Eating Well for Optimum Health

by Andrew Weil

Hopefully, years from now, Eating Well for Optimum Health: The Essential Guide to Bringing Health and Pleasure Back to Eating will be looked upon as the book that saved the health of millions of Americans and transformed the way we eat--not as the book we overlooked at our own peril. It clarifies the mishmash of conflicting news, research, hype, and hearsay regarding diet, nutrition, and supplementation, and further establishes the judicious Dr. Weil, the director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, as a savior of public well-being. If you've ever wondered what "partially hydrogenated soybean oil" really is, been perplexed by contrary news reports about recommended dosages for supplements, or questioned the safety of using aluminum pots for cooking, Dr. Weil will make it all clear.

Weil (pronounced "while") bravely criticizes many of the major diet books on the market, and backs up his admonitions with science. He warns readers to not fall under "the spell" of the anticarbohydrate Atkins Diet, but also criticizes the eating plan advocated by Dr. Dean Ornish--which has been granted Medicare coverage for cardiac patients--as being too low fat for the majority of people. (The omega-3 fatty acids missing from Ornish's diet are essential for hormone production and the control of inflammation, he says.) It's also fascinating to learn that autism, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease may be caused by omega-3 fatty acid deficiencies, while an excess of omega-6 fatty acids--very common in the typical American diet--can exacerbate arthritis symptoms. Weil's explanation of the chemistry of fats will prove difficult for most readers, but few will want to eat fast-food French fries ever again after reading his appalling reasons for avoiding them, which go way beyond their well-documented heart-clogging capabilities.

After a thorough rundown of nutritional basics and a primer of micronutrients such as vitamins, minerals, fiber, and phytochemicals, Weil unveils what he feels is "the best diet in the world," with 85 recipes, such as Salmon Cakes and Oven-Fried Potatoes, that are healthy, tasty, quick to prepare, and complete with nutritional breakdowns. He includes a stirring chapter on safe weight loss (he sympathizes with the overweight and comically recalls his one-week trial of a safflower oil-diet while an undergraduate). Other, equally enlightening sections include tips for eating out and shopping for food (with warnings on various additives and a guide to organics), and a wondrous appendix with dietary recommendations for dozens of health concerns, including allergies, asthma, cancer prevention, mood disorders, and pregnancy. Eating Well is an indispensable consumer reference and one not afraid to lambaste the diet industry and empower the public with information about which the majority of doctors--to the detriment of the public health--are ignorant. --Erica Jorgensen

Genres: Health, Nonfiction, Food, Nutrition, Self Help, Cookbooks, Cooking

307 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Andrew Weil, M.D., is a world-renowned leader and pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, a healing oriented approach to health care that encompasses body, mind, and spirit. He is the author of many scientific and popular articles and of 14 books: The Natural Mind, The Marriage of the Sun and Moon From Chocolate to Morphine (with Winifred Rosen) Health and Healing, Natural Health, Natural Medicine; and the international bestsellers, Spontaneous Healing and 8 Weeks to Optimum Health, Eating Well for Optimum Health: The Essential Guide to Food, Diet, and Nutrition The Healthy Kitchen: Recipes for a Better Body, Life, and Spirit (with Rosie Daley) Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Well-Being; and Why Our Health Matters: A Vision of Medicine That Can Transform Our Future (issued in paperback with new content as You Can’t Afford to Get Sick).

Combining a Harvard education and a lifetime of practicing natural and preventive medicine, Dr. Weil is Director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, where he also holds the Lovell-Jones Endowed Chair in Integrative Rheumatology and is Clinical Professor of Medicine and Professor of Public Health. The Center is the leading effort in the world to develop a comprehensive curriculum in integrative medicine. Graduates serve as directors of integrative medicine programs throughout the United States, and through its Fellowship, the Center is now training doctors and nurse practitioners around the world.

Learn More:
Facebook.com/DrWeil
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Instagram.com/DrWeil
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Reviews

[T.J. Beitelman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have learned firsthand how the body changes depending on what it’s given for fuel. One December more than a decade ago, after a twelve-hour drive from Virginia to Alabama, and a steady diet of French fries and cheeseburgers and sodas along the way, I pulled off the highway and into one of Tuscaloosa’s sundry strip malls to buy a book at a mega-bookstore. (Books are -- this may go without saying -- a salve for me.)

I ended up buying two: the very first Harry Potter book and this one.

I can’t remember precisely why I chose to buy Eating Well for Optimum Health, but it must have had something to do with the queasy feeling in my stomach, the concomitant throbbing headache I had been nursing since northeast Georgia. I just didn’t feel right and I blamed it (not erroneously) on the food I’d eaten.

After reading the first chapter, I immediately forswore processed food and began shopping the fringes of the supermarket -- the outer rim being where the less processed foods, like fish and vegetables, are kept. I started making weekly forays to the whole foods store for things like whole grain breads, soy waffles, and almond butter. (This was before these things started creeping into the larger supermarket chains, before whole supermarket chains devoted to, well, whole foods sprung up.)

I started exercising. Swimming. Jogging. Lifting weights. I did not expect the appearance of my body to change noticeably -- I didn’t really think about that one way or another, which is strange because I am vain. My goal was more neurological than anything else: I had a theory that my mood would level out, I would be calmer, less anxious, more able to cope with stress. I had already read Walt Stoll’s Saving Yourself From The Disease Care Crisis , but hadn’t had the gumption yet to actually change my life based on his ideas. Plus Stoll didn’t really present a systematized approach. He was just a truth-telling crackpot, a la that locust-eating loony, John the Baptist.

But something about Weil -- maybe (let’s be honest) that I’d seen him on Larry King? -- made him seem less a far-out voice in the wilderness and more a mainstream Nazarene. To be truthful, I don’t remember how much my moods changed for the better. I’d like to think it did. I’d like to think I understood them better, but I know they still fluctuated. I’m not sure they’re supposed to do anything else, actually.

Another thing happened, though: I lost twenty-five pounds in about three months. Twenty-five pounds I didn’t really think I had to lose, but I did feel better. I slept better. I just generally felt like I was managing my life better by managing what I put into my body.

I have tried to use this metaphor to better understand all kinds of consumption: TV, relationships, work. What you put into your body, mind, life can consume you. What you eat can also eat you. It doesn’t have to, but it will if you’re not careful.

Something else was instructive. People around me reacted with great interest to my body’s transformation. Some were impressed, but I have to say a great many of them seemed uncomfortable with it. Even (or especially) the ones who were most impressed. I was bombarded with questions about my eating habits. Do you eat this? Would you eat that? I eat this -- I know you don’t eat that! You eat chocolate?! How does that fit into your diet? How much do you exercise?

People would ask me whether I could eat what they were serving, or if I could go to a certain restaurant. While there was certainly a level of courtesy they were trying to extend, it often felt strange to me -- or maybe it made me feel strange, weird, Other. Instead of leaving me to manage my own eating, my eating became a topic of public discussion, maybe even when I wasn’t there, to the point where I consciously decided to go back to eating more like I had before.

There were other factors in that decision, to be sure: I was kind of worried -- vaguely -- that I had lost so much weight so quickly, without even trying. I also worried that I was starting to feel guilty if I ate a not-so-unhealthy chicken gyro from my favorite “fast food” Mediterranean restaurant. But mainly I just wanted to shut people up about what I ate. It took a long time -- people would watch me eat a cheeseburger one day, and the next, they’d ask if barbecue fit into “my diet.” Over the course of a couple of years, I went back to my original weight, and maybe even added a few pounds to it.

Only a routine physical exam that showed I had high cholesterol scared me back into eating “cleaner” again. As before, there was the precipitous weight loss. As before, there was the hubbub around me, my waist size, what I would or wouldn’t eat, whether or not I was sick. This time I tuned it out, focusing instead on the cautionary tale of my father’s massive heart attack at age 54. In the whole process, I learned that food is not just food.

It is psychological, interpersonal, communal, metaphorical, spiritual, and probably a bunch of other things that either A) I’m forgetting or B) I don’t yet know. What we eat and who we eat it with (and when and where and why, for that matter) is as complicated as it is vitally important to who we are.

[Bianca A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would like to emphasize that the book came out in 2008 and there are probably updates and newer research done on some of the topics that are brought about in the book. I purchased this paperback on the vessel I was working on a few years back.
I hovered between a 3 and a 4 rating and would give it 3.5 if I could due to the lack of enough scientific research references and a bit of decline towards the end with trying to imply that spirituality could be a part of food. Not sure if it was inserted to make appeal to that market segment or out of genuine preference.
However, despite the lack of proper referencing, I can acknowledge that a lot of things the author writes about is valid and grounded in research - it's just that you are being placed in a position where you have to take his word for it just because he's an MD that happens to live a healthy life. If you do take the time to do your homework on the side then the things he says mostly match, especially the praise for Mediterranean and Asian cuisine.
The book is designed for Westerners or for people living in a first world country, with available "organic stores" in the vicinity and a paycheck to support shopping in them. If you are East European or from somewhere else, you might have to work around with what you've got at hand in order to follow some important criteria.
Overall I found it very informative in the first half with exceptional explanations on how macro and micronutrients work, but found the personal stories a bit obsolete for the skeptics, because why would you just take someone's word for those accounts? There are innumerable factors that come into play with health decline and improvement even if the person in question is being genuine in assuming that diet modification did indeed solely contribute.
I appreciated the repertoire of recipes that he enclosed towards the end of the book, but personally find some of them (not all) tricky to make. That is to say, your kitchen better be well-equipped and you better have at least some experience with cooking.
He did a good job with inserting disclaimers everywhere and with staying on topic as objectively as possible, so that's what transformed a 3 to a 4 star rating. I own several of his books and will enjoy reading the rest.

[N · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s hard to overstate how useful and illuminating I found this book. I’ve muddled through life thus far, eating reasonably healthily by using some fairly obvious guiding principles (fruit and veg = good; chips = bad), but I never really understood nutrition. (To quote Mean Girls: “Is butter a carb?”)

Despite my fuzziness on how various foods are categorized, I didn’t expect Eating Well for Optimum Health to be such a revelation. But it really, really was! Andrew Weil really cuts through the noise of media chatter about healthy eating and provides reasonable, well-researched advice on how to eat. Some of the science-y bits are... well, science-y. But there are helpful bullet-point synopses at the end of each chapter, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t grasp every biological nuance.

Weil even includes a section on developing better body image/health at any size. I can’t fault this book. It’s great.

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I have read on nutrition. Weil discusses each of the macronutrients essential to life: carbohydrates, fats, protiens and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, fiber and phytocmenicals). He does so in layman's language to make the relationship between the food we eat (good and bad) and its effect on our bodies understandable. He spends equal time discussing what is good (and essential) for our bodies and what is harmful. He is not didactic and he often concludes a finding or recommendation with "in my opinion" or "more research is necessary." He compares the quality of health and longevity of different cultures by examining the food they eat, ie: the paleolithic (caveman) diet, raw foods diet, Japanese diet, Asian diet, vegan diet, Mediterranean diet and American diet - and speaks to the advantages and disadvantages of each. Appendix A contains his "Optimal Diet", which summarizes his findings and recommendations for better health. His recommendations (based on scientific research) make sense. I found that I am already doing much of what he recommends; nevertheless, I plan to make several significant changes to the way I eat to hopefully achieve an even more optimal state of health.

[Reb · Rating 2 out of 5]

meh. I keep thinking food books will add content to my several years of health-food-store-worker thinking, and being wrong. This would probably be great for someone who didn't have the daily experience of forcible education at the hands of macrobiotics and ayurvedic eaters and raw foodists.

He makes some good recommendations (no meat, less dairy, eat flax seeds and nuts) and some bad ones (cook your pasta very al dente for a lower glycemic index?) and overall this is probably great for someone with a poor diet to begin with.

Still, for the time it took to read, I'll stick with Michael Pollan's famous "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pleasure to read

Dr. Weil's graceful and reasoned prose tends one to serenity and contemplation. What I found myself contemplating as I was reading this beautifully presented book about food was Dr. Weil himself. I recall him as the enfant terrible author of the bourgeois-shocking The Natural Mind: A New Way of Looking at Drugs and the Higher Consciousness (1972), a book that helped to persuade a generation of Americans to question the establishment's anti-drug mentality. The theme of that book, if I recall correctly, was that human beings have a natural drive to explore other states of consciousness.

Now Dr. Weil is a middle-aged man like myself, and the fires of youth have turned to...extra-virgin olive oil and tofu! Who says that wisdom does not come with age? As I absorbed Weil's ideas about how to eat properly I couldn't help but notice what has changed since the balmy days of our youth, nutritionally-speaking, and what Weil has, in his diverse travels, both on the surface of this planet and within, learned about how to eat.

He is a vegetarian who loves food. The simple, but inviting recipes on pages 209-260 attest to that. He will eat dairy products in moderation and fish, but he prefers to get his proteins from plants. He believes that refined and highly processed carbohydrate foods (those with a "high gylcemic index"; see his table on pages 56-57) can have disastrous effects on the health of many people, pointing to native Hawaiians and Native Americans as examples (p. 63). Surprisingly he doesn't see dietary fat as the bugaboo it once was as long as one limits the intake of saturated fats and returns to the shelf any product including the words "partially hydrogenated" on the label (192-193). He touts olive oil and makes a very close distinction among saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated oils, opting for a balanced intake in the ratio, respectively, of 1:2:1 (p. 262). He believes that we need to incorporate more omega-3 fatty acids from primarily fish oils, soybeans and walnuts into our diets as opposed to omega-6 oils.

New to me is Weil's contention that vegetarians need not be concerned about the notion of "complementary protein" that we learned about years ago. No longer do we have to combine vegetable foods, corn with beans, for example, to get all the necessary amino acids that our bodies need. He says that Frances Moore Lappé, who brought the concept to a large readership in the seventies with her very popular Diet for a Small Planet (1971), is mistaken and that "the body is clever enough to find missing essential amino acids...from the vast numbers of bacteria that inhabit the lower intestinal tract or from the vast numbers of cells that slough off the lining of the digestive tract every day" (p. 104). I wonder. I do know that when I eat a meal of complementary protein, say tortillas and beans, it tastes especially good, exponentially good in fact, compared to eating just one of those foods alone. Also getting essential amino acids by eating your own cells begs the question of where the essential amino acids came from in the first place. If they really come from intestinal tract bacteria in significant amounts—an intriguing and delightful concept (we farm within!)—perhaps we ought to know more about how such a system works. Does intestinal tract length matter? Are there bacteria cultures we might imbibe? (Maybe this is Weil's next book!)

I also wonder about the significance of the distinction he makes between basmati rice from India and other kinds of rice. He claims that the rice usually eaten in China and Japan is mostly amylopectin starch that is "much easier to digest" than the mostly amylose starch in basmati rice (p. 39). His point is that how fast we digest a starch affects "blood sugar levels, which, in turn, affects our energy, our tendency to gain weight, and our general health" (p. 39) He claims on the following page that "Even if you are ‘carbohydrate sensitive,' you can enjoy some white rice if you choose a lower-glycemic-index variety like basmati."

My confidence in Dr. Weil is not shaken by the inclusion as an appendix the fantastic notion that people might be able to exist without eating. ( See "Appendix D: The Possibility of Surviving Without Eating.") I am not concerned because Weil slyly makes it apparent (but only apparent) that he doubts it is possible. Still one wonders why he included something like this in first place, particularly when one of his seven basic propositions about food is "WE HAVE TO EAT TO LIVE" (his caps on page 9).

His discussion of the various cuisines and their characteristic foods is very interesting and just the sort of thing we need to focus on and appreciate. I have always thought of the Chinese and the French cuisines as monumental edifices of gastronomic art. In this book is an appreciation of the richness of Indian and Middle Eastern cuisines as well. His identification of a Mediterranean cuisine (he calls it a diet, pages 162-165) that includes Middle Eastern foods as well as Italian, Greek and others is particularly significant since that is the part of the world in which our first agriculture-based civilizations began.

In the usual Knopf style this is a beautifully edited and presented book. I didn't notice a single typo, although sweet potatoes are mistakenly identified as roots and not tubers on page 39. Bottom line: Weil is a very persuasive and readable man whose food preferences inspire confidence and imitation. [929 words; 4556 characters]

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[John Ferreira · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up somewhere. I don't recall buying it. Someone must have left it somewhere, and I wanted to learn more about what foods and eating are good for me.

I couldn't keep up with all the things Weil writes about. The most I got out of it is be careful about what you put into your body. That no diet plan is for everyone, and eat less and exercise more is the best way to lose or maintain weight. No duh.

As I was reading the book, I thought of "The Zone" book that I read years ago. Sears seemed to say that if you follow his diet, it could do wonders short of raising the dead. Weil didn't make those kinds of claims.

He was somewhat humorous. And I chuckled at something. When Weil writes about eating is a communal act, I thought of a friend of mine. She posted on Facebook that she hates movies that feature a scene where people are eating. When I read her statement I thought, "That's a thing people do everyday." Then my second thought was that she has been very forward with her bipolar condition, and her celiac disorder. So, I considered the source.

I think of other people who have dietary restrictions, and think others should have the same. I think as long as you are of sound mind and body, eat what you want. If it doesn't work for you, try something else.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm always on the lookout for informative, unbiased nutrition science books since so many "nutrition" books simply present one-sided evidence for the newest trendy fad diet. This is one of the best I've found in a while! It's not recent, but the basic recommendations for the components of a healthful, balanced diet haven't changed much through the decades. Dr. Weil provides a great summary of human nutrition and metabolism, describes the tenets of a healthful diet, and contrasts the typical Western diet with this standard. He also shares personal testimonies of individuals who have changed their lives by changing their diet. He includes some opinions that should be taken with a grain of salt, but overall his message is accurate and timely.

[Jessica Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of Dr. Weil. This book taught me what ranges of macro-nutrients to aim for daily, and the science behind how certain types of nutrients are processed by the body. I thought I knew a lot about food and nutrition, but this book took that knowledge to the next level. This is not a "diet" book. This is a book about food, nutrition, and what the body needs for optimum health. I highly recommend it to everyone looking to fuel their body with the very best foods.

At times, the science got a bit much for me. But overall, this book is approachable, easy to read and understand, and offers valuable insight and advice by a well respected authority on the subject.

[Margo · Rating 4 out of 5]

My partner gave me this book after they saw me reading a fruitarian guru with interest. Weil definitely has a more balanced view. I most enjoyed the narrative biochemical sections explaining the operations of the macronutrients. I studied biochemistry in college and, while we had done some activities with nutrition, never had a full nutritional picture drawn from different molecular cycles. He pointed out that iron is an oxidant, does not leave the body quickly, and should not be taken in high doses -I think I'll need to change my multivitamin for something else. Also, I liked some of the recipes in the back.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this is not a recently published book, the nutritional information is balanced and sound. It stands the test of time. No gimmicks or sales pitches here for the latest fad diet.

The recipe section offers approachable, delicious offerings with completely recognizable ingredients. If some of the earlier chapters seem dense and almost like a textbook, Weil summarizes his Optimum Diet in Appendix A in bullet point style. Essentially, he urges a diet with variety and freshness, abundant in fruits and vegetables with little to no processed foods. Appendix B lists conditions that people suffer with and how diet changes might help.

[Bernie4444 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tells you what you already know.

OK as I said, this book does not tell you anything you do not already know. However, it organizes it in a way that makes sense and helps you put it together. There is nothing revolutionary or supernatural in how Andrew Weil puts food in perspective with everything in our lives. However, this book does make for good reading. It is not just a theory book, however. There are statistics, explanations, and even recipes. He touches on all aspects of life and how foods relate to them. In essence, this is a self-help book that is geared toward Eating Well.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a lot of solid nutritional advice that can be really helpful. This book is not full of hypes or gimmicks. The bottom line as one might expect is that all of us should be eating a wide range of fruits and vegetables and we should be eating more of them. And we should be eating real food and not processed crap. I feel like I know how to eat but sometimes you need reminders and reinforcements on how to do better. This was that book for me.

[Don Follett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive book about food and nutrition written by a well-known Harvard trained Doctor. Although it is fairly technical and scientific, it's written in a style easy to understand. Like most technical books, it was a slow read but one I was glad I finished. It was a follow-up to his book called "Healthy Aging." It was a good learning experience.

[Archie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work is a great summary of what a person needs to do to stay healthy. There are no fads or sales pitches, just good information. I have been following the advice in this book for a few years and my health has improved.
I highly recommend this book.

[Linda Belmont · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes you realize how important it is to fuel your body properly.

[Marcus Goncalves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book! The author dispels myths about fats, eggs, and chocolate and explains how food is best utilized by our bodies.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative as a nutrition guide -- I refer to it quite regularly. I wish he would have included a vegetarian diet in the list of diets he analyzed instead of just veganism.

[Avanish Kant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was amazed with the level of information shared on macro and micronutrients, with ample personal advice.
Will make use of the recipe shared to cook tasty and healthy food at home.

[Chris Gager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked up at the transfer station. I may have read some of this before but I need to read more. My diet is mediocre at best. Actually, at best it's better than that. I just don't hang out there regularly enough.
I just started this morning and didn't get very far. Wasn't this guy an LSD user years ago? I'm thinking this book might be padded with a lot of non-essential stuff. Like recipes. If you're a reasonably "normal" grown-up and can't prepare you're own food you need to go back to go and start again.
I'm not moving along real fast but I just read some interesting stuff about competing diet Messiahs(Atkins et al). I'm digesting this slowly and hoping for some real help.
Two pages... sheesh; not much progress there but my free time is suddenly restricted by new job demands. I HATE that!
Further on(but slowly)... Just waded through pages of bio-chemistry. A waste of time exacerbated when the author then sums it all up again! Most of us just want to get to the salient topics: what and how should we be eating(or NOT eating).
Moving along into the good stuff now. The nitty gritty about good carbs/bad carbs and so on. This is what I'm looking to build a better food plan.
A few more pages... still too much chemical detail to wade through but I'm moving through it.
Slow progress... and more unnecessary chemical detail; though the author even states that he finds it necessary. IT AINT'T!
Still plugging away and done with the fats for now. Next up: protein.
Protein... something most of us in America get too much of along with the animal fat that goes with it. I read on...
'Bout halfway through as I creep along. Just finished with protein and now onto micronutrients.
I swear I'm gonna finish this book. Now we're into looking at various kinds of diets tied to culture. The American diet seems to be the worst possible. All that processed food, pesticides, animal fat, carbs, additives etc.
Getting there slowly. Next up is a chapter about weight. A particular and life-long problem for me: junk food addict and compulsive eater/ self-medicator.
I'm STILL reading it. A little at a time. It's interesting to see how clueless the author is in some ways from the perspective of OA recovery. He writes one story of a woman who "saves herself" from bulimia with "no help from anyone"(is that a GOOD thing?) but her "after" eating habits don't sound so emotionally or physically healthy either.
Finally finished! I did this by skipping the 50+ pages of dubious(especially the sugar-laden desserts) recipes. A few quibbles: He keeps talking about "pleasure from eating". That's a dangerous concept. The point is to eat for good health AND a certain amount of
satisfaction or whatever. He never mentions compulsive (over-)eating or food/junk food addiction. He says the purpose of eating is to "Promote social interaction and reinforce your personal and cultural identity" - WTF! Keep it simple Dude... Otherwise a good book to keep around for reference and remember... ixnay on "partially hydrogenated" and no raw mushrooms. How have I survived?

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve currently taken a stab at being mostly vegetarian (I eat fish occasionally) and to aid in that process I’ve decided to brush up on my nutrition by reading three books: this one, Eat to Live, and Vegan for Life.

Weil presents an excellent summary of basic nutrition, clearly explaining the topics of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats without sacrificing scientific detail. I thought this insistence on cleaving to the biochemical facts was wonderful—it’s complicated material and you need to explain it at a high level. For instance, I was told that when you go on a juice cleanse, you immediately lose “water weight.” What was this mysterious water weight? Is it just water? Why don’t you lose it all the time? Weil explained that carbohydrates are turned into glucose. When there’s excess glucose it gets turned into glycogen, a substance which stores the extra energy. Part of the chemical nature of glycogen is that it binds easily to water. If you aren’t getting enough carbohydrates, your body will use the stored energy in glycogen, simultaneously releasing the water it was bound to, and you, in turn, lose this “water weight.”

Another interesting fact was the differentiation between all the different types of fat, such as saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated, and the Omega-6’s and Omega-3’s. The takeaway from Omega-3’s is that there are 3 different types: ALA, EPA, & DHA. Your body needs EPA & DHA and ALA can be broken down into EPA & DHA—but not very well. There is no plant food that contains EPA. Hence, to truly satisfy all your needs, it’s probably wise to consume either the occasional fish or take a supplement of fish oil. There is little consensus on this idea, though. Some say that you only need a balance between Omega-6’s and Omega-3’s and by eating vegetarian you are getting much closer to that balance. By including walnuts, flax seeds, and algae in your diet you can get enough ALA & DHA to make up for not getting the direct EPA. For now, I’m trying to eat almost exclusively vegetarian with no eggs and dairy, with the occasional fish thrown in for just this very reason.

The book also delves into fighting disease with diet, suggests recipes, and provides inspirational stories, but for the most part this is a nutritional primer. Weil insistence on making sure food is still pleasurable is a wonderful corrective to the books that insist on eating healthy beyond what tastes good.

[Chana Ceasar · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75✨ very informative book. I liked the science in the beginning and the recipes at the end.

[Andrea James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This comes across as a level-headed and sensible book. The author explains the nutritional of food in layman's terms even though he goes into greater depth than the standard self-help book.

He brought to attention a couple of things that I will look into further, such as high protein diets causing a loss of minerals, especially calcium, from our bodies. And the possible misconception that eating lots of protein, animal protein especially, builds strong bones and bodies. The author gives the example of women in Sub-Saharan Africa having very strong bones even though they eat grain based diets and only get a small fraction of the recommended intake of calcium whereas the Inuits eat huge amounts of animal protein and have severe osteoporosis.

And he also questions the strain that high protein diets place on our liver and kidneys.

If true, this is quite disappointing as I like my relatively high protein diet. I eat more fish than meat and usually accompanied with lot of vegetables but nevertheless my meals contain a relatively high protein content. I do this mainly because it keeps me full for longer (and also because I enjoy it)!

He goes through the various types of diets like Paleo, Raw, Vegan, Mediterranean etc. and gives us the pros and cons of each one.

[Elisa Becze · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the more "real" healthy eating books I've read lately, and by that I mean that nothing was overly sensationalized and he didn't try using any major scare tactics to encourage you to change your diet. I liked how the overall recommendations didn't go to any extremes either - he didn't push you to stop eating carbs, or stop eating meat, for example. Rather, he promoted sensible use of the Mediterranean diet and overall moving to eating more plant-based foods and using fewer foods with saturated fats (i.e., animal products, but the key here is fewer, not none altogether). My one contention with it was Weil's encouraging use of "foods made with soy," in which he included things like processed soy burgers, soy hot dogs, soy bacon, soy chicken, and the like. Honestly, processed foods like that have nothing to do with "eating well for optimal health," and I wished he had instead specified more whole forms of soy like edemame, soymilk, tempeh, and tofu. I'm no expert, but in most cases a processed soy burger is no better and may even be worse than an organic, antibiotic-free, lean beef burger.

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mom gave me this book years ago. It sat on the shelf throughout college & subsequent moves until I finally picked it up one day and started reading it. I was raised on a very healthy diet compared to many families I knew growing up. Mom rarely allowed us to eat fast food, and most of what she prepared for us was high in vegetable content and rarely was processed. I overlooked the wisdom of this for years after I left home. But here was her reminder, in book form.

I can't say that I eat as well now as she fed me then. I wish I would...but as I've been using a food diary for the past year I've been paying greater attention to what I've been eating.

Most of the nutritional advice in this book is worth a read. Is it difficult to follow in today's society? Well that's relative to each person. I do think that strictly following the advice of one person is something to be wary of, and I would double check the current (legitimate!) studies to keep up on the latest information. But I did enjoy the section where he breaks down the different micro nutrients and each purpose.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're someone who wants to understand why we should eat a certain way, you'll like that Weil provides fairly involved scientific explanations for his nutritional advice (for a book aimed at a lay audience). There's a lot of detail in this book, and a lot of interesting facts to mull over.

On the other hand, I wish Weil had addressed some of the more hotly contested nutritional issues - how much protein should we eat? is dairy good for us? what's the deal with raw milk? - in more depth. The parts of the book that addressed the health repercussions of alternative (e.g. vegan and raw food) diets were the most interesting to me. Unfortunately, these made up just a page here and there.

Finally, at almost 10 years old, the book could really do with an update.

Overall I'd say if you're just starting to take an interest in nutrition, and you like reading about the science of everyday life, this book would be a good first foray into the subject of nutrition and health.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book by Dr. Weil! Both practical advice and the medical info behind it. It's not the most well-written book ever (the sceincy chapters seem longer than they need to do a lack of white space and section beraks...and some runon paragraphs), but the content was useful and healthy. I liked the doctor's style because he makes no outlandish promises. If you want to be healthy, you have to eath healthy, there's no special pill or short cut to get there. His number one piece of recurring advice (and one most of us Americans need to hear): EAT MORE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. About 200 pages of the book are normal content and that is followed by a big section of recipes and appendices, all of which seem helpful (I haven't gotten to play with the recipes yet). I found the book enriching and helpful and am likely to read more of Dr. Weil in the future:-)

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book which focuses on a healthy diet and way of life. I like that it dispells the myths about many well known diets (i.e Atkins diet). Weil talks about how food should be enjoyed and that it is a social event that brings people together. Yet, he talks about how certain foods are more healthy to eat, rather than insisting that we should deprive ourselves of certain foods. I read this book because I have become increasingly interested in the rise of cancer in the United States and how many of the causes are rooted in diet. Weil tackles this issue and talks about the toxins in our foods, mainly from many of the processed foods that we eat as well as in the fish that we eat (as the waters are growing more and more contaminated).

[Nigeyb · Rating 3 out of 5]

The extent to which you might find this book useful will largely depend upon how much you already know about nutrition. I take an interest in the subject and was already familiar with most of the information contained in the book. That said, it is well written, thorough, and although published in 2000 still relevant.

The author is particularly good at deconstructing fashionable diets and distilling them down to what is helpful, and less so, with each approach.

As another reviewer pointed out - and in the words of Michael Pollan - the key message about food and health can be summed up with these seven words:

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants"

[Bernie4444 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tells you what you already know.

OK as I said, this book does not tell you anything you do not already know. However, it organizes it in a way that makes sense and helps you to put it all together. There is nothing revolutionary or supernatural in the way Andrew Weil puts food in perspective with everything in our lives. However, this book does make for good reading. It is not just a theory book, however. There are statistics, explanations, and even recipes. He touches on all aspects of life and how foods relate to them. In essence, this is a self-help book that is geared toward Eating Well.