Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating - Hardcover

Walter C. Willett M.D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684863375 ISBN 13: 9780684863375

Publisher: Free Press, 2001

Synopsis

The Harvard Medical School and School of Public Health present a revolutionary new approach to a lifetime of healthy eating, discussing problems with the USDA's Food Pyramid, the difficulties with conventional nutritional wisdom, and key foods that help prevent cancer, heart disease, and other ailments. 60,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

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

About the Author:

Walter C. Willett, M.D., is chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School. A world-renowned researcher, he is one of the leaders of the famous Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Dr. Willett has won many honors, including the Mott Prize, the prestigious award of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0684863375
• ISBN 13: 9780684863375
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304