At least that is what I thought when I converted all my family on to it insisting they need more fibre.

So that is all we eat now, occasionally some granary bread, but that, as my dentist will testify, plays havoc with your fillings. White bread, which everyone secretly loves, is now banned in our house.

But, in a book I'm reading at the moment, it blames all the additives we eat in everyday foods on our nation's problems with obesity. And it makes a lot of sense. All our senses our blasted with dozens of different enhanced flavours thanks to all these E numbers and we can't get enough of them. Let's face it, whack some Monosodium Glutamate in to a bag of crisps and they taste great.

So the theory is - go back to basics, eat pure foods and prepare things yourself. Wholegrain cereal, bread and pasta, white fish and chicken, vegetables, fruit, healthy grains like bulgar wheat and lentils and avoid all fats except olive oil.

That's where it starts to become difficult - have you ever tried to buy 100 per cent wholegrain cereal? Nearly every variety has something added to it. And that wholemeal bread I mentioned, this is some of the things it contains: sugar, vegetable oil and vegetable fat, salt, E471, E472e, calcium propionate and ascorbic acid - doesn't sound so tasty now does it? We kid ourselves that we're not eating any sugar, salt or bad oils and all the time we are. It's not as if wholemeal bread is cheap either - a decent loaf will cost you around £1 even at the big supermarkets.

I've become a bit obsessed. There really isn't much that hasn't been contaminated in some way and it's really frightening.

When you get to my age you realise that you have to start looking after your body - eating healthier foods, drinking less alcohol and taking more exercise. I'm still aiming for Geri Halliwell's body in the It's Raining Men video - well I can dream!

I CAN'T drink the same way I used to. The hangovers are too awful. When you're young you can drink all night, sleep all day, eat enough to clog up your arteries then start all over again.

Now if I drink too much I wake up ridiculously early, feeling dreadful and when I look in the mirror you can see every drink etched in my face which doesn't spring back into shape until the next day. Far from doing it all over again, I need a full day to recover, an early night and nothing stronger than a cup of tea.

So it always amazes me how many pubs in Bridge Street are full every weekday with people boozing all day long. In one, drinkers are downing pints of beer at breakfast time, in another they are singing along to the karaoke in the afternoon while they merrily sup their drinks.

I have one question: how do they do it?