You Are What You Eat, Dr Gillian McKeith, Celador, £12.99

THOSE of you familiar with the Channel Four series You Are What You Eat will be well aware of Dr Gillian McKeith.

A small, spritely figure who looks 25 from the back and 65 from the front, she has decided to tackle the fatties of Britain with her "revolutionary approach" to a healthier lifestyle.

Dr McKeith, who is originally from Scotland but moved to the US, has produced a luminous green and pink tome which broadcasts American sentiment cover to cover.

Boasting that it is "the plan that will change your life," it also lists "top five bummers" - bad feelings, such as "tired all the time".

So here's the plan. Dr McK wants you to examine your poo, wind, diet and sex drive to diagnose what's up with you, so that you can formulate a healthy eating plan, which will, no doubt, necessitate spending enough at the health food shop to send Holland & Barratt's stock value through the roof.

For example, if you would like healthier teeth, she advises that you take horsetail, oatstraw, vitamin C with bioflavonoids, zinc, co-enzyme Q10 and one of a choice of seven herbal teas to drink in rotation. And this is every single day.

Fair enough, health is important, as is eating as much organic and unprocessed food as possible. But I feel the misrepresentation and non-practical nature of much of the advice here for normal families - boiling all cow's milk before drinking it to make it easier to digest, which is stated not once, but twice - serves only to alienate and frustrate.

The same goes for the odd dramatic exaggeration.

Her early list of 12 bad foods we eat a lot of says there are 88g of fat in any standard medium deep pan pizza. On a research trip to a local supermarket, I discovered it was well under half this amount.

In a staggeringly-brilliant move, her television companion to the advice here tackles only hugely overweight and unfit individuals who seemingly only have to stop eating burgers for breakfast to drop two stone in eight weeks.

The guilty suspects have their foodie crimes laid out in front of them en masse and, as they peer helplessly over the top of the mountain of chips, buttered bread, biscuits, fried food and sweet tea, she lectures on the disgrace of it all before producing instead some nice fresh fruit, pulses and porridge, which they are going to munch on like bunnies for the following couple of months.

And, wouldn't you know, the pounds roll off. Gasp!

This book can easily be condensed into two simple guidelines - eat less processed food and junk, eat more fresh fruit, vegetables and unprocessed food.

Would you pay me £12.99 to tell you that? I didn't think so.