Healing Foods: A Practical Guide to Key Foods for Good Health

Combining a beautiful and taste-tempting cookbook with nutritional guidelines, a complete guide to healthy eating describes the medicinal and therapeutic properties of fifty key foods, accompanied by advice on which foods to eat to prevent or relieve a range of ailments.

YA. Polunin reviews the merits of a variety of foods, emphasizing their nutritional benefits as well as providing some recipes for their enjoyment. Throughout the book, she points out historical facts along with knowledgeable comments about the changes in healthful eating habits over the years. From a scientific perspective, the author divulges ancient medicinal uses of food and what modern science has learned and proven. She begins with a basic review of the importance of food for its nutrient values and medical purposes, and then explains how the body physically uses it. In the first of four major sections, she uses 50 selected foods as specific examples of their direct influence on health and includes tips on choosing and storing that particular item. See references from the food item to recipes appear at the bottom of the page. A clear photograph of each food decorates the center of its page, adding a visual model that enhances the textual presentation. The next section presents another 30 healthful foods, although in less detail, and with smaller photographs. The third section offers ideas on how consuming specific foods may enhance cures for certain diseases. The fourth section contains the recipes. The attractive DK format, plus the wealth of information, should entice YAs.?Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Here is one DK layout-driven book that works well and doesn't leave the reader wondering what important information didn't make it onto each two-page spread. This attractive work is based on recent research that points to the therapeutic and protective benefits of certain foods. Polunin discusses 50 especially healthy foods (e.g., sweet potato, garlic, and oily fish), noting their therapeutic properties and how to choose, store, and cook them. A short middle section covers body systems and diseases and dietary influences. Sixty-nine recipes feature the 50 healthy foods and include nutritional breakdowns, often a color photograph, and cross-references to the disease section. Rather than focusing on restrictions, Polunin emphasizes the importance of eating more of the protective foods. Helpful vitamin and mineral charts end the book; the obligatory list of U.S. RDAs, however, contradicts much of the research on which the book is based. A good combination of solid nutritional information with gorgeous full-color photographs. Penny Spokes