The book starts with a explanation of how obesity is affecting the health of Americans. It explains how much an individual should weigh, the related diseases (high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes) that can develop from being overweight or obese, and how these conditions can be prevented. Most of this information is very basic and can be found online or through reading other books. There is a brief discussion on how the food industry can affect our choices and the choices our children make when deciding what to eat. This is interesting information that could have been expanded.
The next section discusses what Americans are doing wrong with their current diets. Americans appear to be doing a lot wrong. Overeating is making us age faster and is decreasing our quality of life as we age. We also drink to many of our calories in the sugar filled soft drinks. There is some good science in this section that could also be expanded. This information is very easy to understand and drives home that over consumption is contributing to the obesity problem.
Next, the book gives a very basic overview of the DASH diet. There are no sample meal plans or menu suggestions, but a chart of how many servings per day a person should consume. This information is not a good resource for actually implementing the DASH diet into your life. It gives no information on how to actually change your eating habits to fit with the recommendations of the diet. Some basic information would have been more helpful but there is none. The book does give some very helpful tips on general healthy eating and weight loss. These tips make up the most helpful part of the book. The suggestions are realistic and most people would have no trouble implementing at least a few of them.
The chapter for using the DASH diet with diabetes was quite helpful. This section gives basic information on how carbohydrates and insulin work in the body, then discusses how counting carbohydrates can fit into the general DASH plan. DASH emphasizes vegetable and fruit consumption as the base of the diet which is very healthy for people with diabetes. This section gives a sample meal plan and carbohydrate count for the food included. There are also tips for portion sizes when selecting carbohydrate containing foods.
The last chapter is about salt. Sodium restriction is a very important component of the DASH diet. The current recommendation is that individuals with high blood pressure consume 1500mg of sodium or less a day. The chapter explains how sodium effects the body and kidneys. There is also a chart for common foods with their sodium levels. This chapter is helpful for learning why sodium is unhealthy and a few tips for lower sodium intake. The information could have been more detailed to better explain how to decrease sodium. Most processed food items have a large amount of sodium and a list of requirements for lower sodium would have been appropriate. Lower sodium recipes would have been extremely helpful in this section.
Overall, the book has some good information but is too basic to help someone implement the DASH plan into their daily life. A much better book would be The DASH Diet For Weight Loss.
View all my reviews
