Dr Norman Swan’s new book tests the evidence on diet, sex and the ‘bullshit’ wellness trend. Does he know what’s good for us?

There’s a great moment in George Eliot’s 1861 classic Silas Marner, where a young woman bemoans how people with “neither ache nor pain” want to be “better than well”. Written more than a century before the rise of the “wellness industry” of exclusive gyms, self-help and endless supplements, the phrase is prophetic.