Prescription for Dietary Wellness: Using Foods to Heal 2nd Edition

Like its companion books--the number-one bestselling Prescription for Nutritional Healing and the newer Prescription for Herbal Healing--Prescription for Dietary Wellness offers authoritative information that is research-based and clearly written, making it easy for the reader to quickly find the subjects in which he or she is interested and to incorporate the dietary recommendations into his or her daily life.

Updates in this second edition include:
€ phytochemicals and antioxidants
€ foods that boost immunity
€ how to choose the most nutritious foods
€ "standout" healing foods
€ how to design a diet for your individual optimal health, taking into account special dietary needs such as those of women, children, vegetarians, and others
€ food combining
€ diet-based healing techniques such as juicing, fasting, and detoxifying
€ how to avoid potential dietary dangers, including threats to water safety, foodborne diseases, food additives, food irradiation, antibiotics, genetically engineered foods, and undesirable substances such as caffeine, cholesterol, and sugar.

While not a cookbook, Prescription for Dietary Wellness also includes a number of easy, wholesome recipes and advice on cooking methods. It is a complete, practical guide to eating for good health.

As Hippocrates said, "Leave your drugs in the chemist's pot if you can heal the patient with food." Seems people didn't listen to him, because as the U.S. Surgeon General said more than 2,000 years after him, "Two-thirds of all deaths in 1997 in this country could be attributed to diet." They'd both likely advocate the information contained in Prescription for Dietary Wellness, a massive reference aimed at preventing and treating disease through diet. The Balchs, authors of the 3-million-plus bestseller Prescription for Nutritional Healing, which focuses mainly on supplements and herbs, have created another masterpiece. This book gives a solid education in nutrition basics, with references to the latest research. It also includes flavorful, antioxidant-packed recipes, and adds advice that has been proven effective for treating various ailments using specific foods and supplements. The book also includes:

• Charts with warning signs of disease and nutrient deficiency, along with guidelines to help start the healing process
• Charts that detail the nutrient needs of various organs, and which foods best supply the nutrients
• Lengthy chapters on specific categories of foods, such as beans, cruciferous vegetables, oils, and grains, explaining how best to cook them and the health benefits they confer
• More than 100 pages of quick, healthy, mostly low-fat recipes designed to pack the most nutritional punch for the calories

The Balchs add advice about live juice and herbal preparations and cleansing (i.e., fasting and enemas, including a specific six-day cleansing diet). While this guide can feel a bit overwhelming at times (there are so many nutrients to consider, so many veggies and whole grains to consume), it's certainly not too technical, even for folks who could use a copy of Nutrition for Dummies, and it certainly succeeds in its mission of helping foster better dietary habits for good health.