Other Book Reviews
Well since it seems I'm on a roll with the book reviews, you may want to log onto amazon.com and read my critiques of Andrew Weil's "Eating For Optimal Health," and Kesten and Ornish's "The Healing Secrets of Food." The Weil review is in press right now. The Kesten one is not.
Actually, let me post the Kesten review here. I hope all see just how loony the low-fat camp can be...and how gullible the public and some health professionals can be as well.
The Healing Secrets of Food by Deborah Kesten and Dean Ornish (2001)
Ms. Kesten's book claims to be a treatise on traditional food wisdom, but it is obvious from the book that she knows very little about traditional diets or what native peoples throughout history have eaten.
Ms. Kesten makes many dismaying and untrue statements like this one: "Not only do diets high in 'sat fats' [saturated fats] make you feel sluggish (by lowering the amount of circulating oxygen in the blood), they may also impair memory and alter your mood by encouraging depression." No scientific references are given for this ... tidbit.
Throughout the book, Kesten disparages fats in almost any form and in this she shows her lack of knowledge about lipid biochemistry, as well as native diets which are rich in animal fats as numerous explorers have reported (e.g., Weston Price, Viljhalmur Stefansson, Cabeza de Vaca, and Samuel Hearne). Kesten offers no reputable research to back up her dubious claims about fats--how convenient to be able to make far-flung claims and offer no supporting proof!
In chapter three, Kesten states that saturated fats are "memory-dimming," citing the ideas of Richard and Judith Wurtman who claim that eating fats may slow down serotonin production and therefore cause depression. This unsupportable claim is at variance with research which shows that vitamin D (found only in animal fats which are highly saturated) can fight chronic fatigue, depression, and seasonal affective disorder. Traditional peoples who ate lots of animal/saturated fats were strong, healthy, and cheerful as Price's seminal work showed. Mood disorders and depression go hand in hand with poor nutrition--something Kesten's book is teaching though she is unaware of it.
The book has several chapters on "healing secrets" and the importance of being mindful, appreciating food and socializing while eating. She does have some good ideas, but they are eclipsed by her dismal dietary advice.
Chapter seven is devoted to urging people to eat fresh, whole foods. She then makes the outrageous statement that "technically, because they are not plant-based, meat, poultry, fish, and dairy aren't whole foods." HUH!? I guess making up your own definitions is one way to make your plan seem logical!
She then addresses the "Paleolithic perspective," and makes the false claim (a la Boyd Eaton), that our Paleolithic ancestors ate a lowfat diet--something that is not supported by nutritional anthropology (HL Abrams. J Appl Nutr, 31:1,2:43-59, 1979; HL Abrams, Food & Evolution, Temple University Press, 1987). She mistakenly claims that wild game has a fat content of about 4%. Did she check with any hunters before she wrote her book? Obviously not as wild animals like bison have a high amount of body fat in certain areas. Anthropological research shows unequivocally that native peoples prized the fatty parts of the animal over the lean muscle meats. And the whole animal was consumed, including the inner organs some of which (e.g., the brain) are very fatty.
The bizarre grand finale of her book is her description of a Christmas dinner of "optimal foods" in Norway, 1995. She rightly describes the typical Norwegian Christmas foods of fresh cod, lutefisk, pork ribs, sausages, and mutton--all true traditional foods that nourish and sustain during the dark, cold winter. For this dinner, however, she comes up with a mostly vegetarian meal consisting of melon soup, freshly squeezed juices, and plant foods with a little dairy. She admits how difficult it was to find such foods in Norway during the winter. This should have given her a clue about the validity of her dinner: She's going against nature with her strange ideas about food and native diets!
How serving a meal of fruits and veggies during a frigid Norwegian winter has anything to do with "ancient food wisdom" is hard to understand.
Do not be deceived by this book. It is a far cry from traditional food wisdom. A better and more accurate book would be Fallon & Enig's NOURISHING TRADITIONS, also available from amazon.com.
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