Secrets from the Eating Lab: The Science of Weight Loss, the Myth of Willpower, and Why You Should Never Diet Again


Traci Mann - 2015
    And what she has discovered is groundbreaking. Not only do diets not work; they often result in weight gain. Americans are losing the battle of the bulge because our bodies and brains are not hardwired to resist food—the very idea of it works against our biological imperative to survive.In Secrets From the Eating Lab, Mann challenges assumptions—including those that make up the very foundation of the weight loss industry—about how diets work and why they fail. The result of more than two decades of research, it offers cutting-edge science and exciting new insights into the American obesity epidemic and our relationship with eating and food.Secrets From the Eating Lab also gives readers the practical tools they need to actually lose weight and get healthy. Mann argues that the idea of willpower is a myth—we shouldn’t waste time and money trying to combat our natural tendencies. Instead, she offers 12 simple, effective strategies that take advantage of human nature instead of fighting it—from changing the size of your plates to socializing with people with healthy habits, removing “healthy” labels that send negative messages to redefining comfort food.

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


Steven R. Gundry - 2017
    Stephen Gundry believes that these defense strategies make the seemingly virtuous plants that we consume every day--fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, and seeds--far less "good for us" than we assume. Dr. Gundry outlines the health hazards posed by lectins. The main sources of lectins in the American diet include conventionally-raised dairy products, beans, and other legumes, wheat and grains, and specific vegetables and fruitsWith a full list of lectin-containing foods and simple substitutes for each; a step-by-step detox and eating plan; and easy lectin-free recipes, The Plant Paradox illuminates the hidden dangers lurking in your salad bowl—and shows you how to eat whole foods in a whole new way.

Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body's Natural Ability to Heal Itself


Alejandro Junger - 2009
    “The Clean program works….The wisdom and information contained in this book is deeply helpful and life changing.” —Gwyneth PaltrowAs featured on Goop.com!From Alejandro Junger, Eastern medicine specialist, cardiologist, and head of the Integrative Medicine program at Lenox Hill Hospital (as well as a doctor at New York City’s renowned Eleven Eleven Wellness Center), comes the New York Times bestseller, Clean—a medically-proven program that teaches how to remove toxins, rejuvenate our bodies, and restore our natural health.

The Calorie Myth: How to Eat More and Exercise Less, Lose Weight, and Live Better


Jonathan Bailor - 2013
    Some foods are used to repair tissue, boost brain power, and fuel our metabolism--while others are stored as fat. The human body has a set point--the weight it naturally "wants" to be--that is regulated by hormones.When we eat the right foods--plants, lean proteins, nuts, and legumes--our bodies are naturally able to maintain a healthy set point weight. But when we eat sugar, starches, fats, and other poor-quality foods, our bodies' regulatory systems become "clogged" and prevent us from burning extra calories. Translation: Those extra 10 pounds you've been carrying around for years aren't the result of eating too much: They're the result of eating hormone-clogging foods.With its step-by-step program, including a "SANEity" scale that determines which foods are optimal for weight-control; an eating plan; and a high intensity interval training (HIIT) exercise program that allows you to spend less time in the gym and achieve better results, The Calorie Myth offers a radical new model for weight loss.

The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People


Dan Buettner - 2014
    In The Blue Zones Solution, readers can be inspired by the specific stories of the people, foods, and routines of our healthy elders; understand the role community, family, and naturally healthy habits can play in improving our diet and health; and learn the exact foods-including the 50 superfoods of longevity and dozens of recipes adapted for Western tastes and markets-that offer delicious ways to eat your way to optimum health. Throughout the book are lifestyle recommendations, checklists, and stories to help you create your own personal Blue Zones solution. Readers will learn and apply the 80/20 rule, the plant slant diet, social aspects of eating that lead to weight loss and great health naturally, cultivating your "tribe" of friends and family, and your greater purpose as part of your daily routine. Filled with moving personal stories, delicious recipes, checklists, and useful tips that will transform any home into a miniature blue zone, The Blue Zones Solution is the ultimate blueprint for a healthy, happy life.

An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies


Tyler Cowen - 2012
    

Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives


Daniel J. Levitin - 2020
    Pink, author of When and Drive SUCCESSFUL AGING delivers powerful insights: - Debunking the myth that memory always declines with age - Confirming that health span--not life span--is what matters - Proving that sixty-plus years is a unique and newly recognized developmental stage - Recommending that people look forward to joy, as reminiscing doesn't promote health Levitin looks at the science behind what we all can learn from those who age joyously, as well as how to adapt our culture to take full advantage of older people's wisdom and experience. Throughout his exploration of what aging really means, using research from developmental neuroscience and the psychology of individual differences, Levitin reveals resilience strategies and practical, cognitive enhancing tricks everyone should do as they age.Successful Aging inspires a powerful new approach to how readers think about our final decades, and it will revolutionize the way we plan for old age as individuals, family members, and citizens within a society where the average life expectancy continues to rise.

Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss


Joel Fuhrman - 2003
    In EAT TO LIVE, Dr. Fuhrman offers his healthy, effective, and scientifically proven plan for shedding radical amounts of weight quickly, and keeping it off.Losing weight under Dr. Fuhrman's plan is not about willpower, it is about knowledge. The key to this revolutionary diet is the idea of nutrient density, as expressed by the simple formula Health=Nutrients/Calories. When the ratio of nutrients to calories is high, fat melts away and health is restored. Losing 20 pounds in two to three weeks is just the beginning. The more high-nutrient food Dr. Fuhrman's patients consume, the more they are satisfied with fewer calories, and the less they crave fat and high-calorie foods. Designed for people who must lose 50 pounds or more in a hurry, EAT TO LIVE works for every dieter, even those who want to lose as little as 10 pounds quickly. No willpower required-just knowledge

Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit


Barry Estabrook - 2011
    But in Tomatoland, which is based on his James Beard Award-winning article, "The Price of Tomatoes," investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry. Fields are sprayed with more than one hundred different herbicides and pesticides. Tomatoes are picked hard and green and artificially gassed until their skins acquire a marketable hue. Modern plant breeding has tripled yields, but has also produced fruits with dramatically reduced amounts of calcium, vitamin A, and vitamin C, and tomatoes that have fourteen times more sodium than the tomatoes our parents enjoyed. The relentless drive for low costs has fostered a thriving modern-day slave trade in the United States. How have we come to this point?   Estabrook traces the supermarket tomato from its birthplace in the deserts of Peru to the impoverished town of Immokalee, Florida, a.k.a. the tomato capital of the United States. He visits the laboratories of seedsmen trying to develop varieties that can withstand the rigors of agribusiness and still taste like a garden tomato, and then moves on to commercial growers who operate on tens of thousands of acres, and eventually to a hillside field in Pennsylvania, where he meets an obsessed farmer who produces delectable tomatoes for the nation's top restaurants.Throughout Tomatoland, Estabrook presents a who's who cast of characters in the tomato industry: the avuncular octogenarian whose conglomerate grows one out of every eight tomatoes eaten in the United States; the ex-Marine who heads the group that dictates the size, color, and shape of every tomato shipped out of Florida; the U.S. attorney who has doggedly prosecuted human traffickers for the past decade; and the Guatemalan peasant who came north to earn money for his parents' medical bills and found himself enslaved for two years.Tomatoland reads like a suspenseful whodunit as well as an expose of today's agribusiness systems and the price we pay as a society when we take taste and thought out of our food purchases.

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life


Ed Yong - 2016
    Many people think of microbes as germs to be eradicated, but those that live with us—the microbiome—build our bodies, protect our health, shape our identities, and grant us incredible abilities. In this astonishing book, Ed Yong takes us on a grand tour through our microbial partners, and introduces us to the scientists on the front lines of discovery. Yong, whose humor is as evident as his erudition, prompts us to look at ourselves and our animal companions in a new light—less as individuals and more as the interconnected, interdependent multitudes we assuredly are. The microbes in our bodies are part of our immune systems and protect us from disease. Those in cows and termites digest the plants they eat. In the deep oceans, mysterious creatures without mouths or guts depend on microbes for all their energy. Bacteria provide squids with invisibility cloaks, help beetles to bring down forests, and allow worms to cause diseases that afflict millions of people. I Contain Multitudes is the story of these extraordinary partnerships, between the creatures we are familiar with and those we are not. It reveals how we humans are disrupting these partnerships and how we might manipulate them for our own good. It will change both our view of nature and our sense of where we belong in it.

I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking


Alton Brown - 2002
    Blending humor, wisdom, history, pop culture, science, and basic cooking knowledge, the host of Food Network's Good Eats presents a special edition of his innovative, instructional cooking guide that features various cooking techniques accompanied by a "master" recipe for each technique, and provides a vast array of food-related tips and advice.

The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of Secrets, Eccentrics, and the American Dream


Langdon Cook - 2013
    . . and one of nature’s last truly wild foods: the uncultivated, uncontrollable mushroom.Within the dark corners of America’s forests grow culinary treasures. Chefs pay top dollar to showcase these elusive and beguiling ingredients on their menus. Whether dressing up a filet mignon with smoky morels or shaving luxurious white truffles over pasta, the most elegant restaurants across the country now feature an abundance of wild mushrooms. The mushroom hunters, by contrast, are a rough lot. They live in the wilderness and move with the seasons. Motivated by Gold Rush desires, they haul improbable quantities of fungi from the woods for cash. Langdon Cook embeds himself in this shadowy subculture, reporting from both rural fringes and big-city eateries with the flair of a novelist, uncovering along the way what might be the last gasp of frontier-style capitalism. Meet Doug, an ex-logger and crabber—now an itinerant mushroom picker trying to pay his bills and stay out of trouble; and Jeremy, a former cook turned wild food entrepreneur, crisscrossing the continent to build a business amid cutthroat competition; their friend Matt, an up-and-coming chef whose kitchen alchemy is turning heads; and the woman who inspires them all. Rich with the science and lore of edible fungi—from seductive chanterelles to exotic porcini—The Mushroom Hunters is equal parts gonzo travelogue and culinary history lesson, a rollicking, character-driven tour through a world that is by turns secretive, dangerous, and tragically American.

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal


Eric Schlosser - 2001
    That's a lengthy list of charges, but here Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from California's subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many fast food's flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths -- from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate. (back cover)

Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery


Henry Marsh - 2014
    Operations on the brain carry grave risks. Every day, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh must make agonizing decisions, often in the face of great urgency and uncertainty.If you believe that brain surgery is a precise and exquisite craft, practiced by calm and detached doctors, this gripping, brutally honest account will make you think again. With astonishing compassion and candor, Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets, and the moments of black humor that characterize a brain surgeon's life.Do No Harm provides unforgettable insight into the countless human dramas that take place in a busy modern hospital. Above all, it is a lesson in the need for hope when faced with life's most difficult decisions.

Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put in Us and on Us


George Zaidan - 2020
    Coffee. Sunscreen. Vapes. George Zaidan reveals what will kill you, what won't, and why--explained with high-octane hilarity, hysterical hijinks, and other things that don't begin with the letter H. INGREDIENTS offers the perspective of a chemist on the stuff we eat, drink, inhale, and smear on ourselves. Apart from the burning question of whether you should eat that Cheeto, Zaidan explores a range of topics. Here's a helpful guide:Stuff in this book: - How bad is processed food? How sure are we?- Is sunscreen safe? Should you use it?- Is coffee good or bad for you?- What's your disease horoscope?- What is that public pool smell made of?- What happens when you overdose on fentanyl in the sun?- What do cassava plants and Soviet spies have in common?- When will you die?Stuff in other books: - Your carbon footprint- Food sustainability- GMOs- CEO pay- Science funding- Politics- Football- Baseball- Any kind of ball reallyZaidan, an MIT-trained chemist who cohosted CNBC's hit Make Me a Millionaire Inventor and wrote and voiced several TED-Ed viral videos, makes chemistry more fun than Hogwarts as he reveals exactly what science can (and can't) tell us about the packaged ingredients sold to us every day. Sugar, spinach, formaldehyde, cyanide, the ingredients of life and death, and how we know if something is good or bad for us--as well as the genius of aphids and their butts--are all discussed in exquisite detail at breakneck speed.