Did the world really need a fourth “Eat This, Not That!” book?
Well, maybe not. Having read the first three in the series of food-choice comparison guides created by David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding of Men’s Health magazine, I’d have been inclined to say, OK, guys, I get it. Some foods that seem healthful are surprisingly bad for you, and others that you think might kill you aren’t as bad as you thought, and it’s important to look at the nutrition facts so you’ll know the difference.
To be sure, the new book follows its best-selling forebears, delving into the nutrition data for tons of fast-food, casual dining and grocery-store foods and comparing them to one another, urging readers to choose the more healthful items over those most likely to clog your arteries and pad your thighs.
The shock value is somewhat diminished by now: A venti 2 percent Starbucks Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate has 760 calories? What else is new?
Having said all that, though, I have to confess that I love this book. Flipping through the pages is like snacking on Lay’s potato chips (the 110-calorie baked variety being an “Eat This” choice, besting 210-calorie Sun Chips Original in the vending-machine-snack category).
The four-page list of food sources for 14 key vitamins and minerals (did you know there’s zinc in both wheat germ and pastrami?) is as handy a little guide as I’ve seen.
And after reading this edition’s lineup of common food additives and their potential effects on your body, you’ll never feel the same way again about Tropicana orange juice. Its ingredients include cochineal extract — a coloring agent made of “about 90 percent insect-body fragments.”
As in earlier volumes, Zinczenko and Goulding offer sections enumerating the best and worst foods for specific nutritional goals: To ward off high cholesterol and blood pressure, skip the Grilled Shrimp Caprese at Olive Garden, which delivers 150 percent of the recommended daily maximum of sodium.
And they include information about foods that boost your mood, improve your complexion, fuel your workout or lift your libido (oysters don’t, but dark chocolate does).
New to this edition is a section called “The Best Foods You’ve Never Heard Of.” The aronia berry: Like acai, aronia, also known as chokeberry, has lots of antioxidants, as signaled by its deep purple color.
Then there’s fenugreek, an herb used in many Indian dishes that may help regulate blood sugar. Hemp seed nuts, we learn, are packed with protein and alpha-linoleic acid, which is good for your heart.
Sweet potato leaves turn out to be full of antioxidants and other disease-fighting compounds. And alligator meat has more protein than beef or chicken, as well as omega-3 fatty acids.
The “ETNT” team wins my heart by embracing full-fat cheese over reduced-fat. They say it’s a great source of casein protein, good for building strong muscle; they also cite research showing that “even when men ate 10 ounces of full-fat cheese daily for 3 weeks, their LDL (‘bad’) cholesterol didn’t budge.”
My very favorite nugget appears in the “Superfoods in Disguise” section. I’ve been told for years that iceberg lettuce has almost no nutritional value — but there it is, with the explanation that “half a head of iceberg lettuce has significantly more alpha-carotene, a powerful disease-fighting antioxidant, than either romaine lettuce or spinach.”
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