This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

What better way to start out All Fool's Day than to review a book about idiotic diet fads? In a world where women in particular and especially in the west, are made to feel ugly and worthless if they do not conform to the fashion magazine, television, and Hollywood 'standard' of beauty (i.e. thin as a rake and endowed with hourglass curves and unnaturally flawless skin), you can't blame people for wanting to trim themselves a little, but there are far too many immoral rip-off artists willing to step up and offer snake-oil and quakery to women who have, their entire lives, been primed and weakened to buy into anything which will get them into conformity with the idiotic heights that society seeks to impose upon them.

While it does no-one harm to exercise appropriately and eat wisely, the diet business is a sixty billion dollar industry in the USA alone and yet people are fatter now than they've ever been. That should tell you how fraudulent the whole thing is. However heavy or light your body is, it has a natural weight that it likes to stay close to and it will fight you with some very effective hormones if you try to force it out of that zone. That's not to say it can't be done, but the road to that end is paved with misery, failure, and a constant struggle.

You know things are bad if even Walmart voluntarily steps-up and decides to remove one if its beauty and fashion magazines from the check-out aisle because it's been deemed too obsessed with women being sexualized. If you take a look at those magazines, they rarely have a cover which doesn't mention diet, looks, and/or sex. These magazines are known for air-brushing flaws out of women's skin and Photoshopping them to make them look even thinner than they may already be. Children are bombarded with these images every time they pass through the checkout. On the one side are the magazines essentially telling women how ugly and fat they are, and on the other side of the same aisle are the calorie-laden candy bars and potato chips. That ought to tell you something about how schizophrenic we are in this world of body image which we created for ourselves.

When I requested this from Net Galley I had never heard of the Angry Chef, but the idea of it amused me. I was really pleased to learn that not only does the Author have BSc degree in biochemistry from Manchester University, he's also very much a scientist in his approach to analyzing fad diets, and he gives no quarter in tackling them one after another in this volume, pointing out in no uncertain terms how idiotic and baseless they are.

In Part One 'Gateway Pseuodscience', he covers an important topic: the difference between causation and correlation. Just because something occurs at the same time as something else doesn't automatically mean one was caused by the other. He attacks so-called 'detox' diets and alkaline diets, and he covers the topics of regression to the mean, and 'the remembering self'.

In Part Two we learn about 'when science goes wrong' and meet Science Columbo, coconut oil, the paleo diet, antioxidants, and...sugar! (Its not as bad as you think!). Part Three brings 'the influence of pseudoscience', featuring a history of quacks, the power of ancient wisdom, processed foods, clean eating, and eating disorders. Part Four takes us into 'the dark heart of pseudoscience' and educates us on relative risk, the GAPS diet, and cancer. Not ethat some of his titles and opening paragraphs are laden with sarcasm, so beware that you may think you're having your bias confirmed as you seem to be led in one direction, only to discover that your destination is elsewhere.

If I had three complaints, the first would be that the print version is a tree-slaughtering device if it goes to a long print run, because it has unnecessarily wide margins and generous text-spacing, No-one wants to see a page that's literally black with text, but a wiser publisher - one which actually cared about trees and climate change, could have narrowed the margins and shorted the book considerably by doing so.

My second complaint - be warned - is that the language is a little on the blue side and unnecessarily so in my opinion. There are four-letter words distributed throughout the text, not commonly, but often enough. I thought that was entirely unnecessary. I have no problem with such words in say, a novel, but in a non-fiction book of this nature, I think that language can be dispensed with and thereby reach a wider audience in doing so. It amused me that the cover was so prim and proper that it included an asterisk in the title - like that really disguises what the word is? Seriously? I know an author has no control over the cover when they turn over their book to a regular publisher (which to me is a travesty), but they do have a lot of say over what's inside that cover.

The third issue was that the book was a little long-winded for my taste (336 pages, of which - if you exclude the prologue and the epilogue which I always do), runs to some 286 pages of main text. The extra pages include end notes and two appendices, but the rest of the book was a bit rambling at times. Overall though, I enjoyed it. I loved the exposure of fads and quackery (Gwyneth Paltrow comes in for a well-deserved hammering) as well as a host of less well-known figures in the world of food faddism. The book contains a solid introduction to the scientific approach in which far too many of us are lacking, especially in the USA, land of fundamentalism, conspiracy and fad. The principles learned here can be applied outside the narrow field of diet and food, and I recommend this one as a worthy read.

Some days I applaud the amount of information available to me. Other days, what with fake news, social media trolls, the newest( and best) celebrity endorsed diet and a ton of conflicting nutritional advice, I'd like to unplug and head for the hills. In The Angry Chef, Anthony Warner tackles food facts, as well as myths that we may have been led to believe, are based on scientific facts. As humans, we kinda, sorta know that if we consume more calories than we burn, we gain weight. And that foods full of ingredients we can't spell or pronounce are usually not our friends. Unfortunately, there is so much money made by those who promote the only diet you will ever need or the magical pill that lets you eat whatever you want and still lose weight. There doesn't seem to be as much support( or money to be made) for the fact that if we make healthy eating choices and exercise, our bodies won't be constantly overfed or starving and that number on the scale won't keep going up and down. The Angry Chef talks about a lifestyle change, not a fad diet change and yes it does take commitment and work.
The author didn't shy away from some celebrity bashing and I am not sure if that added anything of value to this book. But I get it, he is angry at a lot of what he sees and hears and as it is his book, he can vent. In his way, he is asking us to do our own research, not take everything we see or hear at face value and make choices based more on facts and less on fantasy. It is a book full of common sense and an enjoyable and informative read.
Thank you, Anthony Warner, The Experiment, and NetGalley for a digital ARC to read and review.

The concept and ideas in the blurb attract me, but doesn’t work for kindle readers and couldn’t open the PDF file.

There is plenty of fake science out there about food, diet, and health. While not as authoritative on food myths as other books I've read, this book takes a good whack at the messed up thought that drives many of us to try increasingly strange and restricted diets.

He's out to expose them for what they are, not useful and possibly harmful. it's a task that is accomplished successfully with lots of evidence and boiled down to ten simple rules.

The Angry Chef's spirited guide to navigating the misinformation around food and superfoods, dietary fads and guidelines, real and pseudoscience of nutrition is engaging, informative, and fun to read. It disentangles lots of confusing advice and issues a manageable--and scientifically backed--recommendation on how to eat well -- with pleasure, with curiosity and with a taste for variety.