Editor’s note –
November 2026

What’s happening to our veggies? A tale of missing minerals (and much more)

I picked a bad time to stop eating animals.

Nutrient depletion in vegetables, fruit and grains has got worse, and two weeks after I opted into going vegetarian (again) and possibly even vegan, out comes a report saying the foods I’m going to be relying on may be up to 50% less nutritious than they were 50 years ago,.

I’ve delved into this starting on page 8, including a shout-out to chiropractor and nutritional therapist David Thomas, a geologist well clued up on minerals,  who sounded the alarm about this 23 years ago.

My past attempts were disasters. In my 20s, I went vegetarian while hammering hard training and competing on the bike. My recovery tanked. Later, I went fully raw after staying at the Instinctothérapie centre near Paris. That was even worse. I lost so much weight and muscle that a little old lady had to help me lift my suitcase onto the train home.

So now it looks like this is going be impossible to do without a refined supplement program.

The final straw for me was seeing yet another video about factory farming. We love dogs, eat pigs and wear cows, to quote a famous book title. “Illogical, Captain”, as Mr Spock might say.

I gave up veal 50 years ago. I’ve never eaten lobster. I finally gave up bacon earlier this year. But entirely cutting out animal foods while training AND staying as healthy as I am, may be challenging.

So I am deep in the research this time round. Ultrarunner Scott Jurek and tennis GOAT Novak Djokovic show what is possible for endurance and sporting longevity. Vegan bodybuilding champion Robert Cheeke’s book Shred It has eased my worry about hitting the protein numbers needed to keep muscle mass. (Our digestive enzyme feature – page 18 – has relevant findings on optimising leucine availability in an “older digestion”.)

Honestly, I don’t WANT to be “plant-based”! There is so much hype about it. Case in point being Prof T. Colin Campbell’s “China Study”, whose sweeping claims and the conclusion that animal foods almost inevitably cause cancer appalled other nutrition scientists. But the springboard was completing the Five-day Fasting Mimicking Diet designed by Prof Valter Longo. It is vegetarian, dairy-free, almost vegan, and made me feel really good AND helped clear up a severe skin breakout all over my face.

And, of course, everybody seems to HATE vegans :).

A word from the Beauty Department

I daren’t show you a “before” picture – it’ll put you off your breakfast. But this skin breakout was SO bad I really didn’t want to leave the house.

No sudden change in diet. Checked liver function, checked kidney function. Eventually decided it was a seborrheic dermatitis type thing caused by an overgrowth of the yeast-fungus Malassezia. This irritating chappy hangs out on skin and feeds on natural oils providing it with the fatty acids it needs.

And this is where the fun started…it turned out  that EVERY moisturising cream, shampoo – you name it – I was using contained the specific fatty acids Malassezia loves. Even “clinical” creams and ointments contain them. It’s a dirty secret of the cosmetic industry. Only Fungal Acne Treatment – Buy Fungal Acne Products at Malezia. is talking about this.

Two other major recovery factors – the Five-day Fasting Mimicking Diet and a cool new skin probiotic that includes two forms of Lactobacillus rhamnosus, plus L. casei, Bifidobacterium lactis and B. longum. Instead of my “before” and “after” pictures check out the ones at Skinesa® | Skin Probiotics | Best Probiotics for Skin Health  (I’m not getting any kickback from these companies)…