Product Description

From the best-selling author of Eight Weeks to Optimum Health, an original, reassuring and practical book on food, diet and nutrition, including 75 - 100 recipes. In his new book, the immensely popular and hugely trusted Dr Andrew Weil focuses on how food can influence health and well-being. He makes clear that an optimal diet should not only supply the basic needs of the body for calories and nutrients but should also reduce risks of disease and fortify the body's defenses and intrinsic mechanisms of healing. Dr Weil establishes that how we eat is an important determinant of how we feel and how we age and that food can function as medicine to influence a variety of common aliments.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #169535 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'One of the 25 most important people in America' TIME 'Warning: this man can seriously affect your health. For the better' GUARDIAN 'Full of common sense...what is comforting about the Weil philosophy is that he recognizes conventional medicine has its uses' DAILY EXPRESS 'His advice is pragmatic, sensitive and positive. His central concept is that our body has a healing system: learn how to use it.' EVENING STANDARD 'At the end of this book you will be able to decipher the labels on food products with a health-trained eye.' MAYO NEWS 'All the answers to your questions are in Dr Weil's most comprehensive book to date.' CAPITAL LINE

Guardian
'Warning: this man can seriously affect your health. For the better'

Express
'Full of common sense...what is comforting about the Weil philosophy is that he recognizes conventional medicine has its uses'

Customer Reviews

Read This Book After Live Right 4 Your Type
I have found Live Right 4 Your Type to be the best single book I have read about healthy eating, but I could appreciate that book as much as I did because of what I learned from reading Eating Well for Optimum Health. I recommend that you read both books, with this one being the second in order.

If you are tired of trying to make sense out of all of the conflicting claims about foods, diets, and various diseases, this book is your answer. The author bravely takes on any school of thought about food (including unhealthy ones), and provides a balanced perspective on what is wrong with that approach.

Health is not only about eating. It is also about exercise, sleep, relationships with others, genetics, and environment. But for the part of health that relates to food, this book is the overall be-all and end-all for now. I say that not because of any weakness the book has, but simply because scientific information about health is expanding so rapidly.

As Dr. Weil points out, the information he shares in this book is often news to medical students and physicians. Food and health are subjects that are poorly connected in our minds at this time.

The book begins with an excellent section on what food means to us. While most health books focus on the disease related issues, Dr. Weil points out that food not only runs our bodies as fuel, but also is a source of pleasure (did you ever think you would hear that from a physician?), a way to create social interaction, a part of health, and a way to address some diseases toward restoring health.

The second section is on the basics of what our bodies need. This is where scientific studies are neatly put together into a consistent description. I was especially impressed with the section on fats. It is very easy to omit getting the right fatty acids in your diet, and I was pleased to see this issue addressed well here.

The third section then looks at the worst diet you could possibly eat (the fast food diet) and explains why the food is so appealing, yet why those french fries could be the death of you (for more reasons than you probably now know about -- beware of reused cooked fats!).

The fourth section goes on to look at the best diet you can eat. Don't worry! It's nothing extreme. In fact, those who are a bit fanatic about their food regimens may be disappointed. I was pleased to find that my regular Saturday lunch of vegetable soup and a half a tuna sandwich are a good idea. There's also no harping on the need to maintain some extremely low weight.

Weight is the next subject, and he looks both at how you should think about what your weight should be and how to get to that weight and stay there. A lot of the material on the satisfaction duration of the food you eat will be new and of interest to you.

The next section was also very helpful to me. It talks about how to buy food and how to decide what to eat and order in restaurants. Since I travel a lot, I always need help with the latter. I got a number of good ideas.

The final section was on recipes that are healthy and quick to make. Many of them sounded very appealing to me, and I was pleased to see that there were more for desserts than for any other part of the meal!

The appendices are very helpful. One summarizes the optimum foods to eat; another looks at how foods can help you deal with various diseases; and another summarizes nutrition information.

Dr Weil can definitely help you have a good time with your food and enjoy a healthy life, too! That's the kind of balance that we all need in our thinking about eating.

Indispensable reading
Of the many health books I have read, this is undoubtedly one of the best. In addition to providing a wealth of nutritional information, Dr. Weil evaluates various diet plans and exposes the dangers inherent in a number of currently popular ones. He offers medically sound and practical guidelines for healthy and enjoyable eating, stressing that for a diet to be followed successfully over a lifetime it must be a source not only of ample nourishment but also of ample pleasure and that healthful food need involve no compromise in taste. An especially useful feature of the book is the tips it contains for shopping and menu planning as well as for making sensible choices when dining out. Readers will also find Dr. Weil's advice very helpful when consulting cookbooks. For example, following the basic principles set forth in his book, I have discovered a gold mine of great eating in Sonia Uvezian's masterpiece, "Recipes and Remembrances from an Eastern Mediterranean Kitchen", which is filled with recipes for a myriad of easy-to-prepare, utterly delicious, and wonderfully healthful dishes that have earned raves from my family and guests.

An authoritative guide
About a year ago I took the advice offered in a customer review of the hardcover edition of this book and purchased the paperback edition as well as Sonia Uvezian's "Recipes and Remembrances from an Eastern Mediterranean Kitchen". I have been using both volumes regularly ever since. Dr. Weil's advice is sound, realistic, humane, and practical. I especially appreciate his concerns about the unhealthiness of fast food and his recommendation of the Mediterranean diet. Uvezian's book is a treasure trove of recipes for dishes that are both truly healthful and utterly delicious, and it is fascinating to read. These two books are exceptionally informative and easy to follow. I recommend them highly.