Sometimes it's very confusing to read the health press - especially about diets. Regular readers of this column will know that I never use the word diet. I write about healthy-eating habits, because the word "diet" conjures up ideas of ways of eating that are artificial - with restrictions of some foods and advice to eat more of others, with the aim of producing a particular result, like losing weight.

Diets very rarely succeed because eventually people can't stand them any more, and they return to their old habits. The trick to healthier eating is to get people to accept that they must change their style of eating permanently, in a way that feels so natural that they are happy to stick to it. All we need to know is what is a healthy eating style.

That's where things get confusing. Because every day we are presented with many different and contradictory opinions about healthy eating. Who is right, and who is peddling a biased view?

That's where we need hard evidence on which to base our advice. So here goes with a few bombshells. It's well established from good studies that eating plenty of fruit and vegetables all your life substantially lowers the risks of cancer and heart disease. So that's simple - except that many people don't like fruit and vegetables. And they think that eating vitamin substitutes (on the basis that fruits and vegetables contain plenty of vitamins) will do the same. They won't. The one big study of beta-carotene (it was pushed as a supplement to prevent cancers and heart attacks) showed that the people taking it actually were MORE likely to die in the few years that the study lasted than those given a placebo. In fact the study was stopped early because the difference between the two treatments was so great.

The fact is that it's the fruit and vegetables themselves you have to eat, not substances manufactured from them. The same goes for eating fish. There are plenty of studies to show that eating fish (particularly oily fish) once a week or more reduces your chances of sudden death from heart attack. For example, in 20,551 men aged 40 to 84, eating fish once a week halved the risk of sudden death. The message is clear, let's enjoy a good piece of fish at least once a week. Rather take capsules of fish oils instead, because you don't like fish? Don't bother. They don't give the same benefit. Like the fruit and vegetables, it's the whole fish that does the trick, not some substance distilled out of them.

How about fats? The news for the last 20 years has always been that "fat is bad". It's not just that young women want to look like anorexic models - many older people have been persuaded to avoid foods containing fat. So they look at labels in the supermarket that shout "low in fat" at them. Yet we need fats to survive. Our brains are mainly made up of fat - nerve cells are full of them and are insulated by a cover of a fat-based substance. So beware. Take a sensible approach to fat. The best way to do that is follow what the Italians, Spanish and Greeks do - get more of your fat intake from vegetable oils and from oily vegetables, as well as from fish.

So add nuts and olives to your fruit, vegetables and fish, and cook in vegetable oils. When the East-West barriers fell in 1990, the Poles were able to start cooking with vegetable oils and margarines, and could import for the first time a huge variety of fruit. They didn't stop smoking, they still ate their meat and dairy products, and they didn't start taking cholesterol-lowering drugs. Yet their deaths from heart attacks fell almost immediately by around a quarter. It is all down to a simple message - eat a wide variety of foods, and you will protect yourself. Restrict your diet and you may do yourself harm.

How about coffee and tea? We still read in health-conscious magazines that they may cause illnesses - some even state that they may cause cancer. They couldn't be more wrong. Yes, studies have suggested that coffee may cause cancer in laboratory rats. But not in humans. In fact there's now good evidence that coffee and tea drinking may actually help protect us against bowel and rectal cancers. This is not unproven or advertising stuff from the people who make coffee and tea - it is the result of long periods of study in different populations and published last year in the prestigious journals, the International Journal of Epidemiology and the European Journal of Cancer Prevention.

So let's get back to common sense about food. The rules are very simple. First widen your tastes and try new foods - their variety in the shops has never been wider. As for being overweight, the answer is simple. Either exercise more or eat less, or both. The laws of physics and nature dictate that this will help you lose weight. Don't go on a "diet" - it doesn't work in the long run, and restricting the types of food you eat may even do you harm.

Extra vitamins and minerals are never a substitute for good food or healthy eating habits. Don't be fooled into buying them to "improve your health" whatever that means. If you want an example to follow, eat like the people on the north shores of the Mediterranean. The Italians, Greeks and Spaniards seem to have the answer, and you can add the odd herring and porridge, if you wish.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.