Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There are a large number of diet books around, espousing a variety of “healthy” lifestyles, and often these are unsustainable over the long term either for financial or health reasons. Many look at such factors as calories, fat, carbohydrates and more without really considering the foods themselves beyond that. This book isn’t a diet book, per se; instead, it looks at the individual foods and explains how the body uses them to heal and regenerate itself. To cut to the chase on one important point: the focus is very much on natural, unprocessed foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts and fish. There is a definite lack of coverage for land-based meats (beef, pork, lamb) though there is discussion of various types of seafood such as tuna, anchovies, clams and more, and chicken/turkey are also covered. This is not a formal diet book; rather, it is more of a field guide to foods that help your body in several key areas: angiogenesis, regeneration, microbiome, DNA protection and immunity. Each of these get a dedicated chapter on what they are, how tending to them is important and how you can give your body the tools it needs to fight off diseases and heal itself. At the end of the book there is a set of large tables, one for each of these aspects of your health, and the author advises to eat at least one serving of something from each table every day. Interestingly, the book does not advocate eating only things on the lists, but instead says to make sure that these are added to the regular diet. Some of the material regarding specific foods I have seen before, such as the antioxidant properties of certain fruits, good fat content of others and so on, but much of what is here is new to me. What this book does is consolidate a lot of information into one handy reference. I did not know what fiddleheads were until I found out about them in this book, after which I was able to get corroborating information online. I am still working my way through this book and I am learning a lot as I go, but so far I have been very encouraged with what I have seen and read. This is a different approach to health, not focused on weight management and counting calories, but instead focusing on how your body uses different foods to heal, rebuild and defend itself.