SOUTHAMPTON green campaigner John Spottiswoode has set up a new Internet site offering the latest information on nutrition and diet.

Built by his 17-year-old son, Robin, the website www.foodcures.net offers:

specialised diets for specific conditions;

individual consultations;

a questionnaire with an automated personalised response;

a research database;

a place where people with similar problems can share their experiences.

John explained: "Just about everyone I talk to, socially or professionally, has a nutritional problem of some sort. I am constantly amazed that so many go through life suffering needlessly because they do not realise what their problem is. They also do not realise that it can be something that they can often sort out themselves relatively simply and painlessly. It seems mad not to understand what our nutritional issues are, and yet hardly anyone bothers to do the basics and find out! Our new website is a new concept about how to help people directly online."

His elder son Owen, 19, who is at Oxford University has been giving editorial services while John has written the bulk of the pages of advice. There is also a professional nutritionist (Fiona Kelly) who comes from Australia but is currently living in London who covers the detailed nutritional consultation requests.

As time goes on, there are plans to expand the site to a diet support programme.

"We feel that a lot of the reason that people fail when they diet is that they do not have support and advice to turn to when they hit problems.

"With this we intend that www.foodcures.net will be available at all times over the Internet to advise people on progress and what can be done to overcome problems.

"Diets fail not necessarily because of a lack of will-power, but because of physical reasons," said John.

He explained that reasons for diets failing can include:

Our bodies are often bio-chemically unable just to stop eating the wrong things as we get symptoms that are more than simple withdrawal symptoms. We are effectively physically addicted to such things as sugar, or carbohydrates, or fats. Beating addictions needs more expert advice and just brute will-power is very unlikely to work.

Physically we may have a food intolerance. Many of us have minor food intolerances that we do not realise and this can affect the way we take up foods. Blood type O people can be particularly susceptible to food intolerances and allergies.

Our body can force us to stop because of a shortage of important nutrients. We can get enormously strong cravings that it would need enormous will-power to resist because our diet could be depriving ourselves of important minerals or vitamins. I believe that this is the reason that many people get fat in the first place, often from eating too much junk food that is low in vitamins and minerals. Everyone is different and www.foodcures.net aims to offer advice so the body can be gradually trained in a new more healthy way.

John's aims in setting up the new site were not only because nothing like it exists on the Internet as yet but because if people can be helped to help themselves more easily by getting the right nutrients then pressure will be taken off the over-stretched NHS.

"We waste so much money and effort on short term solutions that only treat the symptoms without correcting the underlying condition.

"I believe that many degenerative conditions can be enormously helped by getting a high intake of the right nutrients and by avoiding the wrong nutrients.

"If we can help people to eat the right things for them then we can make enormous strides forwards in our health without resorting to pill-popping that only deals with the symptoms.

"Knowing what our body needs so we eat the right things is good for us all on both an individual level and because it helps take the strain off overworked Doctors.

"I want to live to be a hundred, and to do it while staying healthy. Is this not what we all want?"

Research is a key aspect of the site as www.foodcures.net want to use the large volume of data that is created to investigate the statistical links between illnesses, degenerative conditions and nutrition, taking into account such things as toxic exposure to chemicals and individual factors such as blood types.

This is not a simple relationship and John believes it is necessary to build a data source of significant size to be able to compare small sections of society with the wider population and get statistically significant correlations.

For more information visit www.foodcures.net