It seems as a society we are sleepwalking towards a myriad of preventable diseases. I say this because after reading another of Dr. Richard Béliveau’s masterful books on how our lifestyle, eating habits, and food choices are intricately linked with our physical, emotional and spiritual health, the evidence is compelling.

In his new book, Eating Well, Living Well, Dr. Béliveau begins with a straightforward review of the health problems we face, the variances around the world, and the direction that we are heading. The picture is not pretty but is completely within our power to change.

The complexities of medicine, biochemistry, physiology and research are explained in a way that is completely comprehensible to everyone. We begin to understand the interwoven relationship between our bodies, our environment, and the food we eat.

According to Dr. Béliveau, our bodies have evolved over millions of years of slow adaptation to environmental change. However, our environment has changed so severely in the past 100 years it has been impossible for our biology to adapt. Our current Western diets seem to have weakened our body’s ability to fend off certain types of cancer among other diseases. In short, our society’s food choices have become divorced from reality and from our biology and physiology.

• Dr. Richard Béliveau, Professor of Biochemistry and holds the chair in the prevention and treatment of cancer at the University of Québec at Montréal. He is a member of the Neurosurgery-Oncology division at Notre-Dame Hospital and holds the Claude-Bertrand Chair in Neurosurgery, Professor, Department of Surgery and Physiology at the University of Montréal. He is a member of the Center for Cancer Prevention at McGill University and a member of the Montréal Center for Experimental Therapeutics in Cancer at the Jewish General Hospital.Dr. Béliveau is author of Foods That Fight Cancer and Cooking with Foods That Fight Cancer.