Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I buy and read at least a book per week and this is the very first time I've felt compelled to leave a review. I also want to state upfront that I'm fully on board with the idea of a ketogenic/high fat diet and have been eating this way for a couple of years. I enjoy reading new books about the subject to refresh my knowledge and discover new food ideas. I've read several books and many studies on the subject and this combined with the success I've had with self-experimentation has convinced me it's the correct diet for me. I'm not against Jimmy Moore's ideas, I'm against the way this book was written. Based on the reviews here and the fact that Jimmy Moore is not a doctor or scientist, I thought it might be the ideal book to pass on to friends who need help losing weight (as much of the stuff I've read is too technical to keep anyone's attention for long). However, if this was the first time I had read about nutritional ketosis, I would dismiss it as a load of crap. The writing style is amateur, and I don't mean 'conversational' - it just doesn't read well. On top of this, there is a smug attitude that comes through while you're reading. The book makes passing comments about why high fat is right and low fat is wrong and often doesn't reference these points. There is a large bibliography in the back, but (like most other people, I'm sure) I'd rather be linked straight to it, rather than sifting through all the studies trying to find where that information came from. It reads like a fad diet book, focusing more on 'success stories' and Jimmy Moore's personal weight loss experiments than anything else. I understand that success stories are necessary and motivating for the reader, but it felt like there was way more focus on anecdotal evidence than in any other nutritional books I've read. The other disappointing part was that we're introduced to these 'nutritional experts' at the beginning of the book, who were supposed to provide 'expert insights' throughout. What the reader is actually treated to is some painfully dull sidebars with no real information. It's as though Jimmy Moore sent out a generic questionnaire via email to these nutritional experts and took boring snippets of the responses to litter around his book in order to validate it. Even the doctor who co-authored the book had nothing interesting to say. The other thing I found ridiculous was that the book quotes several huge health organisations (with many doctors behind them) commenting on how ketogenic diets are dangerous, which Jimmy Moore dismisses as complete rubbish. He then goes on to introduce his 'experts'; some of whom are self-taught and have no formal qualifications. As stated above, I need no convincing that nutritional ketosis is the right diet for me. I was mostly thinking that I'd be embarrassed to hand this book to a friend who wasn't already convinced. For a first timer, who would you believe? The official organisations peddling the conventional wisdom you've grown up with, or Jimmy Moore's terrible writing and self-taught experts? I also don't have anything against non-doctors/scientists and self taught people writing books, but they need to explain the information properly, reference everything and be credible. A great example of a regular person with no formal health qualifications producing an amazingly informative book about the evils of sugar is 'Sweet Poison' by David Gillespie. I highly recommend this if you want to know more about why you shouldn't eat sugar. The expert panel actually includes the doctors/authors behind Grain Brain and Wheat Belly, which I thought were good, informative books. However, their snippets of info are also extremely dull. It's almost like Jimmy Moore wanted to validate his books with their names ("see, doctors say it's okay") without taking the attention away from himself. If you are already sold on the idea of nutritional ketosis, I don't think you'll find anything new here (I certainly didn't) and if you are new to the idea, I would recommend staying away and buying something like The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living by Stephen D. Phinney and Jeff S. Volek. Admittedly, there isn't an abundance of literature around on nutritional ketosis, but I think many people will also get a lot out of Paleo-style books such as The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sison (who encourages consumption of high fat dairy and meat).