One Fort in the Grave, with KEITH FORT

AFTER the pundits have had their say, I think most of us are totally confused about which foods are good for us - and which are just plain bad.

Any day now I expect some expert to come along and announce that drinking water is bad for us. Some of the announcements in the past have appeared just as ridiculous as that.

I remember what happened years ago after some food expert announced that carrot juice was excellent for health and could improve eyesight. A bit later a few people started to turn yellow so a rider was added: "Please don't drink carrot juice to excess".

Forty years ago, expectant mothers were continually being asked: "Have you eaten enough liver this week?" The iron in it was supposed to be good for mother and baby so the advice from the medicos was to eat it regularly each week.

Then someone suddenly discovered it might be harmful and so, today, expectant mums are advised to keep well away from liver during their weeks of waiting. Now folic acid is all the rage - they're even adding it to your corn flakes.

I suppose the best nutritional advice that I, as a lifelong enthusiast for alcohol, ever received was that red wine is good for us! Yippee! Now this is one piece of encouragement I have taken enthusiastically to heart (pun fully intended) for that is supposed to be the gain - it's good for the old ticker. There again, many of us took to the game a little too enthusiastically, and when some were found to be seriously engaged in taking this important medicine at the rate of a bottle or so a day, back came the experts with a little spoiler - two glasses a day at most. So, sadly it was back to the beer and spirits - and no endorsements from the medicos.

I remember the story of the Scotsman who drank nothing but whisky all his life, until finally his pickled liver saw him off. His relatives told the undertaker "We'd like to have him cremated - but we daren't!"

Well now we're all supposed to be getting fighting fit by going organic. I have two suspicions about "organic" and they'll take some shifting. My first problem is that I never noticed us going un-organic, did you?

When I was a lad and we used to get milk form the back of farmer Rukin's horse-drawn cart ladled into a jug with two inches of cream on top (tut, tut, I hear you cry), EVERYTHING was organic. I know that because even as a child I heard the moans and groans as half the spuds or many of the carrots had to be peeled or thrown away because they were holed or part-decayed.

The peas always had tiny grubs in them (and, unfortunately, my Grannie couldn't see too well) and apples were always suspect, but the meat was tremendously tasty compared with today.

They must have slid in the insecticides and the pest-control sprays without telling us because, suddenly, in more recent years, we've all been urged to "go organic". Well going organic in the shops and supermarkets seems to me to be an excuse to put the price up. And, unfortunately, when I look at some of the fare, some of it reminds me of the despairing food we were buying just after war's end. And even a few of the experts are now admitting that organic food isn't necessarily any better. But I wouldn't like to discourage anyone from eating it.

Back on the trail of the latest food pronouncements, I never expected to have my life saved by tomato sauce.

I mean, I like tomato sauce but I never suspected it was warding off deadly disease. It's totally killed off such phrases as "He's had his chips". I always eat tomato sauce with chips and now its a life saver! Now, we're told, it's helping to ward off prostate cancer in men.

Researchers at the University of Illinois have already discovered that men, already afflicted, who ate tomatoes or a tomato-sauce-based dish every day benefited from a slowing of the progress of the disease and it might also have prevented tumours developing. Considering 20,000 of us get this disease in the UK each year, let's hope they're really on to something this time. The key to the power of tomato, apparently, is a compound called lycopene which gives it its red pigment.

I think we all need to remember the lesson of the carrot juice here, and stick firmly to the old adage where food and drink is concerned - everything in moderation.