Good Grape Wine Company

The book is laid out in alphabetical order, listing each food discussed, and describing how to choose and use it in one's diet. I was quite pleased with how comprehensive and wide ranging the information was. The cover states that it includes information on Ayurveda, Western nutrition, and tradidtional Chinese medicine, and the book lives up to that promise very well.

I have grown tired of all the fad diets and cookbooks that are perpetrated by various economic interests, and this book is a breath of fresh air. My only complaints are the near total lack of information about animal foods (which the book does not even pretend to include, so that is okay), and the "incomplete" information on soy. I have serious issues with the soy industry and some of the goings on therein, and personally avoid soy products of any kind like the plague. The soy industry has been behind campaigns of disinformation about healthy oils like coconut, and I do not trust any information that comes from those quarters. Much of what is circulated in vegetarian circles about the history of soy use in the Orient is distorted. Yes, it was in the Yellow Emperor's book as one of the 5 sacred grains, but it was never eaten as a food by humans until it could be made safe by fermentation, and then seldom in amounts greater than a couple tablespoons a day as flavoring (until the influence of the modern soy industry, that is). It was used as a rotation crop to fix nitrogen in the soil until fermentation was discovered. That is a part of the history that seems to get lost in the telling.

Wood does have caveats against certain soy products, thank goodness, and her blindness to the dark side of soy is the only complaint I have about the entire book. The rest, including the use of coconut oil and butter, seems to me to be right on the mark. I wholeheartedly recommend this book as an additional reference to Sally Fallon's "Nourishing Traditions," and Ron Schmid's "Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine." It is a very good reference to the vegetable, grain, and fruit foods available.

I would like to take off 1/3 of a star for the soy stuff, but feel that the rest of the book is so good as to merit an overall 5.