Recommended Reading
Be informed, very informed:
• Fats that Heal Fats that Kill, by Udo Erasmus
Fats that Heal Fats that Kill presents the most current research on common and lesser known oils with therapeutic potential: flax, hemp, olive, fish, evening primrose, borage, black currant, and even the much maligned snake oil. Here the author exposes the manufacturing processes that turn healing fats into killing fats, explains the effects of these damaged fats on human health, and discloses the information that enables you to choose health-promoting oils.
Purchase: "Fats that Heal Fats that Kill" via PayPal
• The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
In this exquisitely written book, we're taken on a journey to discover where our food really comes from, the nature of what we eat, and what our best choices of what to eat might be. Fascinating stuff, whether you're a food fanatic or not.
Purchase: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
• In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan strikes again, this time debunking much of what many accept as fact regarding nutrition, notably the "low-fat" recommendations Americans in particular have been following for the last 30 years, during which time the very diseases a low-fat diet is supposed to prevent have been steeply on the rise. Brilliantly written.
Purchase: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
• Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain
This is one highly entertaining look at life behind the restaurant kitchen door, by one of the resident psychos who know that world all too well. You'll never look at your fancy night out quite the same way ever again.
Purchase: Kitchen Confidential Updated Ed: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.)
Be afraid, very afraid:
• Deadly Feasts, by Richard Rhodes
If you need any encouragement to watch what you eat, this will get you started, pronto. The author chronicles the discovery of BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy), a.k.a. Mad Cow, and its human variants, Kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, in what reads like a thriller but is all documented fact. Yikes.
Purchase: Deadly Feasts: The "Prion" Controversy and the Public's Health
• The Future of Food (DVD):
You want to see something really scary? Genetically modified food may or may not be dangerous to human health (it's too soon to tell), but the horrific decision to allow companies to patent seeds as intellectual property has the potential to destroy traditional farming as well as the very future of life on earth as we know it. Freaky. Make sure you have a lighthearted comedy to watch afterwards.
Purchase: The Future of Food
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