countries which didn't suit his hypothesis." Barry says this study is used to demo- nstrate how not to do research.

The Framingham project begun in 1948 by the American National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and now in its 60th year, has found no evidence of a link between diet and heart disease, says Barry. "Professor Sylvan Lee Weinberg, a past president of the American College of Cardiology, said in 2003 that the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet could no longer be defended."

So what about those five portions of fruit and veg, wholegrain cereals, soya milk, low-fat yogurts?

"Vegetables are not the problem," says Barry, "but there's no biological or chemical reason to eat them. Liver, for example, has all the minerals and vitamins we need. But fruit? The natural sugar it contains -- fructose -- is much more dangerous than simple glucose or table sugar. "It has been linked to the rise in obesity."

He refuses to touch wheat. "It collects bacteria and dirt as it grows, and is impossible to clean. Then stored in silos, it is a haven for mice and rats, so it gets sprayed with insecticides. Put a wheat flower under the microscope and you'll see traces of rat faeces."
Soy milk, made with unfermented soya beans, is "highly dangerous," says Barry. And yogurts made with skimmed milk, "lack conjugated linoleic acid, which prevents cancer".

So how do we eat more healthily?

"Eat purer foods, and ones that are more natural to us as a species. Cut down on bread and eat more fish, eggs, butter -- any animal protein, anything that used to move around, that wasn't stuck in the ground. Liver, kidneys, snails -- even insects will do."

Trick and Treat: How Healthy Eating Is Making Us Ill by Barry Groves

Editor's Note: Looking forward to my co-writer Dr. John Konhilas Ph.D.'s comment to this story. John is a proponent of low carb nutrition, but probably not take it as far as Barry Groves.