I give this book 10 out of 10 acorns.
I appreciated the following in the book:
1) The organization of the book. It starts off with a great preface that explains the necessity and importance that the author feels in writing her book and the message she would like to convey, Sally Fallon would like to explain how technological innovations to food are harming human health and how knowledge of food and health from indigenous peoples, first nations, and traditional ways of preparing food (e.g. olde English, Scottish, and Russian methods) can be leveraged to improve and sustain human health- to make it so we can thrive as healthy happy beings. She then follows up her preface with a thorough and well-cited introduction that covers what she calls "Politically Correct Nutrition", and then she goes through each food group (Fats, Carbohydrates, Proteins, Milk & milk Products, Vitamins, Minerals, Enzymes, Salt/Spices, Beverages, and Diets/Allergies) and explains what she finds to be wrong with "PC ideas", the flawed analysis of these food groups in "PC diets", and what she believes is actually beneficial for human health from an anthropological, physiological, and biochemical standpoint. Then, after the introduction, the book is organized like a typical cookbook. With each section of recipes that she has grouped together, she starts each section off with a page or two explaining the thoughts and rationale behind the recipes and methods used in each section. Then, within each section of recipes, there is a lot of cited material from papers, other
books, journals, and magazines that talk about issues related to the recipes contained within each section. I especially enjoyed how well-cited the book is, because it demonstrates that she took the time to understand the whole subject and what is going on.
2) Thoroughness. I liked how much effort has gone into the book she wrote, and again, it's all the excerpts that I really love and the completeness of her analysis. One of the things I enjoyed from the anthropological approach taken is that it demonstrates how diet is not a one-size -fits-all kind of thing, and she shows quite well how societies all over the world have good and healthy diets that nourish them under many different conditions and climates. There are some overarching principles that can be gleaned, like including saturated fats in one's diet, eating fermented foods, and eating that has been grown in an appropriate and respectful manner to the environment and to that organism. The book also brought to light the many names of evil- toxins and poisons- that are in our food supply, so I have a better idea of what I need to look out for. Most importantly, she also takes the time ti explain why these toxins and poisons are not good for you, and just as well, she takes the time to explain why all these foods she believes are good are healthy for you to eat and enjoy.
3) Sensibility. As far as I understand the subject, I think what she has written in the book makes sense and is accurate. It jives with what I have learned at college in my biochemistry and microbiology classes, and it makes sense with what I know from the primal movement, which looks at human health from a human physiology and anthropological approach.
So, overall, I gotta say, I loved this book! It opened my eyes more to the breadth of the dangers of technological processing of foods, what poisons/toxins I need to look out for, and best of all, it described the great variety of healthy diets and foods out there and plenty of recipes that I can prepare for myself! That was a key take away from the book- there is more than one way to eat right!
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