This is the first of a more regular email I will be sending out to my subscribers under the banner of Health Talk.

What has prompted me to do this is the sheer number of requests for more information of various aspects of my health product range. One I got a few days back asks how come I am saying that just 3 of my products can supply all the (phyto)nutrients we need for better health.

This is the first of a more regular email I will be sending out to my subscribers under the banner of Health Talk.

What has prompted me to do this is the sheer number of requests for more information of various aspects of my health product range. One I got a few days back asks how come I am saying that just 3 of my products can supply all the (phyto)nutrients we need for better health.

I will get to these sorts of questions over the coming days and welcome any other questions you might want answered as we delve into the world of wild food enriched solutions to the many and varied diseases of nutrition.

So. Please feel free to unsubscribe at any time or better still, whitelist my email and this way I am delivering the information that suits us both.

Next email coming to your inbox tomorrow.

I know that learning fact from fiction really changed my own life. My weight had grown from years of over-eating, particularly while judging restaurants or eating out while running international food promotions. But even at home when ice cream (often up to 55% bad sugars) was a daily dessert with dinner.

Breakfast was high carbs. 3 meals a day was a minimum with snacking probably adding a meal equivalent in empty calories. Alcohol seemed a social lubricant and made each day's end more relaxing too. Or so I thought.

Current research suggests even moderate drinking provides enough alcohol to destroy brain cells in significant amounts. Luckily the biochemistry of our mitochondria (our cellular power-plants) might provide clues as to how best to counteract the negative effects of alcohol so we can still enjoy a drink or two a few times a week, if we wish.

25 years of my entrepreneurial endeavours was primarily supplying chefs with wild food ingredients and promoting the concept of an authentic Australian cuisine. The down side was it meant more proximity to food and restaurant cooking.

As a fat 'chef' (my qualifications in cooking were more a need to look the part as I tried to inspire real chefs to use wild foods in their menus), I had a saying – “Never trust a skinny chef”. This might have seemed clever when you are piling on the weight, working long, stressful hours, eating badly and way too often and exercising rarely if at all.

Over the last 10 years, I then circled back to my years in the 1980s working in nutritional science and having kept up to date with the food science, I saw that wild foods might just be the keys to our future survival. It was also clear to me that most health professionals from doctors to food coaches, dieticians and nutritionists had their heads in the sand when it came to the real healing principles in food.

Equally, I was part of a small group across the planet who maintained that modern foods were not the answer to good nutrition and the attributes of fats, proteins, carbs and fibre, along with a handful of vitamins were not cutting the mustard. Interestingly, I am still a lone voice in using the terms good and bad sugars in similar ways that good and bad fats are promoted. We can't vilify all sugars as bad for us when so many are core elements in antioxidants, Maillard products and other functional compounds. But more on this in future Health Talk emails. Stay tuned.

As a scientist I eventually woke up to the fact that going back to basics was the best way to both, teach chefs about wild foods AND that for me, 135kg was not a healthy weight. My current, stable weight of 84kg is so much more comfortable too.

I can tell you from my own experience. I have tried fat and unhealthy and I've tried lean and energetic. Healthy is better. 

Another thing that surprises me is meeting people who look old and frail and a few have shared their retirement plans with me recently. They were concerned over their future and what to do with their assets and how best to live out the rest of their lives. One told me that they were turning 65 in 3 years so planning was important for them.

62? Retiring soon? Planning end of life stuff?

Admittedly, when I was 135kg I suffered from congenital gout, I had constantly sore knees and nothing of the flexibility I had when I was in my teens. Going to a gym had all the appeal of an alarm clock and squeezing into Cattle Class seats was only tolerable on short domestic flights.

However, I remember one flight in the US on Delta Airlines where I was seated in the middle of three seats for a 3 hour trip. The seats on either side of me were empty until 2 massive Americans, my guess was about 400kg between them, approached my row and begin the attempt to sit on either side of me.

I had to call out to the flight attendant fearing for my life as I would have been squashed into oblivion as I disappeared into massive folds of flesh. I insisted that 3 fatties could not in any way fit into the allocated seats. She did move one of the Americans up a row and I lived to tell the tale.

So now, I am also planning for the future. My wife and I sold our house in the northern beaches of Sydney late last year and moved to a 140 acre (54ha) property called Zara Springs, just north-west of Murwillumbah in northern NSW.

Like others in the area, we are battling floods and endless rains. Grasses and weeds grow faster than a politician's pension and rivers of silt carve channels wherever they please. Bloody gravity.

My days involve digging holes for trees and fences, removing cattle fences and gates, digging ditches, learning to drive tractors and a Zero-Turn mower on slippery grassy slopes and a whole bunch of house chores and farm improvements.

This is even apart from repairing the damage caused by flash floods and massive amounts of water flowing down the valley we now own, nestled between Bald Mountain and Wollumbin (Mt Warning).

Incidentally, Wollumbin translates to Big Fella Mountain and it is but Bald Mountain isn't (bald that is).

I turn 67 in August and feel energized, strong and another 30 years like this seems doable. No knee pains, no gout attacks, I don't wear glasses, I have way more flexibility and strength and I can even order standard sized clothing online instead of getting acres of cloth to cover the middle and too much length in the legs or sleeves.

Look out for another Health Talk email tomorrow. I want to start to look at the keys to the future as we explore how we can invest in nutritional gold and live long enough to spend the proceeds.