Nutrition & Mental Health Book Reviews Page 1

Joel Fuhrman
Little, Brown and Company
2011
400 pages
$12.99 - $22.99

Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss

Joel Fuhrman's nutrient-density-first plant-based programme - a useful framework wrapped in restrictions stricter than the evidence requires.

Gary Taubes
Knopf
2007
640 pages
$15.00

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health

Gary Taubes's ambitious, dense revisionist history of nutrition science - intellectually important, selectively argued, and the origin text of the modern low-carb movement.

Michael Greger, Gene Stone
Flatiron Books
2015
576 pages
$18.99 - $49.99

How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease

Michael Greger's encyclopaedic plant-based guide - densely referenced, passionately argued, and more selectively framed than the enormous bibliography implies.

Michael Pollan
Penguin Press
2008
256 pages
$19.00

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Michael Pollan's eater's manifesto - seven words that changed the nutrition conversation and a book that has aged better than almost anything else on the shelf.

Evelyn Tribole, Elyse Resch
St. Martin's Essentials
2020
400 pages
$12.99 - $20.00

Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach

The foundational anti-diet book - compassionate, evidence-informed, and one of the most important nutrition books for readers whose relationship with food has become a source of suffering.

Shalane Flanagan, Elyse Kopecky
Rodale Books
2016
256 pages
$28.00

Run Fast. Eat Slow.: Nourishing Recipes for Athletes

A New York Times bestseller cookbook that proves athletes can eat food that tastes amazing while fueling peak performance.

Michael Moss
Random House
2013
446 pages
$20.00

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

Michael Moss's James Beard-winning investigation into how the food industry engineers cravings - essential context for any nutrition conversation.

T. Colin Campbell, Thomas M. Campbell II
BenBella Books
2016
496 pages
$9.99 - $17.95

The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-Term Health

T. Colin Campbell's foundational plant-based nutrition book - ambitious, widely influential, and more methodologically contested than most readers realise.

Jason Fung
Greystone Books
2016
296 pages
$22.95

The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

Jason Fung's insulin-focused model of obesity - readable and provocative, but more contested than the confident tone suggests.

Michael Pollan
Penguin Press
2006
450 pages
$19.00 - $28.00

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Michael Pollan's landmark food-chain investigation - one of the most important food books written in the last twenty years and essential context for any nutrition conversation.

Gary Taubes
Knopf
2010
272 pages
$17.00

Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It

Gary Taubes's accessible pitch for the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis - clear and provocative, but the thesis has been partially undermined by subsequent research.

Gin Stephens
St. Martin's Griffin
2020
352 pages
$11.99 - $26.99

Fast. Feast. Repeat.: The Comprehensive Guide to Delay, Don't Deny Intermittent Fasting

Gin Stephens's practical, community-driven guide to intermittent fasting - useful as an on-ramp, oversold in places on the specific mechanisms.

Michael Pollan
Penguin Books
2009
140 pages
$17.00

Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

Michael Pollan's sixty-four short rules for eating well - one of the most durable and quietly powerful nutrition books of the last twenty years.

David Perlmutter
Little, Brown Spark
2013
336 pages
$14.99 - $42.00

Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar - Your Brain's Silent Killers

A commercially huge anti-grain book on brain health - mainstream neurology and nutrition science do not endorse the central claims.

Brian Wansink
Bantam
2006
304 pages
$18.00

Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

An originally influential book on environmental cues and eating - now substantially discredited by the author's research misconduct record.

Dan Buettner
National Geographic
2012
336 pages
$14.95

The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who've Lived the Longest

Dan Buettner's tour of the world's longest-lived communities - diet, movement, purpose, and connection together, in a framework that has aged well.

Tim Spector
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
2015
323 pages
$15.54

The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat

Tim Spector's rigorous tour of diet, the microbiome, and individual variation - one of the most reliable nutrition books on the shelf.

Mark Hyman
Little, Brown Spark
2021
272 pages
$14.99 - $35.00

The Pegan Diet: 21 Practical Principles for Reclaiming Your Health in a Nutritionally Confusing World

Mark Hyman's attempt to merge paleo and vegan into one pragmatic set of whole-food principles - reasonable advice wrapped in functional-medicine packaging.

Steven R. Gundry
Harper Wave
2017
416 pages
$13.49 - $28.99

The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain

A commercially successful, scientifically contested anti-lectin book - most mainstream nutrition experts do not endorse its core claims.

Melissa Hartwig Urban, Dallas Hartwig
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
2015
432 pages
$12.99 - $26.00

The Whole30: The 30-Day Guide to Total Health and Food Freedom

A thirty-day whole-foods elimination and reintroduction protocol - useful as a diagnostic, less useful as a long-term identity.

William Davis
Rodale Books
2011
304 pages
$19.99

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health

A commercially huge, scientifically weak book arguing modern wheat is the root cause of most chronic disease - widely disputed by mainstream nutrition science.