It is possible to eat in a manner that reconciles the demands of staying slim, good health, and general well being - although the steady stream of unhealthy and sometimes dangerous slimming diets would tend to make us believe otherwise. The new health diet proposed here draws much from traditional Cretan eating habits - which seem to be responsible for the population’s tenaciously long life. Crete has the highest life-expectancy rate, and its people have the lowest incidence in the western world of cardiovascular diseases, that scourge of the industrialised nations. ‘Let food be your medicine,’ said Hippocrates. His advice should be taken to heart by anyone in the industrialised world who wishes to live longer and in better health.

Serge Renaud is the scientist who discovered that wine can play a role in protecting against cardiovascular diseases - a finding that has become known as the ‘French paradox’. After spending much of his career in the United States, he directed a research unit of INSERM (France) for twenty years.