Your Healthy Food Finder

Don’t fall foul of food fads – follow our experts’ advice on how to choose the best of today’s most talked-about diets

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Is Fasting or 5:2 For You?

Until TV doctor Michael Mosley, newly diagnosed with high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes, showed on BBC’s Horizon that fasting for two non consecutive days a week (5:2) lowered his blood cholesterol to healthy levels and reversed his diabetes, fasting had been seen as a quirky activity for yoga gurus and religious groups.

Dr Mosley also lost 14lbs weight, 25 per cent of his body fat, and performed better in brain and memory tests. His bestselling 5:2 diet book followed, based on five days’ a week normal eating – around 2,000 calories for women – plus two days a week restricted to 500 calories.

Scientific studies have also shown that intermittent fasting, as the technique is termed, may help prevent insulin resistance which leads to type 2 diabetes, possibly by fat loss around the waist (abdominal) and internal organs (visceral fat). Central and visceral fat is also a risk factor for heart disease, some cancers and other diseases.