Food Isn’t Medicine

Joshua Wolrich

Apr 2021 · Ebury Digital · Narrated by Joshua Wolrich

About this audiobook

Brought to you by Penguin.

Losing weight is not your life's purpose.


Do carbs make you fat?
Could the keto diet cure mental health disorders?
Are eggs as bad for you as smoking?

No, no and absolutely not. It's all what Dr Joshua Wolrich defines as 'nutribollocks' and he is on a mission to set the record straight.

As an NHS doctor with personal experience of how damaging diets can be, he believes every one of us deserves to have a happy, healthy relationship with food and with our bodies. His message is clear: we need to fight weight stigma, call out the lies of diet culture and give ourselves permission to eat all foods.

Food Isn't Medicine wades through nutritional science (both good and bad) to demystify the common diet myths that many of us believe without questioning. If you have ever wondered whether you should stop eating sugar, try fasting, juicing or 'alkaline water', or struggled through diet after diet (none of which seem to work), this book will be a powerful wake-up call. Drawing on the latest research and delivered with a dose of humour, it not only liberates us from the destructive belief that weight defines health but also explains how to spot the misinformation we are bombarded with every day.

Dr Joshua Wolrich will empower you to escape the diet trap and call out the bad health advice for what it really is: complete nutribollocks.

© Joshua Wolrich 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Ratings and reviews

I cannot emphasize enough how impressed I am with this evidenced and compassionate look at nutrition, weight, diet, and the surrounding industry. Whether we are comfortable doing it or not, primary care providers are asked to or feel they need to provide nutritional advice in the vast majority or their encounters. This book helped me keep in mind the responsibility I have not to add to stigma and anxiety, as unfortunately I have previously justified asking patients to lose weight under the guise of "just doing my job", even if it was not truly medically indicated, and I think I have done some harm previously as a result. I am going to seek out further evidence regarding nutrition and cardiovascular and diabetes risk and discuss common nutrional misconceptions more comfortably. I think this book can be very helpful for clinicians, patients with disordered eating, and their loved ones.

I didn't know what to expect from this audiobook but found it thought provoking and excellently put together. It is well read by the author and he put his points across is a clear and concise manner backed by reliable evidence. If you are someone tempted by any kind of fad diet, do yourself a favour and read this first. It will almost certainly get you thinking about things.

About the author

Dr Joshua Wolrich is an NHS surgical trainee and nutrition MSc student who is not only setting the record straight when it comes to spurious nutrition advice, but aggressively fighting weight stigma and campaigning for healthcare to become weight-inclusive, spreading the message via his podcasts and his 350K plus followers online. He follows a Health at Every Size® approach and encourages his patients to have a healthy, happy relationship with their bodies and food.