Diet Health Books

I haven't had a chance to read the whole book however what I have read has been helpful and informative. The book itself was shipped in excellent condition and, like many of the books I've bought through Amazon, I think I purchased it used and it looks new. And, I don't plan on just using it to balance out my washing machine ;-).

I am in my mid-40s and have toyed with the idea of doing a triathlon for quite some time. Somehow, when I would begin to really get the training ramped up, I would run in to a problem. I believe that I was probably bringing on the problems with less than ideal nutrition. So, though I harbor no aspirations of being a serious athlete, I have found that nutrition is an important--and often overlooked--aspect for even recreational athletes like me. Using the information in this book is allowing me to push my training farther than I ever have before and will get me across the finish line for my first triathlon sometime this summer.

I've been running since I was in high school and continued during and after graduationg college. It wasn't until recently that I decided to run my first half marathon. I have read lots of material on training and nutrition, but none have been as complete and informative. The first eight chapters are devoted to all endurance athletes. The last few chapters are each devoted to a particular endurance sport. This book has taught me how to fully prepare and train to successfully reach my goal. I would suggest this book for anyone interested in endurance sports.

Suzanne knows her stuff. I've been an ultrarunner and endurance athlete for nearly 25 years and I find Suzanne's wisdom and advice both on target and incredibly helpful. In fact, as I get older, which I am, her advice is seemingly even more relevant. Following her advice on everything from hydration to nutrition to stretching has been vital to me being able to keep doing what I love to do. The bottom line is that proper nutrition is key to optimal performance and the information in this book can ensure you're geting both.

This is a serious sports nutrition book for serious athletes. It is packed with information for the endurance athlete or those coaching endurance/elite athletes. In addition to providing a complete nutritional overview for the elite athlete, Endurance Sports touches on other related subjects such as hydration, the effectiveness of supplements, food intolerances, eating disorders and even optimal eating for the vegetarian athlete. As a nutrition writer, this book is an integral part of my reference library.

I did like this book and enjoyed Carol Alt's honesty. However, I wanted more information. The intention of this book is to be a beginners guide to a raw food lifestyle and that is exactly what it is. I finished and was very excited, however I still didn't know how to start and had to go find another book. But I will still recommend it b/c it held my interest and I think Alt has good intentions.

Carol shares her own experience with diet and her transition to eating raw food and this is interesting reading. However, there isn't much here in the way of practical advice on eating raw food so you'll need a better guide if you want to learn how to do it.

The most interesting parts of this book are Carol's own story and her overall tips for the beginner in raw food. As a beginner myself I appreciated her advice to try a little at a time inserting raw into your diet in lieu of worrying about switching over altogether all at once. The recipes were ok, but I live in a pretty remote location - so her general advice was of more use to me than the actual recipes. But if you live in an urban area you should have no problem at all rounding up these ingredients, and enjoying a healthier lifestyle!

This book was just what I needed to explore raw foodism. Carol Alt gave very direct ideas and opinions on her own venture into raw foods as well as some pretty decent recipes, tips and tricks for preparing raw foods. I count this book as a must have for anyone that is interested in this lifestyle.

Carol does a great job of giving variety to the "eating raw" world with all her recipes and tips. It's not an easy lifestyle change to implement but with her help it's going more smoothly.

Written by an expert who has taken 20 years of IBS treatment research and condensed it into a book, Dr. Jeffrey Lackner has written a very different type of book for IBS sufferers. The core of the book is a 10-step plan for symptom relief; however, Dr. Lackner's approach is not ordinary. He combines proven techniques for you to develop an understanding of who you are and how your thoughts and behavior attribute to your well being. This isn't a book about psychology and IBS. Dr. Lackner skillfully takes the reader through an understanding of how the digestive system works, how you may be diagnosed with a digestive disease, and then how the physical torture of daily IBS symptoms can be coped with by changes in how you think and act. For over 25 years I have fostered a self-help/control approach for individuals and this is the first book in a long time that provides the ingredients to do just that. I highly recommend this book for every IBS sufferer.

I found following the glycemic program has enabled me to still enjoy the foods I love and to actually feel very healthy at the same time. It has affected my moods, my cravings, and relationship with food and my emotions. Thank you for this book - I believe the low glycemic program should be under consideration to replace the food pyramid!

If you don't know much about nutrition and metabolism this book contains lots of good information. I found the the GI ratings of different foods very useful and the recipes are excellent.

This book helps the reader understand why whole grains and fiber help to lose wight. The recipes in the book are definitely worth trying. The idea is to eat less and be less hungry. My husband has lost 30 pounds thanks to the information in this book.

This is a good book for all people!! You learn a lot and gain more facts about health. I would give it 5 STARS!! Get this book! You will love it and read it over and over again. Order This Book TODAY. I garantee you will love it.....

As the editor of DolceDolce.com I reveiw dozens of anti-aging books as well as cook books. Cheryl as captured the best of both. Her recipes are mouth watering. You can tell a chef was at work in this book. Her health information is fabulous. She doesn't miss a trick: skin, hair bones, weight, she covers it all. She lets you know what and how to eat to stay healthy, vital, vigorous, --and ageless. This is a great reference book for women of all ages; shop with it and cook with it!

First we want to grow up; then, we want to look younger! Positively Ageless gives advice on how to take care of ourselves inside and out. I've met Cheryl Forberg and she is a perfect example of practicing what she preaches. This book touches upon every aspect of maintaining health and the recipes are doable and delicious. That's what I want to be --'positively ageless'. Thanks.

For those of us wanting to keep our bodies healthy and as "ageless" as we can, this book is a hit! The easy to understand examples (like the oxidizing apple...) are great, and the no-nonsense research is fascinating and well-written. And the recipes are terrific too -- so far, of the 4 I've tried, all are yummy! Great book...

Finally! A book by someone who's knowledgeable about the subject of antiaging nutrition. I saw her on television and she really knows her stuff.
I've read a few popular antiaging books and I liked Positively Ageless better because it is written from the perspective of a nutritionist who is also a professional chef. She makes the subject easy and logical to understand. Her recipes sound and taste great. I even made two of them myself so far which is a first for me.

I felt like a new person after following Dr. Cheryl's nutritional advice. I lost weight, but more importantly, I looked great! Everyone commented on how much I glowed after a few weeks of following the plan.

While this book has lots of different recipes i have found only a few that I would actually eat or cook for two main reasons. First, almost all of the baking includes sugar alcohol's also known as "polyols". Some claim that by using these sugar substitutes you can deduct carbohydrates from the recipe. For me, I have a hard time digesting polyols. They completely disrupts my stomach causing an unpleasant feeling. In my opinion no dessert is worth that. I am not alone on this either just look up polyols or sugar alcohol's and you will find a host of problems with them. So, I was unable to bake any of the desserts in this book due to the fact that they all contain sugar alcohol's.

Secondly, the other recipes in this book require lots of unfamiliar and hard to find products. The author recommends finding some of these items online. I have a hard time with cookbooks that use hard to find ingredients which this book does. I have gone to every health food store I could think of and majority of the items needed to complete the recipes are not sold there.

To me this book isn't well balanced. While it is low carb its not necessarily health.

I love this cookbook because it doesn't necessarily require you to go out and get exotic ingredients from a specialty store. Most ingredients are things you either probably already have or can easily pick up at any grocery store. There's also a lot of quick recipes for those nights you don't feel like putting so much work into dinner or thinking about how it will affect your diet.

I gave this one star without even trying a recipe. While this book has a good variety of recipes which are "low carb", if you are following South Beach, don't buy it! It uses lots of butter, cream and fatty meats! I will be returning my copy.

This was my first Dana Carpenter book. I had already been introduced to the low carb way of eating, but Dana's book makes it so much more interesting! Her humor and healthy tips inspire me to be faithful. The variety of recipes expand my menu ideas considerably, and also are a springboard for recipes of my own creation.

Because I liked this book so much, I also bought Volume 1 of "500 Recipes" cookbook for myself and 3 others. This second volume, however, is my favorite. I also just purchased Dana's "How I Gave Up My Low Fat Diet and Lost 40 LBS." book, and am enjoying it very much, which I heartily recommend to anyone wanting to learn more about lo carb eating, and also to those who need motivation to continue. It is full of excellent health info.

If you need new recipe ideas, or instruction on how to eat low carb, Dana provides it all in a fun and interesting way. Dana is a great mentor on the path of a low carb lifestyle!

I feel that Dana is an old friend as she always adds little tips and comments every thing I have made as turned out wonderful I love her little extra comments I have all her books so far

I think of supplements as an insurance policy.

The main reason that I take USANA is that the supplements are Bioavailable. Many vitamins do not dissolve quickly enough (20 minutes or less) to be used by the body. To test, place vitamins in a glass of water. If they don't dissolve within 20 minutes or so, they are likely not going to be absorbed by your body.

This book helped me to understand that not all vitamins are the same, and, that some of the most popular vitamins may not be fully absorbed. Things are often not as they seem.

http://www.purchaseusana.usana.com

I have been using vitamins and food supplements since 2003, and realized "deep down" that I was doing the right thing. However, I was looking for a body of well-researched evidence to back up my belief. This book gave me that.

It contains medical evidence (sometimes quite technical) of the critical importance of nutritional supplements in the overall well-being of a person's health. Dr. Strand discusses the basis of major diseases, and how vitamins can help.

I realized, too, that the money I have spent buying good-quality vitamins has been worth it, because not all vitamins are created equal. You get what you pay for.

I found this book most empowering and exciting with regard to taking control of my health.

This was estimated to be arriving on 31st July 2007 and it is still not arrived so it is very hard to rate a book purchased, paid for and not delivered!!!

Please advise those responsible

Dr Strand begins his most enlightening book by telling us about his wife's debilitating condition, diagnosed as fibromyalgia. In a situation whereby they had nothing to lose, Mrs Strand took some vitamin supplements and her condition gradually but almost miraculously improved.

Virtually overnight, Dr Strand became a "converted doctor". It's certainly not very scientific for a doctor to make such conclusions based on anecdotal evidence, but Dr Strand goes on to identify and explain the root cause of many serious ailments from heart disease to cancer as "oxidative stress".

He describes our bodies as "rusting away" from metabolic activities that consume oxygen and release harmful free radicals. He provides a simple answer on how to win the battle from within - reduce oxidative stress by increasing the amount of antioxidants in the body.

Why is the significance of homocysteine in patients prone to heart attacks and strokes discovered so late? Why don't doctors recommend Coenzyme Q10 as a supplement to reduce the risk of heart attack? Why are vitamin B supplements ignored while cholesterol lowering drugs drugs are prescribed with such enthusiasm? Dr Strand goes into the politics and economics of medical research which may make him some enemies in the fraternity.

Whether it's cardiomyopathy, cancer prevention, arthritis or autoimmune disorders, Dr Strand's advice seems focussed on optimal doses (higher than RDA doses) of various vitamins, minerals, glutathione, alpha-lipoic acid and supplements like glucosamine sulphate and grape seed extract. Dr Strand provides lots of anecdotal evidence on how these supplements can work for a wide range of illnesses. It does look like vitamin C and E are good for almost every condition. His attacks on money-driven physicians get tiring after a while. I personally think that he didn't have to explain why most doctors don't want to recommend cheap supplements that reduce the number of indications for heart or orthopaedic surgery.

Do I believe in Dr Strand's theories? Well, as far as the need for optimal levels of vitamins, minerals and even herbal supplements is concerned, I agree. Whether remarkable recoveries recounted from the good doctor's practice are typical is something for which I have my reservations.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that the wellness industry is already booming even before Dr Strand wrote this book. Expensive vitamins, nutritional supplements and other healthcare and wellness products are all over the pharmacies and even supermarkets, often promoted by aggressive sales people with limited medical knowledge. I wouldn't say that these folks are more concerned about their potential customers' health than doctors who discourage their patients from spending so much on supplements that don't really work for their condition.

This book rolls back some of the falacious defensiveness of traditional medical thinking and shows the existing bias against nutritional medicine.

Dr Strand is blunt and forthright about his findings and is careful to give credit to the treatments that were effective, and to identify those that were not. He does not decry pharmaceuticals nor does he promise nutritionals as the end of all cures. Instead, he advocates the use of them in combination when possible. His writing does reveal a competition between pharmaceutically trained physicians and those who dispense and recommend nutritionals.

His case studies are excellent, and he retains a sense of reality and knowledgable insight afforded him by his traditional medical training that has now been tempered by his own experience.

If you want the truth on nutritional medicine, which is sorely lacking in our medical schools who are in some ways subsidized by big pharma, this will please you...and perhaps even make you more healthy.

Great source of info on processed foods. It should be a class requirement in grade school health class. People might eat better if they knew what they were really eating.

I thought this would be enjoyable reading, but the tone of the book thoughout was so about not offending anyone. I mean, 50% of our food--whole and processed--is genetically modified, created by a chemical company responsible for Roundup, Agent Orange, postcancer drugs, etc., and that's OK with Steve? All that gets is a little footnote at the bottom of the page? And I wanted to know if stearic acid and sodium stearylate or however you spell it is animal-byproduct-derived, but there was no mention of anything about that--just vague mentionings throughout about "emulsifiers" and whatnot. This book serves no purpose. Hated it.

This is the sort of book I would normally enjoy. Filled with arcane details and delightful trivia, the odysseys of the huge number of products that come together to make Twinkies should be a fun read. But it wasn't.

Part of the problem is that he is not a good writer. There are many of those "Well, that's not the right word there" moments, where he has chosen a word or syntax that made me stop and note the writing (in a negative way) rather than the tale. One example. On page 48 he describes Marmite, a goop I'm quite familiar with. He describes it as "tasting like a salty, bitter, awful form of molasses." The texture is not at all like molasses. Nor the flavor. The color sort of is; it is, after all, brown, but the word "awful" really makes this already weak and unhelpful description sound as if written by a 10 year old. One example among many I could choose.

Then there are the endlessly unfunny asides. If we were casually chatting on an airplane, I might find his little jokes amusing. (Though I doubt it.) But the snide and unwitty remarks of the "this is also used in the manufacture of anti-freeze" variety make this a loser. Am I supposed to be afraid? Worried? Amused? Or just what?

He repeatedly uses terms without defining them (e.g., crumb) but with other terms repeats the definition. A glossary might have been nice.

Ultimately, there is nothing much here. Endless tales of huge tanks and vats and train cars and spinning things and precipitating liquids and complex processes (many of which he is not allowed to see) all blur together. Do I really need to read how each one is made? All these less than 2% chemicals that are swirled together in a process he never sees? Maybe someone cares, but I did not. I bought this book having never heard of it, based on these delightful reviews, but I was not delighted.

Anyone who's ever eaten a Twinkie remembers the experience, even if it's been years. The textured, firm, sweet dough combined with the intense vanilla creme (not cream, mind you) filling is distinctive and, especially when you're a kid, delicious, yet obviously somehow sinful and wrong and unnatural at the same time.

Twinkie, Deconstructed is a perfect "sick day in bed" book: a sort of "science lite" non-fiction tome that's fascinating, informative, and non-polemical while still making a political point. I finished it in a little over a day while in the hospital.

The concept is brilliant. Prompted by a question from one of his kids, Ettlinger, a long-time science and consumer products writer, tells a story of traveling around the world to find out where each of the dozens of ingredients in a Hostess Twinkie comes from--in the order in which they're listed on the package. In doing so, he visits a lot more factories than farms, and encounters many more industrial centrifuges than ploughs.

Some reviewers think that Ettlinger got co-opted into the "Twinkie-Industrial Complex" (as he calls it) during the writing of the book. They think that he is too accepting, too uncritical, and indeed too friendly to the various large corporate interests who show him (or, in many cases, refuse to show him) around their facilities and processes. But I think he's smarter and more subversive than that.

Here's something from page 195:

"In an undisclosed location, perhaps in an industrial park near Chicago, maybe in rural, central Pennsylvania, possibly in riparian Delaware, in a plant full of tanks, railroad sidings, and a maze of pipes and catwalks, big, stainless steel vats are filled with fresh, hot, luscious, liquefied sorbitan monostearate."

Or check out this label-text Kremlinology from page 255:

"...while it seems that not one natural color is use in Twinkies, sometime the label has said 'color added,' which would make me suspect that annato, the butter and cheese colorant that is popular with [Hostess's] competitors, is indeed in the mix. But their punctuation indicates otherwise. 'Color added' is followed by '(yellow 5 red 40)' which would seem to indicate grammatically that they are the only colors involved."

One of the most obvious stylistic effects throughout the book is that whenever Ettlinger first mentions a trademarked product, he adds the registered trademark symbol: Yoo-hoo(R) Chocolate Drink, PAM(R) cooking spray, Clabber Girl(R), Davis(R), and Calumet(R) baking soda, and so on. Normally you'd only see things written that way in a press release or corporate brochure.

You might think he was simply pressured by company lawyers, but when I read the book every trademark symbol seemed to me like a wink from the author, an unavoidable reminder that while he's breezing along in his personal, gee-whiz style, he hasn't forgotten that the process of Twinkie-making is huge and industrial, one that has only a little to do with baking and nourishment, and a lot with multinational chemical firms and drill rigs and mines and massive tract farms.

Twinkie, Deconstructed is no Silent Spring, or even Super Size Me. It's neither a manifesto nor a satire. It's not horrified at what Twinkies are made of--because ingredients originating from petroleum or minerals rather than food plants or animals is part of the Twinkie legend. What's surprising is only how far some of those ingredients have to travel, and how extensively they have to be mangled, reprocessed, ground, dissolved, flung, and dried before they get used in even minute quantities to bake those little cakes.

Ettlinger's book is, I think, more effective because he doesn't politicize it overtly. He simply tells us, repeatedly and relentlessly, about conveyor belts, pipes, pressure vessels, railroad cars, noxious chemical reactions, huge stainless steel tanks, monstrous earth-moving equipment, and what obviously must be enormous quantities of energy used in all those processes. He talks just as blithely about factories that refuse to tell him where their ingredients come from at all as he does friendly chemical engineers who show him around less secretive facilities. You can draw your own conclusions.

I did find myself wishing, at the end, that he had calculated how much energy a single Twinkie consumes in its manufacture--how much oil or coal or gas, or how many kilowatt-hours of electricity, it takes to bring all those ingredients together. And I was surprised that, after nearly 300 pages of background, Ettlinger never actually describes step-by-step how a Twinkie is made at the Hostess bakery.

But Twinkie, Deconstructed is a fun read. Whether you feel safe eating a Twinkie afterwards is a message you can safely infer from the book, rather than having to be clubbed over the head with it.

So I'm at the bookstore, and I noticed this bright orange book on a rack, with a large Twinkie on the cover. Twinkies? I'm fascinated by Twinkies, and have been ever since I put a pair into a jar in 2005, where they sit to this day, stale and hard as rocks but otherwise unspoiled. I looked at the title: Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated into What America Eats. Oh, I like that. I am highly disturbed by the amount of processing that goes into our food. So I bought it and took it home and read it, even though I knew nothing about the author, because I like surprises in books. And I got one. It seems after reading this that Steve Ettlinger, the man who wrote this and several other food books, is not horrified as I am by the chemicals and machinery that process our food, nor is he disgusted by the source of most of the food additives. Oh, no: he finds it fascinating. It was like reading a canned travelogue by a corporate shill as he goes on an ersatz tour of discovery. The majority of the commentary in the book was along the lines of, "Gee, that machine over there, where they're mixing corn with six different toxic chemicals in order to make it look bright orange, is really, really big!" or "Golly, ain't it a wonder that such a delicious food comes from a petrochemical factory in China! If only we in America could eliminate our labor laws, we could make this wondrous product ourselves!" I took to reading this book in Troy McClure's voice, since it reminded me so much of his Meat Council film on how meat gets from the farm into your stomach. Everything was spun so that it was supposed to depict the miracle of modern industry, the wondrousness of how these massive, shadowy chemical conglomerates manage to make food so easy to make and sell, and so appealing to an unsuspecting public, on such a huge scale. Whenever he visited one of these plants, he was not allowed to see the process that goes into making the actual additive, but he was allowed to gawp at the 80-story buildings and the 1000-ton train cars and the 1,000,000-gallon mixing tanks. Every single company he describes, the first thing he talks about is the scale: how big the buildings and machines are, how much material they take in and how much they pump out every day, every year.

I suppose you could, as some of my fellow reviewers did, see the book as raising questions and provoking thought. But how much of a question needs to be raised here? How much thought do we need to put into these things? The entire thing was disgusting to me. The whole system boils down to this: we eat grains like wheat, soybeans and corn; minerals like salt and soda ash (baking soda), and oil. Lots and lots of oil. I don't know what it is about petrochemicals that make them so handy for the artificial food industry, but the last several chapters of the book (He wrote it in the same order as the list of ingredients on a Twinkie wrapper, which is clever but tends to de-emphasize the most horrid things, which are in there in much smaller proportions that high fructose corn syrup -- though that's really pretty nasty, too.) are all about different ways that oil and natural gas get messed with chemically in order to produce flavorings, dyes, and preservatives. And reading all of this with this author who actually takes the word of the company that all of the toxins are removed after processing and the food is perfectly healthy for human consumption -- it was amazing to watch him swallow that one; it was like watching a boa constrictor eat a Vespa -- gave the whole thing such a surreal aura that it was even more bizarre and uncomfortable to read than it should have been just based on the subject. It amazed me that someone could find out so many terrible things and think so little of it.

Then again, I guess it was like a little slice of America.

I never thought I'd find such an extensive library on zone food blocks, including ready-made TV dinners and fast food. It does not include everything, but it makes a very good attempt at doing so.

This book is my "go to" for information for the zone diet. I can figure out how to eat anything and still stay in the zone. I would highly reccommend it.

This is a very nice book to have as a reference if you're on the Zone diet. It has a very comprehensive and detailed list of frozen dinners, broken down into blocks.

The reason I'm giving it three stars, though, is the fact that the book is not very user-friendly. It's VERY bulky, so I have to type grocery lists on the computer of what I can from the book when I go shopping. I also wish the fast foods section was more of a "This is what you can, and can't eat" reference. It tells you how many blocks each food is, but when you're at Wendy's, chances are, you won't have the book handy.

A helpful tip to remember is: If you're going to buy this book, highlight what you think you can eat and then write it down and keep in in your wallet or purse for the store or when you're out to eat. Also write down how many blocks each meal is so that you'll know if you need to compensate for a fat or carb during the meal. Then you have a great reference at home with everything you need, and a travel-sized version!

Good information.
Many fresh fruits and vegetables are not listed. Mostly canned, frozen, and processed foods are listed.
The organization within the main categories is difficult to navigate. Rather than listing "fruits" within the Carbohydrate category and putting all fruits under that heading, they are listed alphabetically within the category and mixed in with everyting else.

Sears wants you to think he has come up with a complicated system which he calls The Zone.

In reality, all you need is to eat naturally, like our ancestors did thousands of years ago. Eat greens, vegetables, berries, fruit, mushrooms, nuts. Eat lean meat (our ancestors hunted for healthy, lean animals). Eat egg whites, but avoid yolks. Most of the modern contaminants stick to fat molecules, and yolks are mostly fat. Plus it's the wrong type of fat, as chickens are not fed properly. Eat wild fish (but not too often; don't forget about pollutants).

That's it. Forget grains (and everything made from them). Forget potatoes and hard beans, soda and juices. Forget vegetable oils. All that junk is completely unnatural for humans to eat; our ancestors couldn't imagine that was edible. And that's why we have diseases that they didn't have.

Forget milk. Milk is only good for babies under 3 years old. Studies show that milk (and even yogurt) causes hyperinsulinemia (insulin "spikes" that lead to diabetes etc.) in adults.

Yes, his advice to take fish oil is great. Farm-raised animals are fed with junk food; consequently, they lack certain fatty acids that are vital for our health. Fish oil is a convenient way of restoring the balance. But Sears' fish oil is not the purest and cheapest on the market.

I'm a physiologist, and I've helped a number of people to change their eating habits. Those people have gotten rid of many problems, like obesity, allergies, asthma, arthritis, and excessive fatigue. And they don't complain that the food is not delicious enough. They learned to use their imagination a little bit and combine various healthy foods to create their nice and simple "recipes", and realized they enjoy their food even more than before.