psoriasis:BOOKS KEYS TO HEALTH
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JANE BRODY’S NUTRITION BOOK: A Lifetime Guide to Good Eating for Better Health and Weight Control. 552 pages. Norton. $17.95.
SOME people eye all foods with suspicion; they’ve read about coffee and cancer of the pancreas, cholesterol and heart disease, tuna fish and mercury poisoning, and they don’t know what they can eat or drink safely anymore. Others seek salvation in special diets or mineral supplements that they believe will keep them healthy, young, slim and vital - and they bore their friends with endless descriptions of each new panacea.
Most of us alternate betwen being perplexed and shrugging our shoulders about food, as if it didn’t really make any difference what we ate.
Jane E. Brody, personal-health columnist of The New York Times, takes issue with all these positions. In this splendid, wellresearched book, she makes it clear that (1) what we choose to put in our stomach does matter, for it can produce illness or, maybe, add years to our lives, (2) most of the fad diets and supplements are dangerous and (3) our best hope lies in eating the widest possible variety of foods - in spreading the risk, so to speak, lest one good custom corrupt our health. The Dosage Is the Key
”It takes more than just the presence of a chemical to make a toxic substance a poison,” she points out. ”It also requires a dose sufficiently large to have an effect. The greater the variety of foods you consume, the less the chance that you will accumulate a hazardous dose of a toxic chemical from any one food.”
This baleful, but sensible view of food applies to ”natural” or ”health” foods as well as to others, Miss Brody emphasizes. ” ‘Natural’ doesn’t necessarily mean good,” she writes. ”Natural poisons can contaminate otherwise healthful foods, such as the cancer-causing aflatoxin produced by a mold that grows on peanuts, corn and grain.” A Useful Package
The book is packed with useful information about every conceivable aspect of nutrition: how much protein you need (less than you think), what food additives to avoid, how to lose weight, how to gain weight and what to eat at every stage of life, from infancy to the teens, from pregnancy to old age. It contains hundreds of anecdotes, recipes and helpful do’s and don’ts: Do drink water - lots of it -while exercising, despite the myth that it is bad for you; do eat more carbohydrates, for it’s not true that they are fattening; cut down on salt and sugar; eat more fiber.
Miss Brody also answers some questions that have puzzled me for years: Why does one get hungry again soon after eating Chinese food? Is bottled ‘’spring water” really better than what comes from the tap? What does the ”all-natural” label actually mean? This comprehensive guidebook will surely answer your questions as well. ————————————————– ——————- Maya Pines, who writes about science and behavior, is author of ”The Brain Changers.”
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