What's your optimum?

Eating well can cure what ails us, so why is it so hard? Anna Blewett discovers the secrets to a more resolved relationship with food...

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Do me a favour: go and dig in your cupboards to find the healthiest, most nutritionally-abundant ingredient you can. A tin of aduki beans, maybe? Seaweed? Perhaps some stone ground spelt flour? Now flip that packaging over and read the expiry date.

If it's still usable, you're in the minority, because if stats on UK eating habits are to be believed, these ingredients may make it into our cupboards - but they certainly aren't making it to our mouths.

When Professor Tim Spector reported in his book Food For Life (Vintage, £12.99) that 50 per cent of serious diseases are avoidable via 'optimum diet', he highlighted the huge role our attitude to food plays in the way our lives will unfold.

And it's not that we don't try to address this: in the UK, we're on track to spend around £1.7 billion on 'dietetic food' this year. These include the ultra-processed protein shakes and slimline foods that glossy campaigns tell us will speed us to better health. But despite our intentions, few of us are nailing the fundamentals.

Government data published earlier this year suggests only 32 per cent of Brits manage to get their five-a-day.

And our average intake of fibreessential for our bodies to function - is less than two thirds of the recommended amount. The struggle to eat better for our health to take in more essential nutrients and fewer e-numbers - is real, so how do we get our head in the game? One answer might be a more mindful approach to everything we eat; after all, the rich meanings of food in our lives give it a role far beyond simple fuel.