The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth About What You Should Eat and Why

`The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth' by Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S. is the latest and best of the healthy eating genre, the `best foods' book. Earlier entries in this category are `Superfoods' by Steven Pratt, M.D. and Kathy Matthews and the '12 Best Foods Cookbook' by Dana Jacobi. Bowden's book is different in three directions from these other volumes. First, it contains no recipes. This is little loss, as the second difference, the much longer list of `good' foods more than makes it up. One can quite easily find good recipes for these foods by yourself. For starters, just get Pratt and Jacobi's books! The third difference is that the author has many comments on what is NOT good for you, what you should avoid, as well as the many things you should search out.The very best news in this book is the revelation (or confirmation, if you are up on your nutritional news flashes) that coffee, wine, butter, eggs, chocolate, cinnamon and watermelon are GOOD FOR YOU! One of the biggest surprises is that most soy products and many milk products (although NOT cheese and yogurt) are NOT good for you. Weak soy products include soy milk and tofu. Fermented soy products such as miso, like so many other fermented food products (yogurt, Kimchee, cheeses and sauerkraut) are still valuable, enhanced by the friendly bacteria responsible for the fermentation.In spite of all the great news about some guilty pleasures, Bowden gives no relief for the bread and pasta lovers among us. It seems that grains such as wheat and rice, no matter how `unfussed about with', are high in `empty calories'. Processed white grain and their wheats come off as being close to being poisonous! I'm exaggerating, of course, but I sometimes have the feeling that our good Dr. Bowden sometimes overstates his case just a smidge. One example that caught my eye was his opinion on the relative value of the commercially packaged honey (regardless of flowery source) versus raw honey in the comb. While I am not intimate with all the details of honey processing, I have seen some of the steps, and I honestly can't see how a bit of centrifugation and even pasteurization can succeed in turning something good into something bad or at least neutral. On the other hand, Bowden does agree with a general position on food processing that claims that all heat treatment such as pasteurization degrades foods. The entire `Raw' food movement is based on this premise. So, while I am not ready to go out and buy my dehydrator and ship my range off to the metal recycler, I chalk some points up to the `Raw' camp from this very knowledgeably written book. One question I would pose to the Raw camp is how can you deal with especially good foods such as bitter greens which are almost inedible, or at least unpalatable if left uncooked.One thing I find missing in this and virtually all other books on nutrition is a good practical sense of what in economics is called the marginal value of one food over another. For example, what is the practical difference to us between raw honey and `processed' honey. I will grant the difference, but is that difference worth the effort required to search out a source for raw honey when the `Sue Bee' honey bear is on every supermarket shelf. A more serious thought on the marginal value of foods arises when the author, or any other nutritional author touts a particular nutritional benefit, such as the anti-prostate cancer properties of lycopene found in both tomatoes and watermelon. As I am genetically predisposed to prostate cancer, I am inclined to wolf down as many tomato preparations as I can get my hands on. My problem is that this `hope' is probably pretty slim. Two portions of tomatoes a day for the rest of my life will probably change my chances by about 0.2%. I'm just guessing here, but I have a hunch that if someone ate a perfect diet according to these recommendation, the difference may still be too small to measure. This is why the author's negative comments about grains, milk, and soy are probably more valuable, as they warn us against things which we have for generations believed to be especially good for us.I found only one weakness in Dr. Bowden's facts, or at least in his completeness. In the article about cinnamon, he does not distinguish between true cinnamon (cinnamonum zelanicum) from Sri Lanka and it's close lookalike, cassia (Cinnamomum cassia) from China and southeast Asia. My hunch is that the good doctor was really talking about cassia. He would have removed a small blemish on his thoroughness if he would have distinguished the two. In general, he would have given a small bone to those of us who dote on such things if he were to have given the scientific names for all plant and animal food sources.Overall, this is a really good book on nutrition. Not because it's facts are better than those in many other books on nutrition, but rather because the cases for both good and bad foods are so eloquently and readably made. My two favorite facts are on the relative nutritional value of dandelion greens and lamb. Now dandelion should be no surprise, ALL green leaved vegetables are good for you. It's just that dandelion, like so many greens, is cheap. The good news about lamb, my very favorite meat, is based on the fact that sheep are grass fed, unlike cattle and pigs. And, if there is any one lesson we get from this book, our food sources, like us, are what they eat, and green grass is much better for Bo Peep's charges than corn or wheat.This is an excellent book of useable information on nutrition! I hope the author gets together with a strong culinary collaborator and turns all this information into a cookbook.

LOVE THIS BOOK!! It helped change my family’s eating lifestyle for the better and so educational. Have had it a long while now and it’s been SO helpful. It’s super easy (and fun) to read right thru and/or use as like a reference guide. Good imagery, well thought out layout and flow. Knowledge is power and it is very encouraging; when you read why this or this food is good for you (and tips on how to eat it and integrate it into your daily lifestyle with food) it really makes a difference and you tend to focus on all the GOOD stuff you can eat and WHY you’d want to eat it!! Very informative, interesting, and a staple now in our home. Love this author too, he’s got a great outlook on living a healthier life!!

This is one of the best books I've bought in a long time. You could probably get the raw information contained in this book off the Web with a little bit of work, but the book has huge value from the sheer energy with which it presents eating healthily. The book is beautifully produced, with lavish color photographs of each food -- page 24, for example, sports a kingly stalk of beautiful fresh green broccoli standing upright against a glossy white page, soft shadow angling off to the left, next to the sentence, "Broccoli is vegetable royalty." And Jonny Bowden writes with infectious enthusiasm about the health benefits of all the foods, so that you really feel that that handful of blueberries you're eating will keep your memory strong into old age, and that the quinoa you're cooking gives you a leg up on everyone else in terms of nutrition value in your grain.The one ding I'll give to the book is that it has not taken into account any considerations of the environmental impact of the food recommendations given. This turns out to be a surprisingly minor issue, but it leads to things like (for example) a recommendation of orange roughy as a good fish choice, which may be true in terms of pure health but is not ecologically sustainable.But the book earns a solid five stars nevertheless. A hard-boiled egg and oatmeal with frozen berries for breakfast! Yeah!

Detailed info abounds along with color photos!This is a wonderfully informative book written by a doctor that gives not only nutritional details but also the healing properties of foods along with studies done. As a vegan I still will not eat some of the foods claimed to be healthy (such as organic beef) only because my extensive research shows that in any form it is not that healthy... but the fact is if you eat meat... this book tells you the best meat to eat. (I'm a poet and I didn't even know it!) The best book on high quality food I've ever purchased. Also comes with a DVD (which I have not watched as of yet so I will not comment.)Nancy Rector, author of:"A Painful Truth - The Entrapment of America's Sick" (How being ill got me arrested.)

I was a bit skeptic about buying it but needed a bargain , it’s in very good condition and the disc is in there so very happy with my purchase thank you

I first got this book as a gift from a nationally ranked athlete who specializes in recovery & nutrition. I then promptly bought it as a gift to give my daughter. My husband has (had?) zero interest in nutrition, but the info in this book is so easy to read & understand... it's actually entertaining!... that even my husband started quoting passages from it to his friends. You will become a much better shopper, and you will never again think that all yogurts (oats, milk, tea, rice... ) are created equally.

I started working out 8 months ago, rethought my Nutrition at this point, so i decided to buy a book about healthy foods...I bought this one cause a friend recommended this one to me!The book is great and describes details about nutrition level from these foods in an easy and informative way...After reading this book, u know what u should eat to be healthy.I lost 25kg with this knowledge... even if u workout u should remember that weight is all a question of nutrition ( well actually, 70% nutrition, 30% workout)This book helped me a lot getting lean!

I found out a lot more about why certain foods are good for you - and some of the research behind it, all in an easily digestible form :) The only drawback is the quantity needed to achieve some of the benefits is not readily discernible in a lot of cases - but to offset that, if you ate the ingredients listed you would presumably have a pretty good diet!

Another gem from Jonny Bowden, all the usual suspects in the expert fields of nutrition and health. I ordered a few extra copies to lend out and as a presents to family members. Very informative with the studies to back up the arguments of why to use or avoid certain foods.