Hopefully, years from now, Eating Well for Optimum Health will be looked upon as the book that saved the health of millions of Americans and transformed the way we eat--not as the book we overlooked at our own peril.

Eating Well For Optimum Health: The Essential Guide to Bringing Health and Pleasure Back to Eating clarifies the mishmash of conflicting news, research, hype, and hearsay regarding diet, nutrition, and supplementation, and further establishes the judicious Dr. Weil, the director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, as a savior of public well-being.

If you've ever wondered what "partially hydrogenated soybean oil" really is, been perplexed by contrary news reports about recommended dosages for supplements, or questioned the safety of using aluminum pots for cooking, Dr. Weil will make it all clear.

Weil (pronounced "while") bravely criticizes many of the major diet books on the market, and backs up his admonitions with science. He warns readers to not fall under "the spell" of the anticarbohydrate Atkins Diet, but also criticizes the eating plan advocated by Dr. Dean Ornish--which has been granted Medicare coverage for cardiac patients--as being too low fat for the majority of people. (The omega-3 fatty acids missing from Ornish's diet are essential for hormone production and the control of inflammation, he says.)

It's also fascinating to learn that autism, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease may be caused by omega-3 fatty acid deficiencies, while an excess of omega-6 fatty acids--very common in the typical American diet--can exacerbate arthritis symptoms. Weil's explanation of the chemistry of fats will prove difficult for most readers, but few will want to eat fast-food French fries ever again after reading his appalling reasons for avoiding them, which go way beyond their well-documented heart-clogging capabilities.

After a thorough rundown of nutritional basics and a primer of micronutrients such as vitamins, minerals, fiber, and phytochemicals, Weil unveils what he feels is "the best diet in the world," with 85 recipes, such as Salmon Cakes and Oven-Fried Potatoes, that are healthy, tasty, quick to prepare, and complete with nutritional breakdowns. He includes a stirring chapter on safe weight loss (he sympathizes with the overweight and comically recalls his one-week trial of a safflower oil-diet while an undergraduate).

Other, equally enlightening sections include tips for eating out and shopping for food (with warnings on various additives and a guide to organics), and a wondrous appendix with dietary recommendations for dozens of health concerns, including allergies, asthma, cancer prevention, mood disorders, and pregnancy. Eating Well is an indispensable consumer reference and one not afraid to lambaste the diet industry and empower the public with information about which the majority of doctors--to the detriment of the public health--are ignorant. --Erica Jorgensen

From Publishers Weekly

Now considered one of holistic medicine's most authoritative voices, Weil (Spontaneous Healing; 8 Weeks to Optimum Health) provides a common-sense approach to healthy eating. While much of this information can be found in other volumes, Weil illuminates the often confusing and conflicting ideas circulating about good nutrition, addressing specific health issues and offering nutritional guidance to help heal and prevent major illnesses. Of particular value is his examination of recent fads, such as low-carbohydrate, vegan and "Asian" diets, with an eye toward debunking the myths about them while highlighting their valuable aspects. Readers will appreciate the brief stories of individuals who have made big changes in their eating habits and solved chronic health problems, as well as recipes for foods that Weil feels will satisfy nutritional needs and the taste buds. Although not the first to link the rise of cancer, heart disease and obesity with the now-prevalent consumption of fast food and processed foods that contain a lot of sugar and few, if any, micronutrients, Weil's articulate plea to reflect on the consequences is convincing. Despite Weil's emphasis on a diet of fresh fruits and vegetables, unprocessed foods and much less meat and dairy products than most Americans are used to, readers will notice a profoundly realistic observation of what changes they can readily incorporate into their busy lives. And they will be heartened to learn that they can eat nutritious foods and still get much pleasure from them. (Mar.) - Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Women's Health Perfect Body Diet: The Ultimate Weight Loss and Workout Plan to Drop Stubborn Pounds and Get Fit for Life! is an excellent addition to the literature on women's health and weight loss. It will help veterans of the dieting roller-coaster overcome hunger, build lean muscle mass, burn fat and maintain energy and mood levels.

Developed by the editors of Women's Health magazine, the eight-week program consists of two eating plans, with each of the five-to-six daily meals containing a balance of protein, fat and carbohydrate. After determining body shape, calculating ideal weight and doing a simple test for carbohydrate tolerance, readers will know which plan to follow.

Both plans pivot around hunger-banishing fiber, particularly glucomannan, a soluble fiber that stimulates satiety, helps burn fat and is featured in many of the plan recipes. Although daily meals for the entire program are charted, readers will learn enough about perfect and not-so-perfect proteins, fats and carbohydrates for their type to create meals that are low in sugar, high in nutrients and efficiently metabolized by the body.

The exercise portion of the plan is rigorous: at least 30 minutes of physical activity every day of the week (three days each, strength training and cardio workouts; one day of general physical activity), but even those with no gym experience will be able to follow the detailed daily routines. In fact, this convincing presentation of the benefits of calorie-burning exercise may cause many to dive in with enthusiasm, knowing that they can eat well and maintain their weight. (Jan.) - Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A top nutritionist provides, in this great book called The Raw Food Detox Diet: The Five-Step Plan for Vibrant Health and Maximum Weight Loss, her simple, proven five-level diet plan to safely make the transition to eating raw foods, and to detoxify and achieve a perfect body no matter how you eat now.

The raw food craze has taken off, as raw restaurants spring up and celebrities, models, and other fans tout the effects of eating raw.

However, many people who are intrigued by raw food simply don't know how to make the transition from what they're eating now, or how to achieve the benefits of eating raw without giving up their lifestyle or the foods they love. Natalia Rose, an in-demand nutritionist, shows how in "The Raw Food Detox Diet".

Whether your diet is primarily made up of meat and potatoes, or tofu and tempeh, you can incorporate the flavor and lasting health benefits of raw food into your life with this groundbreaking diet book to energize and inspire you to achieve your goals safely and easily.
About the Author

Natalia Rose works with some of the world's most health- and body-conscious men and women. Her private practice is in the heart of midtown Manhattan, where she is sought after by a wide variety of clients, including models, actors, socialites, and media personalities—primarily women ages 23 to 52. She has been in private practice for more than ten years and also served as the nutrition director for the Elizabeth Arden Spa on 5th Avenue and the FrÉdÉric Fekkai Salons and Spas.

There are many ways to eat healthy and look healthy and gorgeous. You do not have to starve or only eat vegetables and fruits either. It's quite possible to have your cake and eat it too, argues dietitian-nutritionist Blum in this bubbly, vivacious approach to living well the healthy way.

Avoiding dietary absolutes and encouraging readers to make gradual changes in their eating habits rather than drastic ones (which are often hard to keep up), Blum's sensible guide is sure to resonate with young women.

She makes compelling arguments for choosing organic foods-going so far as to list the top 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables-and extols the virtues of grass-fed meat and dairy. An informative chapter detailing alcohol's specific effects on women (including calorie counts for a long list of beers and cocktails) enable readers to make the most of their nights out without paying for it later.

Troubleshooting suggestions offer relief from the symptoms of everything from hangovers and herpes to smoking cessation and premenstrual discomfort. Rounded out with chapters on dietary supplements and depression, as well as a Q&A for frequently asked queries-"What kind of prepared foods (i.e., frozen dinners) are actually good for me?"-Blum's guidebook complete guide to women's health is an encouraging, smart and sisterly volume that deserves a place alongside other trusted go-to resources

Review

"Eat, Drink, and Be Gorgeous is filled with sound nutritional advice on what to eat and drink and how to repair the damage when our good intentions slip. A delightful book, as entertaining as it is educational." Nicholas Perricone, MD

"You've heard people talk about the 'feel-good book of the year'? Well, Eat, Drink, and Be Gorgeous is the 'feel gorgeous book of the year'!" Karen Salmansohn, author of Hot Mama and How to Be Happy, Dammit

"Written by one of the world's top nutritional physicians, "Eat, Play, and Be Healthy" gives scientifically sound and kitchen-tested advice on creating lifelong healthy eating habits. This book is a solution to the growing epidemic of nutrition-related health and behavior problems in children' - William Sears, M.D., author of "The Baby Book".

'An excellent guide for parents who want to provide the best possible nutritional health for their growing children' - Ronald Kleinman, M.D., former chairman of the Committee on Nutrition, American Academy of Pediatrics. With so much conflicting advice coming from the media, your friends, and parenting guides, it's hard to know whether you're making the right food choices for your kids.

Written by a leading authority on pediatric nutrition, "Eat, Play, and Be Healthy" provides answers to all your childhood nutrition questions - and much more. "Eat, Play, and Be Healthy" shows you how to feed your children to ensure that their young bodies and minds enjoy full and healthy growth at every stage of development.

Picking up where Dr. Walter C. Willett's international bestseller "Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy" left off, W. Allan Walker, M.D., shows how to apply the research-based Healthy Eating Pyramid to a child's unique needs. Drawing on his forty years of clinical research as well as the latest scientific findings, he:

• offers a scientifically proven alternative to the FDA food pyramid;
• helps you shape your kids' eating habits from the start; and,
• provides fun, delicious recipes for healthy foods kids will want to eat.

From the Back Cover

"Written by one of the world's top nutritional physicians, Eat, Play, and Be Healthy gives scientifically sound and kitchen-tested advice on creating lifelong healthy eating habits. This book is a solution to the growing epidemic of nutrition-related health and behavior problems in children."
--William Sears, M.D., author of The Baby Book

"An excellent guide for parents who want to provide the best possible nutritional health for their growing children."
--Ronald Kleinman, M.D., former chairman of the Committee on Nutrition, American Academy of Pediatrics

With so much conflicting advice coming from the media, your friends, and parenting guides, it's hard to know whether you're making the right food choices for your kids. Written by a leading authority on pediatric nutrition, Eat, Play, and Be Healthy provides answers to all your childhood nutrition questions--and much more.

Eat, Play, and Be Healthy shows you how to feed your children to ensure that their young bodies and minds enjoy full and healthy growth at every stage of development. Picking up where Dr. Walter C. Willett's international bestseller Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy left off, W. Allan Walker, M.D., shows how to apply the research-based Healthy Eating Pyramid to a child's unique needs. Drawing on his forty years of clinical research, as well as the latest scientific findings, he:

• Offers a scientifically proven alternative to the FDA food pyramid
• Helps you shape your kids' eating habits from the start
• Provides fun, delicious recipes for healthy foods kids will want to eat

There is no debate that if you want to live longer, then you need to eat healthy, exercise and lead a healthy lifestyle. Eating healthy food is important but do you know what you need to eat to be healthy? In the past, people relied on the government and commercials to tell them what they should eat but now there are more resources available so you can do your own research to find out what are best to eat for you.You can read lots of books and research papers by various organizations and believe what make sense to you. Do not follow any advice blindly. This book called Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating is a revolutionary book that will revive your understanding of what healthy food is. Aimed at nothing less than totally restructuring the diets of Americans, Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy may well accomplish its goal.

Dismantling USDA Food Pyramid

Dr. Walter C. Willett gets off to a roaring start by totally dismantling one of the largest icons in health today:

• the USDA Food Pyramid that we all learn in elementary school.

Willett's own simple pyramid has several benefits over the traditional format. His information is up-to-date, and you won't find recommendations that come from special-interest groups. His ideas are nothing radical:

• if we eat more vegetables and complex carbohydrates (no, potatoes are not complex),
• emphasize healthy fats, and
• enjoy small amounts of a tremendous variety of food, we will be healthier.

From The New England Journal of Medicine

There is an interesting dilemma for those who would influence nutrition. In many places in the world, there are governmental agencies concerned with food security, food safety, agriculture, health, and trade that may, from time to time, implement policies that are at least intended to reduce the risk of chronic diseases. Most often, when the goals of agriculture and human health clash, it is the will of the agriculture sector that prevails (remember the European Union's ``butter mountain'' and ``wine lake''?).

In the United States, perhaps more than anywhere else, this has left an opening for self-help nutrition books. In a land where individuality and self-reliance are valued above many other virtues and where disease is sometimes seen to be a mark of personal failure, gaining access to the best data on health-related food consumption may be central to maintaining control over one's health.

The quality of such books varies enormously, from the bizarre to the mundane. The feature they share is the promise of better health and control over one's destiny. Only occasionally do bona fide researchers step into the maelstrom. Enter Walter Willett of Harvard University and Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy.

Willett's book is based on evidence derived almost exclusively from large cohort studies of diet and disease. He has been the architect of several such studies and is a major contributor to what we know about methods of collecting and analyzing data; he formerly served the Journal well in this capacity.

His position in this regard is preeminent but not unchallenged. He encapsulates his position on the evidence in a new ``Healthy Eating Pyramid,'' a gauntlet thrown at the feet of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). He notes that the USDA Food Guide Pyramid, like Rudyard Kipling's elephant's child, got pulled into shape by competing interests, few of which cared about human health. He goes on, ``You deserve more accurate, less biased, and more helpful information than that found in the USDA Pyramid.'' Thus, the book brings us the promise of science in the service of nutrition, and as with any good scientific claims, Willett makes sure we know, up front, that all findings are provisional and all recommendations subject to change.

The central chapters of the book are derived from and explicate the layers of the new pyramid. Central to Willett's recommendations is the control of body weight, in which exercise, rather than caloric restriction, has the primary role. However, there is also helpful and practical advice on defensive eating strategies; for example, Willett states, ``Recognize that we are victims of our culture, one that glorifies excess.''

Indeed, much of what is presented in the book is sensible and practical and demystified. For example, the data and associated recommendations on fluid intake include the following: we should drink water; tap water is OK; soft drinks are full of empty calories; and fruit juice contains more beneficial substances and less sugar than soft drinks but cannot simply be substituted for water, because, of course, it does contain calories.

There is also useful information on more arcane subjects: for instance, we should be careful of grapefruit juice because it modifies the absorption and metabolism of a variety of drugs in ways that may be detrimental. And there is a proper assessment of coffee drinking that I like to summarize as follows. If drinking moderate amounts of coffee is your worst nutritional vice, you are in excellent shape.

Even in the area of alcohol, Willett, who has been and remains a champion of the beneficial effects of moderate consumption (which he has the courage to define), notes that if you do not drink alcohol you should not ``feel compelled'' to start. Possibly, this is a nice antidote to the widely held notion that if some is good, more is better, but his choice of words is just a little disturbing. Finally, although many self-help books with much poorer pedigrees than this one offer recipes, it is not often that they include useful rules of thumb about shopping and places to shop and even practical tips on how to make substitutions in recipes.

Are there areas where Willett's Healthy Eating Pyramid and the associated information may not be warmly embraced by others in the nutrition-and-disease research community? Certainly the switch from vilifying total fat (a position Willett abandoned early) to asserting that carbohydrate is the bad guy (a position that Willett has made his own) and that there are ``good fats'' and ``bad fats'' does not meet everybody's sniff test.

The field of nutrition and chronic disease is populated by those who will agree with Willett on none, one, two, or all three of these positions. It is probably fair to say that reality is not as clear as this book suggests. It is quite clear that diets high in potatoes, olive oil, or even sugar are not harmful to all (or beneficial to all). It seems probable that in the future there will be increasingly clearer advice that is based on metabolic variations -- variations in body shape and fat distribution and subtle genetic differences in the capacity to handle major nutrients -- and that echoes what we already know about micronutrients. It may well be that the ability to handle specific foods and nutrients differs substantially from person to person and that the only universal may prove to be Willett's central tenet: match the energy ingested to the energy expended by controlling both eating and exercise.

It is an interesting paradox that doctors, scientists, and engineers are highly regarded in Western societies but that only a minority of people in those societies like reading about science or are even interested in the topic. Couple that with data from Robin Dunbar of the University of Liverpool in Britain, who found that perhaps two thirds of all human speech is gossip, and it will not be surprising if Willett's book (perhaps like those by Stephen Hawking) sells well but has no impact at all on human behavior or even understanding. John D. Potter, M.D., Ph.D.