Alex Avery resorts to histrionics and fails to address the real reason behind the growth of organic food production and consumption, namely that mass-produced food is not nutritious and in many cases is poisonous. Milk’s nutrition is destroyed by pasteurisation, which we no longer need because we can refrigerate it. Homogenisation serves no purpose except to make milk sour more quickly by removing the cream barrier between milk and air, and to make milk less digestible - note the explosion of processed-milk (not lactose) intolerance since the 1970s.

Fruit and vegetables are picked raw to extend shelf-life, then coloured with gas to look ripe. Cereals have nutrition processed out of them, and are heated and extruded into poisonous, sweetened breakfast dishes. Corn syrup, the sweetener and preservative of choice, is not only indigestible fructose, but also inhibits production of the chemical that tells the brain we’re no longer hungry. The obesity problem is right there! Soy is bad for us and has to be sweetened to be palatable. Vegetable oils oxidise when cooked and are unhealthy - saturated animal fats are good for us and remain as animal fats when cooked at sensible temperatures.

Meat animals are fed on grains (which they normally don’t eat) and pumped up with growth hormones and antibiotics that pass to us. Eggs, nature’s wonder snack are similarly ruined. The pharmaceuticals and so-called health industries are dupes of the conventional wisdom. Doctors do not cure illness, they alleviate symptoms. Cholesterol, for example, is necessary for many body functions. Bad cholesterol is produced to repair inflammation, so taking drugs to remove the cholesterol introduces an expensive toxin and leaves the inflammation unchecked, or the target of another drug, such as counter-arthritic drugs.

In short, just about anything that is advertised is unnecessary or deleterious. Anything the government tells us is good isn’t, and anything they say is bad isn’t either, with the notable exceptions of drugs of addiction - a puzzle I’ve yet to unriddle. My advice is at the very least get off sugars and sweeteners, then quit the supermarket and hunt down the farmers’ markets for pasture-fed meat; soak your grains and nuts etc etc…there are plenty of websites loaded with good information about how to return to a nutritious pre-First World War diet. If we can do it in Australia, it must be a snap in Europe.

Michael William Trafford, Australia