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Real Food: What to Eat and Why (平装)
by Nina Planck
| Category:
Diets & weight loss, Gastronomy, Food science, Healthy living |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
MSL price:
¥ 148.00
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Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 6 items |
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Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-17 00:00>
Nina Planck is a good, stylish writer and a dogged researcher who writes directly, forthrightly and with an edge. She isn't afraid to make the occasional wisecrack ("No doubt, for some people, cracking open an egg is one chore too many") while taking unpopular positions. Her chosen field - she is a champion of "real" (as opposed to industrialized) food - is one in which unpopular positions are easy to find. As Planck reveals, in her compellingly smart Real Food: What to Eat and Why, much of what we have learned about nutrition in the past generation or so is either misinformed or dead wrong, and almost all of the food invented in the last century, and especially since the Second World War, is worse than almost all of the food that we've been eating since we developed agriculture. This means, she says, that butter is better than margarine (so, for that matter, is lard); that whole eggs (especially those laid by hens who scratch around in the dirt) are better than egg whites, and that eggs in general are an integral part of a sound diet; that full-fat milk is preferable to skim, raw preferable to pasteurized, au naturel preferable to homogenized. She goes so far as to maintain - horror of horrors - that chopped liver mixed with real schmaltz and hard-boiled eggs is, in a very real way, a form of health food. Like those who've paved the way before her, she urges us to eat in a natural, old-fashioned way. But unlike many of them, and unlike her sometimes overbearing compatriots in the Slow Food movement, she is far from dogmatic, making her case casually, gently, persuasively. And personally, Planck's philosophy grows directly out of her life history, which included a pair of well-educated parents who decided, when the author was two, to pull up stakes in Buffalo, N.Y., and take up farming in northern Virginia. Planck, therefore, grew up among that odd combination of rural farming intellectuals who not only wanted to raise food for a living but could explain why it made sense. Planck, who is now an author and a creator and manager of farmers' markets, has a message that can be - and is - summed up in straightforward and simple fashion in her first couple of chapters. She then goes on to build her case elaborately, citing both recent and venerable studies, concluding in the end that the only sensible path for eating, the one that maintains and even improves health, the one that maintains stable weight and avoids obesity, happens to be the one that we all crave: not modern food, but traditional food, and not industrial food, but real food. (June)Mark Bittman's latest book is The Best Recipes in the World (Broadway); he is also the author of How to Cook Everything (Wiley).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. |
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Booklist (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-17 00:00>
A successful manager of urban green markets, Planck presents a contrarian view of what constitutes sound nutrition. She urges readers to think back to the kinds of diets that their grandmothers ate, regimens full of foods fresh from farms and from individual purveyors: meats, dairy, and seasonal fruits and vegetables. Planck has a lot to offer about the role of fats in a healthy diet. Although most nutritionists worry about people consuming too much fat, Planck distinguishes good fats from bad, noting that many vital nutrients are absorbed into the body only dissolved in fat. She describes the differences between industrial fats that have been chemically saturated and hydrogenated and those fats that occur naturally in vegetables, fish, and meats, especially lauding the benefits of homemade lard. Planck draws a similar line between natural and industrial soy foods. She also encourages people to consume much more seafood, finding the threat of mercury contamination a bit overblown. Above all, Planck links good nutrition to sensible enjoyment of food in all its variety. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. |
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Jesse Kornbluth, HeadButler.com, USA
<2008-03-17 00:00>
How can you not be interested in Nina Planck's book? |
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Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, USA
<2008-03-17 00:00>
Science is finally catching up to what our grandmothers knew long ago: that traditional foods, and even fats, are actually good for you - and a whole lot healthier than the creations of food technology. Drawing on the latest research and oldest folk wisdom, Real Food offers a persuasive and invigorating defense of eggs, butter, meat, and even lard (!), as well as a powerful critique of a food industry that aims to replace these standbys with its highly processed, and sometimes deadly, simulacra. Nina Planck has written a valuable and eye-opening book. |
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Los Angeles Times Book Review, USA
<2008-03-17 00:00>
Planck has written an important book, and her timing may be perfect. With any luck, Real Food will resonate with Americans (starved for so long on low-fat diets) and bring Weston Price to a much larger audience than he could ever have imagined. |
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Sarah (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-17 00:00>
I give this book a 5 with some caveats. It gets a 5 because what it does say it says very well, and it isn't easy to say things which go against the grain of modern "logic".
Planck goes through all the reasons "bad" food is good for you, from steak to whole milk to egg yolks. The chapter on cholesterol was perhaps the most interesting. I had heard before that dietary cholesterol wasn't that bad for you, but the distinction she made between whole lipids and damaged lipids (i.e. most prepared egg products and packaged foods) was new. The writing is smooth and readable, and she offers in endnotes the full bibliographic citation of the medical research. These citations are full of articles from well-respected peer-reviewed journals - quite a difference from the health-nut crack-pots roaming the web who make all kinds of fantastic and unsubstantiated claims.
The caveats, which are not huge, and perhaps are things which Planck could address in a revised edition:
- I found the chapter on sugar to be skimpy. White sugar is bad for you, yes, the entire book says that a million times over. But what are the options? Is raw sugar better? Does it have enhanced mineral content which would merit tweaking muffin recipes for raw sugar instead of white? In the end of the book she mentions honey (raw of course, I'm the lucky person whose father-in-law keeps bees as a hobby, raw honey is amazing stuff and well worth its weight in gold, literally) but honey has limited use in baking. Her discussion of other alternatives is barely mentionable, agave and stevia get a mention, but they are hardly discussed. And she doesn't spend a lot of time discussing chemical alternatives like sucralose, except that they are bad. Yes, they're bad, but is sucrolose worse than white sugar?
- This leads to the next problem, no comprehensive list of what food is good or bad, better or worse. The rule of thumb "eat what your great-grandmother ate" actually breaks down quickly. Like eggs, my great-grandmother ate eggs. But the form of the egg actually matters more than the egginess itself: Planck says pre-mixed cartons of eggs is bad because it has damaged lipids. Also, she mentions various "exotic" foods in her discussion of nutrition, like Siberian pine nuts. I eat regular pine nuts (very tasty on a green salad) is that good enough? Better than packaged croutons I suppose, but do they also offer me GLA? And I really don't think my Irish great-grandmother ate Siberian pine nuts anyways. The same with coconut oil. I'm being facetious, but you get the point.
- Like others have said, and other have responded, this is not a cookbook, nor meant to be a cookbook (or a diet plan for that matter). Nonetheless, even if I ordered some coconut oil I wouldn't know what to do with it when I got it. Most recipes in regular cookbooks don't even mention the stuff. While I don't think a full menu would be right for this book, a little concise and easy to find guidance would be helpful. Can I use coconut oil in place of canola oil? Can I use it in baked goods? I can experiment and try these out, but if I had a yes or no to these two questions I would have a much better understanding of how coconut oil works and what to do with it.
- She does not discuss common import foods, like coffee and tea, except to say that no, these are not local, and yes she likes them anyways. Given her emphasis on the environment and sustainability it would be helpful if she would discuss the need to buy coffee and tea products that were grown with respect to the environment and the people picking them. There are a number of fair-trade, organic, and shade-grown coffee companies in the US and UK, it would have been nice if she had mentioned a few of them.
She does give some very helpful links at the end of her book. Those interested in putting her advice into practice can look up the links and read the websites for more information. Of course, this presupposes that you have an internet connection and can order products over the internet, but I suppose one can make that assumption these days.
Altogether, I think it is a very good book which says some much needed things in a readable, yet researched, way. Even if you don't put all of her recommendations into action, it still gives some wonderful tips on how to eat healthier. |
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1 Total 1 pages 6 items |
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