BIOLOGICAL scientist Jane Philpott spent the first half of her career working on how to improve global crop yields, first as an academic and then for the likes of agri-chemical giants ICI and Syngenta.

But it wasn't until she and her husband Paul moved to Charlton Adam in Somerset around five years ago that she started looking at food from a different angle – not just how to increase yields, but what effect that food has on the body.

Now she's changed direction and is a dietary educator and nutritionist.

But she'd never have found her way into this intensely fulfilling second career if it hadn't been for her own experience of ill health.

Jane was head of bio-science at Syngenta and flew regularly to Europe and the United States on business trips, but she decided to give up her high-flying career mainly to spend more time with her sons Matthew, nine, and Tommi, eight.

But she was also totally run down. "I felt completely exhausted and no amount of sleep made me feel better," she recalls. At one point, she even thought she was developing multiple sclerosis after becoming numb down one side of her body.

While she was waiting for test results to come back, Jane reasoned that if she did have multiple sclerosis there was little the doctors could do.

So what, if anything, could she do to help herself? "I started reading about nutrition," she says, "and I got drawn into it. I hadn't really looked at it from a health point of view before, I'd been concentrating on global food production."

Jane enrolled in the School Of Natural Cookery in Bath and spent two years studying before training as a teacher there. She also embarked on a masters degree in nutritional therapy, accredited by Middlesex University and the British Associat- ion for Nutritional Therapists.

"I went into bio science and agriculture because I was fascinated by the world food problem," she says. "Now I look at this country and see we have a different type of food problem – what I call 'type two malnutrition'."

TYPE one malnutrition is caused by not having enough food to eat – the issue that Jane was tackling in her first career.

Type two malnutrition is the problem of too much food, leading to obesity and serious health problems, and the food itself being inadequate, either because people are eating the wrong sort (lots of fat and sugar and not enough vegetables) or because the food is over-refined and has lost many of its nutrients.

Decades of intensive agriculture means that we've depleted the soil of many of its nutrients, says Jane.

"Zinc has decreased by 60 per cent since the 1940s," she says.

"Even the composition of the flesh of the animals we eat now is totally different to how it used to be.

"The irony is that during World War II the nation's health was never better – because people couldn't get as much sugar and meat as they used to and were encouraged to grow their own fruit and veg."

Our poor diet is one reason for the dramatic increase in conditions such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes in recent decades. Yet if we only knew how, we could reduce our risk of developing such disease by up to 30 per cent simply through diet and exercise, says Jane.

"In South Somerset, 33 per cent of adults are overweight and 13 per cent obese," she says. "By 2020, 33 per cent will be obese, according to the district council's health and wellbeing strategy. I don't see how the NHS will afford to treat all these people."

Jane now runs courses on diet, nutrition and health in Keinton Mandeville, Somerset. Topics include managing your weight and boosting your immune system. Each day course costs £65 including two to three hours of cookery lessons.

Jane has completely changed her own diet (thankfully, tests found she didn't have MS): "I eat properly now and I feel fantastic," she says.

She eats organic food wherever possible, and says the healthiest diet is based around wholegrains (brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat and millet), vegetable protein (beans, pulses, fermented soy products, oily fish such as mackerel, sardines and herring), lots of veg ("you should eat six portions of veg to every portion of fruit to keep blood sugars regulated") and nuts and seeds.

Many people feel tired and stressed, she say. The good news is that we can regain our health and energy with a more natural diet.

■ Call 01458 224 606 or email janekphilpott@googlemail.com