Dr Gillian McKeith once found an entire vitamin tablet in one of her stools. "There it was, gleaming and undigested," she says. "You see, you are not what you eat, you are what you absorb. Get your nutrients from real food." There is a pause and a whimper. "Sorry, the baby just fell off my breast."
McKeith is promoting her new book by telephone because she has just given birth. Living Food for Health: 12 Natural Superfoods to Transform Your Health is just one of this month's new books about the miracle healing properties of food. Sprouting beans, it suggests, may cure prostate cancer.
The "alfalfa saved my life" genre of health books is a growing market. Last year we learnt that lean beef and lamb cure acne, oysters relieve cold sores, dried apricots ease fluid retention, prawns cure colds and yoghurt helps you remember who you are and where you put your wallet. This spring's new releases include Food: Your Miracle Medicine; The Food Pharmacy; Eat Well, Stay Well; Super Juice; Super Herbs; Super Boosters; Detox Your Mind; Detox Your Life; Detox Your Self; Healing from the Inside; Energy Foods; H2O: The Healing Power of Water and The Power Food Cookbook.
Borders book shop in London's Oxford Street has three shelves of these titles. The Food Doctor by Ian Marbar and Vicki Edgson has had four reprints since September, and in August, Collins & Brown publish Food Doctor in the City (like Sex in the City, but with mung beans).
Recently the line between food and pharmaceuticals has been blurred. The bread and bananas that give you vitamins are no longer foods, they are "nutraceuticals". "The market for books about so-called healing foods is an extension of the market for functional foods such as Yakult and Benecol margarine - which is fortified to lower your cholesterol," says "food psychologist" Richard Shepherd, who works at Surrey University. "People want two things: information and an easy cure for illness."
All these books about healing foods carry disclaimers warning readers not to give up chemotherapy in favour of dried pears. But people, inevitably, have high expectations. "More and more people are visiting nutritionists not to cure a specific ailment but because they don't feel happy with their lives and expect spinach to solve the problem," says Sarah Stanner, a nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation.
Jackie Landman, a public health nutritionist, says a priest told her recently that food therapists were like the clergy. In a secular world, "cancer-curing" radish juice is the new religion. There is an evangelism about the language of the new healing nutrition titles: "miracle foods", "food bible", "health testament". Miracle Food Cures from the Bible by Reese Dubin (Prentice Hall, £9.49) claims that the hawthorn featured in Jesus's crown of thorns is a great cure for heart pain.
McKeith's Living Food for Health (Piatkus, £6.99) is one of the better researched books. Her London clinic has a two-year waiting list for consultations and she irrigates the colons of the royals, the Hollywood acting establishment and Olympic athletes. A former health consultant to the Joan Rivers television show, she now presents a Feel Fab Forever slot on This Morning with Richard and Judy.
McKeith tells you to give your body "a lube job" with sprouting grains such as millet, quinoa, flax seeds and barley grass. This will cure spots, warts, brain malfunction, high cholesterol and hormone trouble, she says. It may also cure cancer. But you will have to spend an awful lot of time playing around with wet beans: covering them with cheese cloth or muslin, tilting them to 45 degrees and putting them on and off the window ledge for days to make them sprout properly.
Aloe vera, it seems, is the Rolls-Royce of healing foods. It cures all manner of infections, arthritis, diabetes, hepatitis, tumours, constipation, haemorrhoids, ulcers, skin diseases, burns, wounds and liver complaints. Courgettes cleanse the organs. And - surely a miracle - lentils and kidney beans cure wind.
Flatulence features quite potently in Jean Carper's Food: Your Miracle Medicine - How Foods can Prevent and Treat over 100 Symptoms and Problems (Pocket Books, £8.99). To find your wind nemesis, keep a record of how many farts you do in a 24-hour period (one young entrepreneur did 34), and cut down on the food types you ate that day.
Carper claims that asparagus and avocados may stop the proliferation of Aids, tea and carrots prevent strokes, ginger snaps cure nausea, sugar stops anti-social behaviour, spinach and garlic sooth depression, turkey breasts give you energy and - this is a new one - pasta is a downer that makes you woolly in the head.
Super Juice: Juicing for Health and Healing by Michael Van Straten (Mitchell Beazley, £10.99) claims squeezing fruit "extends your life". "Good mouthkeeping" (carrots and radish juice) cures throat and gum problems, "healer colada" (pineapple and coconut) stops the effects of alcohol abuse and "high flyer" (spinach, beetroot and carrot) prevents sunburn damage and should be drunk before going abroad. Try a "radish revolution" to combat cancer, fresh onion and garlic to "build better blood" or the self-explanatory prune-light express.
Anna Selby's H2O: Healing Water for Mind and Body, just published by Collins & Brown at £14.99, teaches you to cure eczema, spots, headaches, stress, lack of concentration, depression and travel sickness by drinking water at certain times of the day. Try 2pm for clear thinking. Boost your immune system with H20 recipes like cabbage water, watery vegetable broth, and a glass of water with sunflower seeds floating in it.
Amanda Grant, food editor of Women's Journal, couldn't get to the phone to discuss her new tome, The Power Food Cookbook (Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99), because the Carlton Food Network was filming in her kitchen. "My mother died of cancer," she tells us in the introduction, before going on to list a series of fiddly recipes that will, apparently, turn you into Popeye. It's hard to see what the real benefits of recipes such as baby spinach with crispy bacon and soft creamy eggs, and soft, garlicky peppers might be, however.
Energy Foods by naturopaths Nic Rowley and Kirsten Hartvig (Duncan Baird, £7.99) is more of the same. Penne with pesto prevents heart attacks, spinach parcels ease stress, stuffed mushrooms stop brittle hair, gazpacho cures urinary infections, Does it all work? "Obviously, there is a link between nutrition and health," says Stanner. But she does add that all such books should be taken with a healthy pinch of salt.
