A wonderful book for permanent weight loss.

This book educates you on your body and how it works. Then, Dr. Bernard tells you how you can use that knowledge to lose weight permanently and feel great. It is not about a "diet" but rather about how to eat to get your body to perform at its best which naturally results in weight loss. Dr. Bernard covers different problem areas of health such as high blood pressure and diabetes and how changing our eating habits can improve them. At the back of the book are many recipes which help you to get started.

I highly recommend this book as it will help you learn about your body and what it needs and what happens when it gets the wrong "fuel". I've read it twice and its on my Christmas list!

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An Eye Opener on the Effects of Diet on Health and Disease

The advise in this book can extend your life and improve your health. No one knows what the "optimal" diet is, but Dr. Barnard shows that there is overwhelming evidence that the common dietary practices in America are responsible for a great deal of avoidable illness and early death. He backs up his statements with health statistics and numerous references to studies published in well-known journals. He shows that high rates of heart disease, cancer, and many other life threatening diseases are *not* natural -- they are primarily the result of poor diet and/or smoking. For some diseases, our risk can be reduced more than 50% by following the sort of diet recommended in this book.

The book, like Dr. Barnard's previous books "The Power of Your Plate" and "Food for Life", is clearly written and invites the reader to examine the evidence and decide for himself. The author also gives suggestions for making a change in diet easier and encou! ragement that it will be an enjoyable, sustainable transition.

There are two things I don't like about this book: the second half of the book is nothing but recipes, and this book follows a trend toward dumbing-down the presentation (in comparison with "The Power of Your Plate" and "Food for Life"). The author tries to make his presentation friendlier and more understandable to sixth graders through the use of analogies and explanations of biological phenomenon in overly simplistic terms. The book would be better if it contained more depth and more precise language. For these reasons I rated it only 3-stars.

Still, this book is well worth reading. If you're following the FDA's dietary guidelines, you are almost certainly shortening your own lifespan. The advise in this book could add years and improve the health of most Americans.

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This book convinced me to become a vegetarian.

Dr. Barnard gives excellent descriptions of how our bodies process foods and how the typical American diet focused on hormone-laden meats puts undue stress on our systems and causes early breakdown. He shows how a diet focused on fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes allows our bodies to function optimally, which in turn, gives us greater chances for disease-free longer life. Includes many recipes to help make the transition to this kind of healthy diet. I recommend this book if you are interested in nutrition!

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