Man of substance

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It was the anchovy dreams that did it. I am a big fan anyway, but after almost a week on a spartan "detox" regime, it was the strong, salty little fish that I really craved - not red meat, not alcohol - just to bring a splash of flavour into my animal-protein-free world.

While I enjoy my food and drink, I also want to stay healthy and strive for a balanced diet: plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, oily fish, not too much red meat and I try to moderate my alcohol consumption. I don't think I'm overweight but my body mass index says officially I am. So, I decided that in addition to an alcohol-free January to give my liver a break, I would also try, for one week at least, to give all my body a rest. I would go for total "detox" - an ill-defined word that seems to be bandied about by every self-styled diet guru and happily taken up by the makers of everything from bottled water to scented candles - supposed to create a "new you". I would see what life was like without meat, fish or caffeine.

And also I'd ditch wheat or dairy products, which are regularly deemed "problematic", because barely a day goes past without some celebrity confessing they are now intolerant or allergic to this or that food, that nothing white or brown ever passes their lips, or that they've embarked on a new detox regime, consisting entirely of hot water, but with as much lemon as they want.

What can life be like for such people? And why does everyone else seem to follow their lead, despite the scepticism of many dieticians and experts. I suspect the experts are right. But, fortified with a "last meal" of meat pie, roast potatoes and a half of a bottle of red wine, I prepared for my week of denial and detox to find out for myself. Here's how it went.

Monday

A breakfast of orange juice, gluten-free organic muesli with soya milk, and caffeine-free rooibos (or red bush) tea. Lunch is sprout and chestnut soup, plus a few oatcakes, fruit and decaffeinated coffee. Later, desperately hungry after a night at the theatre, I discover that my normal late-night restaurant choices - tapas or pizza - have been banned. We find a Turkish place. Although I can't eat any lovely flatbread with dips, the falafel and an aubergine and couscous dish do just fine.

Tuesday

Wake up feeling guilty because I remembered couscous stems from wheat and is therefore banned under my regime. The list of what I can't eat seems to grow longer. Breakfast is more muesli, which frankly tastes like sawdust, plus green tea. Lunch is gluten-free bread - it claims to be ciabatta, but looks and tastes nothing like it - with hummus and salad. In fact, it's more sawdust. And taste-free. My belief that you need culinary cultures which place vegetables, pulses and grains at the centre of their table is confirmed when a friend cooks kootu sambar for me - yellow lentils and vegetables. It's everyday Indian comfort food and very good. Not so appetising is the gluten-free naan.

Wednesday

Abandon sawdust muesli in favour of fresh fruit and red bush tea. I'm not getting any withdrawal symptoms from a lack of caffeine, which suggests I'm not dependent. So I can't see any reason not to return eventually to my daily routine of about three cups each of tea and coffee. More than two days in and my body should now, in theory, be ridding itself of all those nasty toxins supposedly accumulating in my system. Do I feel healthier? Not really. Is my coat shiny, hair glossy? Nope.

In the evening, my teenage sons are over for dinner. Since I've banned white foods from my diet I can't eat the baked gnocchi I've cooked, so I eat gluten-free pasta made from rice flour. Another taste-free zone, incapable of being cooked al dente and it turns to mush. I lust for anchovies in the tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese on top. In fact, it's this kind of deep-flavoured foods I miss most. At night, I dream of relish on muffins and spaghetti a la puttanesca.

Thursday

Lunch is homemade spinach soup and more sawdust bread and hummus. I'm largely working from home this week, so it's much easier to plan such a careful diet - particularly if, unlike Madonna or Gwyneth Paltrow, you don't have a chef to prepare your macrobiotic meals, all of which take considerable time.

Even making a salad for lunch is problematic, since to make it a substantial meal, it should include some kind of animal-derived protein or stuff I've banned. A bowl of leaves is just not enough for me. I can just about get by on soup at lunchtime but I need more at night. I begin to ache for meaty casseroles, roast chicken and homemade fish pie.

As recommended, I'm eating lots of fresh fruit and snacks and drinking plenty of juices - both bought and homemade - and around two litres of water a day, but I normally do that anyway. In the evening, my 17-year-old son devours two large tuna steaks while I look on enviously, trying to eat my mushroom stroganoff and wild rice.

Friday

By now, both my energy levels and appetite seem to have diminished and, unusually, I struggle to finish my meals. Tonight's vegetable curry seems one lentil too many. Is this because I've denied myself the daily pleasure of an almost limitless range of possibilities available to a modern foodie? Perhaps it's the absence of wine from my diet - I miss the sheer pleasure of choosing what I'm going to drink and what I eat with it, as much as the effect of alcohol itself. Without it, I'm livelier in the evenings but edgy, going to bed later and sleeping poorly.

Saturday

Depressed at another day of sawdust and lentil stew. Once you take animal protein, wheat and dairy produce out of your diet, you are mostly left with variations on a theme: some kind of vegetable stew or bake, with or without pulses and whole grains or pasta. Which become pretty boring and stodgy if eaten every day. I look at vegan websites for recipe inspiration, but scrambled tofu, "bacon" and "cheese" substitutes and bean casseroles do nothing for me. I am revived with a vegetarian pad thai, the Thai dish made with rice noodles, although without fish sauce, unfortunately.

Sunday

Feel brighter - perhaps because it is my last day of denial. I celebrate with a brunch of buckwheat pancakes - not made from true wheat - maple syrup and bananas. In the evening, I cook a splendid roast chicken for everyone else and turlu-turlu for myself, a spiced Turkish ratatouille with chickpeas, eaten with more brown rice. A perfect side dish or main course vegetarian dish, but without its normal accompaniments of yoghurt and flatbread, it's not quite as satisfying. I console myself that, tomorrow, I have all that leftover chicken to look forward to ...

On the plus side, I've learned to look very closely at the labels of foods and that I could probably increase the vegetable content of my diet. And I've lost a kilo or two, almost certainly due to a lack of alcohol and proper bread and pasta, which I'll bear in mind in the future. That's about it.

Otherwise, I felt increasingly physically low as the week went on, eating a diet difficult to maintain in most normal domestic or social settings and generally uninspiring for the enthusiastic cook. And because of a slight back strain, I wasn't able to go to the gym this week - if I had, my body's demand for carbohydrates and filling foods would have been even higher.

"Detox is a myth put about by self-appointed nutrition experts and perpetuated by those with commercial interests, all ignorant of the basic physiology of the body - which is detoxifying itself naturally all the time."

- INDEPENDENT