Here’s a really bad idea. Send a dozen nutritionists to work alongside regular doctors in a Medecins Sans Frontières team providing emergency treatment to the wounded in a war zone. It’s a bad idea because they would lack any relevant skills. They might help speed up recovery but in the operating theatre they’d be be worse than useless as the wounded come in.

Last week the front page of The Times carried a story that was an opening shot in a revolution. I’m sure that the editors didn’t intend it as that and that the readers didn’t see it that way either. It was a story about shifting from the long recommended low fat diet to one that cut back on carbohydrates instead. Standard fare for the cuddly lifestyle pages, hardly material for social upheaval.

I’m not given to melodrama but I think I have just spotted that the cancer establishment is getting ready to perform a massive, unthinkable, screeching U-turn. Impossibly expensive new drugs are out and diet, exercise and supplement (yes you read it right) are in.

The complicated and confusing debate about statins – are they worth taking or not; are they safe or do they have nasty side effect? – has suddenly plunged into anarchic and uncharted territory by the claims of a new rival drug.

The complicated and confusing debate about statins – are they worth taking or not; are they safe or do they have nasty side effect? – has suddenly plunged into anarchic and uncharted territory by the claims of a new rival drug.

There can be few people who think that putting an increasing number of children on SSRI anti-depressants is really a good idea but then reflect that it’s just one of those things. Cash strapped NHS; time-poor GPs; waiting lists of months for therapy; drugs cheap; they may help some.

We all agree that Alzheimer’s is a dreadful disease and something has to be done about it because there’s no treatment and it’s costing billions. So prevention would be a good idea, wouldn’t it, especially since if it works it would both cut your risk and save vast amounts of money.

Leafing through the New Year papers I was struck by the similarity between the housing crisis the diabetes and obesity epidemics. In one case rapidly inflating prices pushing virtually all properties out of reach of anyone on an average wage, in the other a relentless expansion of supermarket shelving devoted to refined carbohydrates, driving an inexorable inflation of the nation’s waistlines.

There is a feature of mine in the Daily Mail today which deals with recent research showing the rapid benefit a high fat low carb diet can have on a dangerous disorder known as NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease). You’ve probably heard about fatty liver disease in connection with drinking too much. This version looks like being the result of eating too much carbohydrate.

That old adage ‘Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me’ looks like a perfect description of why the heart disease establishment should be hanging its collective head. Having totally bought into one cholesterol-lowering class of drug – statins – it now looks ready to open its arms and pockets equally wide to embrace a new improved more powerful son of statin drug – the PCSK9 inhibitors – that will drive that deadly fatty stuff right to the floor.