REAL BODIES: LIFE DOCTOR

OH SIGH. Another season, another reason to fret about what to serve at those summer dinner parties.

Last year, serving three courses was so ... out. I dispensed with pudding. This year, dinner party chic has deconstructed further still. Courses are gone, hors d'oeuvres are in. But still you can't be ahead of the game. Everybody's bored of vine wrapped squid balls already.

Go for science. Science is so hip even physics teachers are driving flash cars. I give you:

The Longevity Dinner Party

A distillation of the very best , the very latest sounds from the nutrition science underground. Non-stop "functional foods". These are the latest thing. Not merely healthy, they actively promote health or prevent disease.

Hors d'oeuvres

Grilled tofu cubes and mung beans. "Anything that is soya based," says Sarah Schenker, duty nutritionist at the British Nutrition Foundation, "is made up of phyto-oestrogens that will decrease your risk of heart disease and many cancers." Serve big portions of tofu, mind you. The eastern societies that benefit from a soya-rich diet consume anything from 20mg to 200mg a day. Mung beans are hot news - the tequila of salad vegetables.

Starter

Lollo rosso lettuce tossed with cherry tomatoes and walnuts with a wheat- germ oil dressing. The rise of cherry tomatoes and lollo rosso is thanks to greater understanding of "flavonols". Flavonols are a type of plant chemical that protects you from disease.

Main course

To drink: Chilean red wine. More flavonols than the rest, according to recent research by Professor Michael Lean at the University of Glasgow.

Chick pea, watercress and orange casserole. Accompanied by brown rice with toasted sunflower seeds. A red pepper, broccoli and carrot salad with a selenium supplement - on the side, as some of your guests may not do drugs.

Vitamins A, C and E are nature's anti-oxidants. Found in citrus fruits and yellow and orange vegetables they castrate evil free radicals and stop them spreading their nasty ideas from one cell to another.

Watercress is one of the richest vegetable sources of iron (often lacking in British diets) and the orange will provide vitamin C to aid digestion. Wheatgerm oil and seeds are all hot vitamin E sources.

Walnuts are rich in N-3 fatty acids. "These are what used to be called Omega 3 fatty acids," says Schenker, "but that name has rather gone out of fashion." (Science is very label conscious.)

To follow

Tapioca pudding with prunes. A study last month at Tufts University in Boston looked at the anti-oxidant power of fruit. Way out in the lead came the lowly prune.

Tapioca (edible frogspawn) is also making a comeback of John Travolta proportions. Tapioca comes from the cassava plant which produces a natural cyanide that deters predators.

Digestif

Give 'em green tea. Scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden found that drinking two or three cups of green tea per day reduces blood vessel production by 70 per cent - apparently a good thing. The active ingredient, according to Nature, is epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). Wow your friends with this interesting information. That, plus a menu like this, will guarantee you will never have to throw another dinner party. No one will want to come again.