Food and You

A women's guide to nutrition discusses foods that speed up metabolism to help women control weight, women's top ten comfort foods, twenty key fatigue-fighting foods, herbal teas, the impact of hormones on appetite and food preferences, nutritional remedies, and more. Tour.

Journalistic in tone, this review of women's relationships to food is aimed at women for whom eating is fraught with anxiety, although many of its topics-dieting, body image, self-esteem, eating disorders, midlife weight gain, breast cancer, cholesterol, heart disease, metabolism, PMS-are common topics of women's magazines and daily papers. The book is organized into five main areas: Food and Your Emotions; Food and Your Health; Food and Your Female Body; Food and Your Weight; and Food and Your Mealtime Strategy (covering shopping, cooking, dining out, snacking and traveling). Having queried hundreds of women about their eating patterns and the meaning of food in their lives, the editors weave some of the stories into the text but rely more on experts, who are heavily quoted: how often to weigh yourself, what to do to stop yourself from bingeing, why cellulite is difficult to get rid of. How-to's and Why's are mixed in to the text, as are health tips and the occasional quiz. While offering little that is not available elsewhere, the book gathers a great deal of information into one easily consulted source.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Everything about women and food is indeed covered in this Prevention magazine inspired book. Name any emotional or physical angle on the dual subject, from anorexia to varicose veins, and chances are that the editors have interviewed medical experts, surveyed a national sample of women, included self-administering quizzes, and summarized the issue and its solutions in a scant few pages. The advice is good, commonsensical, and completely tolerant of human foibles. Little is left out in the areas of female weight, diet, and diseases; this compendium will be a much-requested reference, particularly for maturing baby boomers. Barbara Jacobs