These answers will probably change over the year as new research becomes available or fashionable. Please note the inverted commas around ‘healthy eating’ – one blogger’s ‘healthy eating’ is a healthcare professional’s ‘reckless ignoring of the facts.

Do we need a vego burger that bleeds?
No. I’ve never heard a vegan say “What I want is a burger that reminds me of the suffering an animal goes through.” Likewise, I don’t know a carnivore who values a burger for its oozing myoglobin. It seems like it’s more marketing madness – trying to make your beetroot and lentil burger into something a rugged lumberjack would eat.

Is almond milk really milk?
No, almonds don’t lactate, but marketeers avoid calling such plantbased liquids what they really are: a nice mouthful of nut or seed juice.

Has RenéRedzepi signalled the end to hip vegetarianism?
René Redzepi’s Noma in Copenhagen is famous for ushering in trends – using insects, indigenous ingredients and fermentation, among others. He has also championed plant-based dishes in his dégustation menus. Noma 2.0 had an autumn-winter menu loaded with local wild meat such as reindeer and duck brain, sweetbreads fried in moss and even duck breast tempura served with wing attached. It’s confronting even for the most seasoned carnivore.

Is vegan or paleo best?
Best for who and what? The paleo diet gets blasted as being environmentally irresponsible, animals being ecologically more costly to raise than vegetables. The vegan diet gets blasted by critics for occasionally being incomplete. There’s some truth and some exaggeration in both points of view. In my experience both are far more expensive to follow than the usual Aussie diet if you want to enjoy the variety and pleasure food can deliver when it’s more than just fuel.

Why doesn’t someone create a hybrid version of the two?
They already have. Hello, Mark Hyman, MD, who spruiks the pegan diet. What’s next? Ketegan? Atketo? NESJF? That’s not eating shitty junk food. That’s the one I’m behind.

Which will lose me the most weight?
Both claim they’re ‘healthy’, and these days ‘healthy eating’ is the new diet. And both sides are right. When Christopher Gardner, professor of medicine at Stanford, studied the impact of both a low-carb diet (paleo or Atkins) and a low-fat (ie, vegan or Pritikin) for a year on a group of 609 people he found both groups lost pretty much the same amount of weight (on average 5.9 kilos each).

Is there anything these warring tribes agree on?
Yes. Processed foods are universally regarded as the enemy so reduce the amount of sugar, packaged food and refined flour. And eat lots more vegies.

What’s resistant starch?
The microbiome and gut health hit the mainstream media in 2018 and the CSIRO’s contribution to the debate was research into the benefits of resistant starches. The upshot? Load those frozen peas, beans (kidney, lima, etc), underripe bananas, Brussels sprouts, wholemeal pasta, sweet potatoes and cashews into your shopping trolley.

Why don’t we tax soft drinks?
I’ve yet to hear a good reason not to. If you have one, let me know. If you don’t, let your local pollie know you want to protect our kids’ futures – and teeth.

Is bee-exploitation a thing?
Most certainly in 2018 it was. There was a worrying moment when hipsterdom and veganism seemed to be on a collision course when someone pointed out bees were exploited to pollinate crops like almonds or avocados. To make matters worse, sometimes up to half the colony can die in the process, especially if the bees are trucked in – a practice known as migratory pollination. Luckily for vegan lovers of activated almonds and avocado toast it was deemed (by some vegan pope perhaps?) that vegans could exploit bees since they’re still not eating something made by or from the bees. Honey is still a vegan no-no, though.

Should LSD be part of a healthy modern diet?
This sounds not just illegal but also total madness, yet microdosing with LSD (or even with narcolepsy drug modafinil) is championed by some on the extreme fringes of health bloggerdom. Author Michael Pollan, whose mantra is to ‘eat food, not too much, mostly plants’, explores psychedelics in his 2018 book How to Change Your Mind , but this area of microdosing is so new it’s backed with little decent research. The real question is who’ll be the first Aussie ‘name’ to go on the record to say they do it and it makes them less stressed, more creative and less anxious. Well, apart from the anxiety induced by fear of the drug squad.

Is microdosing part of the interest in brain food?
Brain food (buzzword: nootropics) is now talked about as much as gut health and prebiotics. Apparently eating salmon, eggs, turmeric, dandelion greens and jicama will make you smarter. Well, that’s my breakfast sorted – but I’ll be eating it with a huge grain of salt.