Eating Well For Optimum Health : The Essential Guide to Food, Diet, and Nutrition

Eating Well For Optimum Health : The Essential Guide to Food, Diet, and Nutrition

by Andrew Weil M.D., Andrew Weil

Amazon.com
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 anti-carbohydrate 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 Booklist March 1, 2000
Two of the four parts of the program Weil so persuasively presented in the mega-selling Eight Weeks to Optimum Health (1997) dealt with oral intake of food and dietary supplements, respectively. This book expands upon those two constituents, proposing how and explaining why one should follow Weil's dietary advice long beyond the eight weeks it takes to get healthy. That advice is based on seven propositions: we must eat to live, eating is pleasurable, food can be simultaneously healthy and pleasurable, eating is often an important social activity, diet reflects personal and cultural identity, how one eats affects health, and changing diet can help manage disease and restore health. One huge and five much shorter chapters follow, and as Weil did in previous books, he appends to each chapter one or two personal testimonials to the value of its counsel. The big chapter explains human nutrition by considering the macronutrients (carbohydrates, fats, proteins) and the micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, fiber, phytochemicals) separately, and the former at much greater length and depth; this chapter alone makes the book more solidly informational than Eight Weeks. The short chapters outline the "worst" and "best" diets "in the world," mull over weight-loss dieting, advise on grocery shopping and dining out, and encourage personal cooking. Clarity, pertinence, and reasonableness again characterize Weil's writing, and a hefty clutch of recipes concludes. Ray Olson

From Kirkus Reviews
From a familiar, reputable--if sometimes offbeat--source, a worthwhile discussion of how to formulate a healthy approach to eating. Weil doesn't look for easy answers, or absolute rules for readers. Instead, he begins by explaining the seven basic propositions of his own nutritional philosophy, beginning with the fact that we have to eat to live (Or do we? Throughout history there have been unsubstantiated reports of persons who survive without eating). Second, eating is a major source of pleasure in life, and any nutritional recommendations that don't acknowledge that fact are doomed to fail. Weil's take on it is that many so-called healthy eating proponents--nutritionists, dieticians, and diet-book writers--themselves derive no particular pleasure from eating. Weil's third proposition is that foods which are healthy and those that are pleasurable are not mutually exclusive. His fourth and fifth points suggest that we recognize eating as a social interaction, and that what we eat reflects our personal and cultural identities. Finally, how we eat is also a determinant of health; and improving eating habits is one strategy for being healthy. Weil looks in depth at basic nutritional facts--again, happily, making clear that there is much we don't know. He examines the world's worst and best diets, offers help with buying food and eating out, and includes some of his own favorite recipes here. Entertaining, thoughtful, and educational. (First printing of 250,000; Book-of-the-Month Club main selection) -- Copyright Š2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
From one of our most trusted authorities on health and alternative health care, a comprehensive and reassuring book about food, diet, and nutrition.

Building on the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of his Spontaneous Healing -- the body's capacity to heal itself -- and presenting the kind of practical information that informed his enormous best-seller 8 Weeks to Optimum Health, Dr. Weil now provides us with a program for improving our well-being by making informed choices about how and what we eat. He explains the safest and most effective ways to lose weight; how diet can affect energy and sleep; how foods can exacerbate or minimize specific physical problems; how much fat to include in our diet; what nutrients are in which foods; and much, much more. He makes clear that an optimal diet will both supply the basic needs of the body and fortify the body's defenses and mechanisms of healing. And he provides easy-to-prepare recipes in which the food is as sensually satisfying as it is beneficial.

Eating Well for Optimum Health stands to change -- for the better and the healthier -- our most fundamental ideas about eating.

From the Publisher
In essence, this book combines the best elements of Spontaneous Healing and 8 Weeks to Optimum Health and builds on them. Unlike other books by authors who simply say, follow my diet and all will be well, and pay lip service to clichés about nutrition, Andy wants you to understand exactly how food affects your body.

As in Spontaneous Healing, in this book he builds a scientific foundation for what is to follow. He reviews what we know scientifically about the components of our diets and how they affect our health, for better or worse; exactly how our bodies process various foods; and whether it has a positive or negative impact. He has an overview, and then separate chapters, on three macronutrients: fats, carbohydrates, and proteins.

The Andy turns very practical, as he did in 8 Weeks to Optimum Health. He defines the optimum diet, explains it, analyzes it. He discusses food preparation and ingredients. He discusses nutritional medicine, that is, how diet becomes a tool for battling specific maladies. And then he adds about 100 recipes.

Those recipes lead me to a vitally important aspect of the book. I have visited Andy's home many times, and he's cooked many meals for us. He is one helluva cook. He is serious about cooking, he knows his stuff, he's creative -- and perhaps all of that is true because he loves to eat. And that leads me to the point Andy emphasized to me over and over, a point that comes clear in the book: healthy eating and pleasurable eating are not only compatible, but essential -- not only because eating can be such a pleasurable part of life, but because great tasting food is a necessary inducement for adhering to the optimum diet that will help you achieve maximum health.

Make no mistake: Andy is on a mission in his life's work, and therefore in this book. He did not invent holistic medicine, of course, but his ability to incorporate the best aspects of traditional Western medicine and the best of alternative medicine has led to a new kind of medicine called Integrative Medicine, which is now being taught in medical schools, written about in scholarly journals -- and helping millions of Americans. Andy has an obligation to many of those people who read his books, read his newsletters, visit his Web site, and hear him talk -- and those people won't be disappointed by Eating Well for Optimum Health. I rather think they will be thrilled.

About the Author
Andrew Weil, M.D., a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, is the founder of the Center for Integrative Medicine in Tuscon, Arizona, and is director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. He is the author of seven previous books and has made two television programs for PBS. He lives near Tuscon.