Healthy Eating and Nutritional Information

Eating for Life: Your Guide to Great Health, Fat Loss and Increased Energy!
Bill Phillips

Did you truly enjoy the food you ate today? Do you really like the way you look and feel? Are you consistently enjoying great health and high energy?
Bill Phillips, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Body-for-LIFE, believes your answer to all of the above questions should be, "Yes!" He feels that food should be a source of pure pleasure. A source of positive, abundant energy! A "sure thing" in a world of much uncertainty.
Phillips, who's widely regarded as today's most successful fitness author, has firm beliefs which go against the grain of today's popular weight-loss methods. "Diets, all of them, are potentially dangerous, most always dumb and ultimately a dead-end street!" he insists. "Eventually, anyone and everyone who's at all concerned with their health must learn how to feed their body, not how to starve it."
Instead, Phillips encourages a safe and sound solution which includes eating balanced, nutrient-rich meals, frequently throughout the day. "This is what works in the long run," he explains.
Rich with common sense and science, Eating for Life has rhyme and reason. It is specific. There are very clear dos and don'ts which help people enjoy food and improve their overall fitness.
Bill's approach, which he calls the "Eating for Lifestyle," has already helped thousands of people break free from the dieting dilemma and discover that, contrary to pop-culture belief, food is friend, not foe. Used intelligently, it nourishes the body and mind, satisfies the appetite, calms cravings, renews health and lifts energy.
Like Bill Phillips' Body-for-LIFE, this is a tell-it-like-it-is book. There's no promise of a quick fix. No metabolic tricks or so-called miracles. Just straightforward, clear, concise, practical and appropriate principles for eating right... for life.

Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating
Walter C. Willett

Aimed at nothing less than totally restructuring the diets of Americans, Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy may well accomplish its goal. 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. He blames many of the pyramid's recommendations--6 to 11 servings of carbohydrates, all fats used sparingly--for much of the current wave of obesity. At first this may read differently than any diet book, but Willett also makes a crucial, rarely mentioned point about this icon: "The thing to keep in mind about the USDA Pyramid is that it comes from the Department of Agriculture, the agency responsible for promoting American agriculture, not from the agencies established to monitor and protect our health." It's no wonder that dairy products and American-grown grains such as wheat and corn figure so prominently in the USDA's recommendations.
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. You'll find some surprises as well, such as doubts about the overall benefits of soy (unless you're willing to eat a pound and a half of tofu a day), and that nuts, with their "good" fat content, are a terrific snack. Relying on research rather than anecdotes, this is a solidly written nutritional guide that will show you the real story behind how food is digested, from the glycemic index for carbs to the wisdom of adding a multivitamin to your diet. Willett combines research with matter-of-fact language and a no-nonsense tone that turns academic studies into easily understandable suggestions for living. --Jill Lightner

Foods That Harm, Foods That Heal: An A - Z Guide to Safe and Healthy Eating
Reader's Digest

In a blizzard of conflicting nutritional claims and information, here is a book that gets down to basics, debunks many myths, and gives the reader a useful and comprehensive look at food, nutrition, and health. Based on sound science and the research of more than 300 nutritional experts worldwide, it is well organized and indexed, and will be a refreshingly clear reference for anyone who wants to know about nutrition and health.
Alphabetical listings in this clearly written resource span general categories of illnesses, food groups, additives, and normal life passages, such as aging. Other entries refer to specific medical conditions or individual dietary elements--from acne and alcohol to zucchini and zwieback. Each medical entry recommends helpful foods, followed by those that should be avoided. The format allows easy access to information, with entries offering straightforward advice, explanations, and answers to pertinent questions. Case studies illustrate examples of positive changes in eating habits or lifestyle that can lead to improved health.

The Get with the Program! Guide to Good Eating: Great Food for Good Health
Bob Greene

"Eat sensibly and exercise," is Bob Greene's message, and in a friendly and personal style, he shows you how. Greene, an exercise physiologist and Oprah Winfrey's trainer, focuses on diet with a wealth of sound information and helpful strategies. Greene starts with a cutting overview of destructive diets, including those popular today. Then, after reviewing exercise essentials, he presents a refreshingly sensible plan for nutritious, healthy eating, with tools for keeping intake moderate. One key is eating breakfast, which boosts metabolism and helps you eat less all day. Another is distributing your calories over the course of the day rather than eating a lot at any one meal. You won't get bored with Greene's 85 enticing recipes, including Scrambled Egg Whites with Spinach and Orange, Breakfast Fried Rice, Gingered Butternut Squash Soup, Fish Chowder, Portabella Mushroom Burgers, Pan-Seared Fillet of Tilapia with Mango Tomato Salsa and Lentil Pancake, and Chocolate Almond Angel Food Cake. Greene's other books and CDs in the Make the Connection (with Winfrey) and Get with the Program series helped millions start a fitness program. This one will help people concerned with weight loss and health take their next steps towards a nutritious, moderate-calorie, lifetime eating plan. --Joan Price

Eating Well For Optimum Health: The Essential Guide to Bringing Health and Pleasure Back to Eating
Andrew Weil

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. It 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

The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia: A Comprehensive Resource for Healthy Eating
Rebecca Wood

The one-of-a-kind encyclopedia of natural, whole foods that shows you how to eat right and feel better.
To a large degree, the quality of what we eat determines our health, and many cultures understand that food is the best medicine for what ails us. Arranged alphabetically, fully cross-referenced and indexed, and illustrated with line drawings, The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia provides information on how to select, prepare, store, and use medicinally more than 1,000 common and uncommon whole foods, from acorn to zucchini and aduki (a healthful Japanese bean) to zapote (a tropical fruit). Sidebar anecdotes, unique recipes, historical background, and a complete glossary of terms also contribute to the book's modern, user-friendly format.
For three decades, Rebecca Wood has conducted workshops and seminars on whole foods cookery and the properties of foods according to Western, Ayurvedic, and Chinese models. The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia shares her wisdom with a new generation of readers at a time when the benefits of holistic medicine are being recognized by the entire medical community.
Wood received both the 1998 James Beard Award and the Julia Child/IACP Award for her latest book, The Splendid Grain.

The Acid Alkaline Balance Diet : An Innovative Program for Ridding Your Body of Acidic Wastes
Felicia Drury Kliment

Balancing the body's acid alkaline pH factor to improve health is the hot new treatment in alternative medicine. The Acid Alkaline Balance Diet clarifies for you this cutting-edge option with an easy-to-follow food combination program and herbal therapy regime that redefines the notion of a "well-balanced diet." By balancing the body's acidity levels, this simple plan can help toward curing various medical conditions, including arthritis, hepatitis, insomnia, alcoholism, and kidney disease. With information organized by affliction, you can quickly find the help you need. Anecdotal success stories offer inspiring evidence that this dietary/lifestyle change really works.