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We were never meant to eat this way. And we can’t afford to keep pretending we should.

Real Food Matters is not a diet book. It’s a demolition job on the systems that lied to us about what food is, what it does, and who benefits when we stay sick.

Scott Pettifer blends personal experience with hard-hitting research to uncover how the modern food system became toxic, nutritionally, environmentally, and politically. From the sugar industry’s deliberate manipulation of science, to the mass suppression of indigenous knowledge, and the slow collapse of public health, this book lays bare the truth behind every aisle in the supermarket.

But it’s also a book about action. About healing. About reclaiming the right to eat in ways that support life, our own and the planet’s.

Whether you're struggling with health, overwhelmed by information, or just tired of being lied to—this book is a reset. A return to what nourishes. A confrontation with what doesn’t. And a call to remember that food is not just fuel. It’s power.

I wrote Real Food Matters during lockdown. Not because I planned to. Because I had to.

Like a lot of people, I was forced to slow down. And when I did, I noticed how bad things had got, inside my own body, in my habits, and in the way we’ve all been taught to eat without thinking. I’d had years of digestive issues, inflammation, misdiagnoses, and frustration. Lockdown gave me space to face it. Properly.

This book started as a personal reckoning. I didn’t trust the advice I was getting. I knew something was off. So I went looking. What I found wasn’t just poor food, it was a system that rewards sickness, buries truth, and feeds us for profit, not for nourishment.

Real Food Matters became my lockdown project, but it turned into something more. Something I knew I had to finish. Something I had to share.

It’s now under publishing contract and in the final stages before release. That still feels strange to say. But it’s ready. It doesn’t try to be a manual, or a diet plan, or a miracle cure. It’s not trying to scare anyone or sell anything. It’s just honest. About what food really is. About what it’s become. And about how we might find our way back.

I wrote this because I wanted to feel better. I’m sharing it because I think, deep down, most of us do too.

Scott Pettifer

1. The food system is not broken, it’s functioning exactly as designed.
And that design prioritises profit over health, scale over quality, and shelf life over nourishment. The crisis isn’t accidental. It’s built-in.

2. Most of us have been taught to eat in ways that slowly harm us.
From ultra-processed foods and industrial oils to hidden sugars and hollow calories, our modern diet isn’t just lacking nutrients. It actively feeds inflammation, fatigue, and long-term disease.

3. Food is political.
The food choices available to you are not neutral. They’re shaped by lobbying, legislation, corporate influence, and deliberate misinformation. The system tells you to blame your willpower, never the supply chain.

4. Gut health is ground zero.
So much of what we call mental health, energy loss, or immune dysfunction can be traced back to compromised digestion and the state of our gut microbiome, an ecosystem damaged by modern food practices.

5. Real food isn’t expensive, it’s been made expensive.
Whole foods have become luxury items while processed rubbish is subsidised. That’s not by accident. That’s how systems keep the public sick and the machine fed.

6. You are not crazy for feeling worse in your own body.
If your energy is flat, your digestion unreliable, or your focus frayed, you’re not imagining it. You’re responding, intelligently, to a toxic norm.

7. Healing starts with awareness, not perfection.
You don’t need to overhaul your life overnight. But you do need to understand what’s going in, what it’s doing, and what it’s costing. Clarity is the beginning.

8. Food is not the enemy. It’s the way back.
Once you strip away the noise, the trends, the shame, and the confusion, what remains is the truth that food is memory, rhythm, biology, and power. And you can reclaim it.