John Potter, an award-winning public health researcher, examines the latest research on what causes cancer and other chronic diseases. What is scientists’ current understanding of the balance between diet, genes and plain bad luck, and how is the balance shifting? He explores how our adaptation to the diets of our ancestors can be linked to the diseases we experience in the present – and explains what the evidence says we can do about it.

BWB Texts are short books on big subjects by great New Zealand writers. Spanning contemporary issues, history and memoir, new BWB Texts are released regularly, and the series now amounts to well over fifty works.