To achieve truly nutritious, you need to make it all from scratch. No more ready meals, or freshly prepared anything from the supermarket. No more cans of soup, loaves of bread, prepared sauces, lasagna, or chicken pies.

Next time you go grocery shopping, spend some time examining the ingredients of the food you buy. Obviously fruit and vegetables don’t have any ingredients as they come to us whole from nature. It’s all the other stuff you need to be aware of.

I decided to give this a go, and allowed myself a good two hours for a grocery shop one morning two years ago. I examined everything that came in some sort of package and that wasn’t naturally occurring in nature – breakfast cereals, yoghurt, cheese, tinned soup, ready meals, pizza, pasta, bread, cold meats, desserts, sweets, sauces, chutney, tomato sauce, jams… the list could go on pretty much ad infinitum. And frankly, it was a huge wake-up call.

Do not believe what you see on the pretty packaging; read the labels on the back of the pack and then make your mind up. Decide for yourself whether you want to include colourants, preservatives and additives in your diet. Or whether vast quantities of salt and sugar are what you want to consume. Sometimes, even the most innocuous item is loaded with ingredients you wouldn’t choose to eat. I even found a cold roast chicken leg and thigh which contained Demerara sugar – apparently to give it that browned look.

So, its back to basics – you want to buy it in as close to its original form as possible.

First prize is to go organic. It may be a little more expensive to buy organic fruit and vegetables but what price do you put on your health and well-being? Considering that the use of pesticides has increased 50 fold since the 1950’s, and that around 23 million tonnes are used around the world each year, wouldn’t you want to ensure your food is free of them? Organic means it does not get treated with pesticides or chemical fertilizers. The relevant governing bodies will tell you that the amounts used are within the safety limits on a specific food item, but they don’t tell you what the effects will be if you consume those supposedly small quantities every day for fifty years, do they?

When it comes to animal products, it is a cess pool of controversy. Many cancers today have strong hormonal links. Factory-farmed animals are pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics to promote rapid growth and stem the disease that sweeps through these animals because of the cramped and unhealthy conditions in which they are raised. This is what is present in the non-organic meat we eat. Organic and free-range is about the best you can get. And of course, if you live in the country, there will always be a local farmer who would welcome your business.

Cow’s milk is of particular concern – it is packed full of the hormones fed to cows to keep them producing milk unnaturally when they are not suckling a calf. If this is not enough, it has also been proven that the milk protein, casein, is tumour-forming. Lactose-free milk does not counteract this. The only alternative is not to drink cow’s milk or at the very least, cut consumption to the bare minimum. Of course, this applies to cow’s milk cheese as well.

Contrary to popular belief, sugar itself, although naturally occurring, has no nutritional value whatsoever. In fact as we age, sugar acts like a toxin. Consistent high intake of sugar can lead to adult onset diabetes, and place enormous strain on the pancreas, never mind the waistline.

What you can use instead of:

• Olive oil in place of butter, margarine, vegetable oil
• Herbs, spices, lemon juice, garlic in place of prepared seasonings, gravies, sauces
• Cow’s milk in place of soya milk, rice milk, goats milk, almond milk, coconut milk (my personal choice)
• Cows milk cheese in place of goats cheese, sheep’s cheese
• Honey in place of sugar
• Real coffee in place of instant
• Dark chocolate in place of milk chocolate

The most exciting thing for me is to take fresh produce, lay them out on the kitchen counter and whip up something exquisitely tasty from the raw ingredients. With a dash of olive oil, a generous helping of garlic, assorted herbs and spices, all over a low heat, you can smell the fragrance of deliciousness wafting up from the pan. Finely chopped onions sweated to perfection, coax a handful of small, vine tomatoes tossed in whole to release their juices as they heat together. Stirred regularly, and reduced just a little, you have the most glorious tomato sauce you can imagine. In this, I often roast a few chicken pieces, or spice up some pasta.