"Food Cures:" how food relates to specific health concerns -- new book by Joy Bauer

I recently received a copy of Joy Bauer’s Food Cures (Eat right to get healthier, look younger and add years to your life) from its publisher, Rodale Press. It's very interesting, well researched and engagingly written, enough that I can heartily recommend this book for the healthy foodie.

On the back cover and first pages are testimonials from food-oriented celebs such as TV chef Bobby Flay, Meredith Viera and South Beach Diet author Arthur Agatson, among others – as well as an impressive list of medical professionals. Joy Bauer has is a nutritionist who writes regularly for Women’s Day magazine and appears as a nutrition expert on the Today Show.

I like the author's organization the material, with the book divided into sections such as Losing Weight, Looking Great, and Feeling Good, and further subdivided into chapters that address virtually any type of health concern a reader might have. So if, for instance, you suffer from insomnia, PMS or arthritis – among many others – you can flip right to the chapter that will help you figure out the best foods for your particular areas of interest.  Other chapters cover vision, memory, headaches, depression, cancer, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, along with chapters on keeping your skin, hair and teeth healthy.

I consider myself a fairly well-read health consumer, and yet I learned quite a lot from Joy’s book.  Each chapter begins with the “basics” of the topic, and the author has condensed up-to-date research results in very approachable, readable prose. (Information sources are saved until the end of the book so as not to clutter the chapters.)  Next she writes about the relationship between food and that chapter’s focus; then a step-by-step plan for incorporating the right foods into your lifestyle.  Each chapter concludes with a few recipes (3-5 per chapter), giving the reader a total of perhaps 70 healthy recipes throughout the book. I haven't tried any of the recipes yet, but they seem well written, clear and easy to follow.

Go here to learn more about Joy Bauer, this book, and her other work.