Customer Reviews

The Cardiologist's Wife's Chocolate Too! Diet: No Sugar, No Fat & Luscious

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This diet/cookbook is terrific. I've lost 10 pounds without cravings! That may not sound like a lot, but believe me, it is. The health/nutrition updates in the first 50 pages have helped me realize what I'd been doing wrong. Can't think of any other diet book that gave such great advice, and in such a warm, helpful way. This book's a real ego booster when I'm feeling down or stressed about my weight.

And, since I love chocolate, the book's recommended unsweetened cocoa recipes (no-sugar no-fat fudge sauce!) have helped me fight off hunger. Cocoa is also the highest in antioxidants, something else I hadn't known, so I consider it and the recent studies revealed in this book as a lifesaver. The recipes are also amazingly inventive, using new, better-for-you food products.

I've done about a zillion diets, but I've only gained weight and nearly went nuts from the cravings. No more of that with The Cardiologist's Wife's book. I can't recommend it enough.

I'm very impressed with this book and let me say i'm not that easy to impress - the food recipes are so delicious and healthy but at the same time easy and quick to make - that i was blown away !!!

there is also so much health oriented information in this book -
i couldn't believe it when i found out that pure cocoa is so good for your health with all of the antioxidant's and other natural compound's that it has - which drove me to spend many hr's researching and reading all of the research available on it's health benefits

many of the recipes in the book show you how to incorporate pure coca ( to satisfy your and my sweet tooth ) and many other wonderful healthy ingredients into your everyday cooking

one of the chapters includes the most recent updates in nutrition and cardiology - the book also offers many food lists, meal plans and of course the many delicious recipes that it has

I think the book was poorly written. I think an editor would have been nice - LOTS of typos in the recipes. We tried several of the dessert recipes (cheesecake and apple crisp) and threw them away. They were awful!!! Although the ideas in the book are good, the recipes are not and too much Splenda is used. Some of the recipes could do without the Splenda and still taste good.

I've got mixed feelings about this book.

Pros: I think the author(s) hit it right on the head with respect to the basic premise. Sugars and fats can BOTH be bad. So, if you go low-carb, it often means high fat, including 'bad fats' (saturated, trans-fat; Esselstyn would say pretty much ALL oils other than what you get in eating the actual natural foods themselves like flaxseeds, etc.) If you go low-fat, it often means high carb, including 'bad carbs' (fructose & other sugar-loaded foods and high-GI starches that quickly spike blood glucose). The premise of this book is that it's actually possible to eat to avoid BOTH sets of pitfalls, once you know what they are.

In principle, I like this. It's what I've been saying to myself for the last year or two after reading Esselstyn's Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease and then Richard Johnson's The Sugar Fix, Richard Gillespie's Sweet Poison and more recently Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It and soon to read Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes.

It feels like each has a piece of the diet-health puzzle. This book seems to understand that and in many places makes the, I think well-founded, implicit claim that "it's not one or the other, it's BOTH."

Cons: The book's editor needs to be fired. There were tons of typos or wrong words. And, honestly, it was repetitive in a few places. Cutting out the repeated bits could have probably shaved a good 3-5 pages off, maybe more. If you're going to make a list of bullet points, really, just do it once and leave it at that. Don't copy and paste nearly verbatim the same bullet points throughout the book. We got it the first time, move on. Don't pad the page count. One example is toward the end in the recipes section where there's a list of the supposedly highest antioxidant ingredients or foods, and then literally about 3-5 pages later, the exact same list is repeated verbatim. Even the next that came after it looked like it might have been repeated. I skipped over it and didn't re-read it word-for-word.

For extolling the virtues of cocoa, up to including the word chocolate in the title, very few recipes actually USED the stuff. Anyone expecting TONS of recipes with cocoa in them, better think twice.

I wasn't particularly impressed with the layout of the recipes either. It seemed pretty haphazardly thrown together. I couldn't really tell if things were grouped by food type, by time of day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc.). Heck, the recipes section was even interrupted by a section of text supposedly from the cardiologist husband. Then they went back to some more recipes. In the second section, they were supposed to be comparing "unhealthy" vs. "healthy" versions of the same dish side-by-side. That didn't always seem to be the case. In general it just needed to be organized better. I would have much preferred the substitutions and such to be a section unto themselves. So, "if an egg is called for, use XYZ instead," "if cooking oil is called for, use PDQ instead." Once those are done, THEN launch into some examples of one dish versus another dish. Then move on to a more general list of single "good" recipes. And if you're going for a lifestyle-change or wanting your readers to change their lifestyle. 30-50 recipes probably isn't going to do it. I'd like to see a MUCH longer recipe list, well-formatted, with consistent and complete nutritional information well-formatted for each item. Most of the entries listed calories, carbs, fats, protein and some broke it down further with sugars. But at some point, it felt like the author just got lazy and sloppy and the only nutritional information was the number of calories. Maybe it was because there really was no nutritional value to speak of (protein, fat, sugar, carbs), but we'll never know, since the author didn't elaborate beyond "115 calories," etc.

Also, there were a lot of claims made, but little evidence to back them up. I had hoped to hear about specific studies, like those references by the books listed above by Esselstyn, Johnson, Taubes, Barnard, etc. From my OTHER reading, I generally agree with a number of the claims. However, due to lack of evidentiary support for them, I would not recommend this book as a "sole authority" on the subject. I'd recommend reading the books mentioned above as well and making up your own mind on what is / isn't safe and what does / doesn't pack on the pounds or disrupt the metabolism.

Conclusion: In general, I agree with the premise that both added fats and sugars can be major mines in the dietary landscape and lowering one usually means raising the other unless you're careful. I think it's quite possible the choose a middle ground that avoids the perilous parts of both macro-nutrients.

However, the book seems a bit sloppy and less-than-rigorous.
For a discussion of fructose / sugar: read Richard Johnson & David Gillespie.
For a discussion of fats, read Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn.
For a discussion of carbohydrates and their impact on hormones and obesity, perhaps read Gary Taubes.
I'm holding off on recommending Barnard's book on Diabetes, since I haven't yet received my copy that's in the mail. Once I get it and peruse it, I'll let you know. 'Til then, I'll just say that from the Amazon preview it looks promising, but I'll reserve judgment, for the time being.
Oh, and if you want an interesting book on some of the new information about heart disease, I also do recommend Hidden Causes of Heart Attack and Stroke: Inflammation, Cardiology's New Frontier. It's a rather good read. Not perfect, but pretty decent.

So, in sum, I think this book's an okayish supplement to the above authors once you've read them and their slightly harder science. But on its own it's a little sloppy and lacks a certain depth.

My husband is a heart patient, so I was delighted when I saw this book; however, I am extremely disappointed. His heart doctor does not recommend ANY sugar substitutes. Most of the recipes contain artificial sweetners especially Splenda (which affects my digestive system negatively). So, I am not happy with my purchase. Many of the recipes I have had previously. And there are not enough with chocolate to warrant the price of the book. My advice: don't waste your money.

This book was recommended to me by a physician's wife. I usually don't buy this type of book, but I was willing to risk "another diet book.' This is funny and interesting. The news about the health benefits of cocoa are really making the news now -- and the book and recipes are already in my hands. I don't understand why the news items don't move away from the fat and sugar that is always discussed with "dark chocolate" candy bars, but the book helps one expand the idea about how to use cocoa.

The Cardiologist's Wife's Chocolate Too! Diet: No Sugar, No Fat & Luscious It's not often I get taken by "Impressional News" but watching a major TV news channel, part of the broadcast was this book I'm reviewing and I was impressed and ordered two copies. Upon receipt of the books, I scanned one of the books and it was B-A-D. I quickly sent the other book back and had wished that I sent both back. All they had to say on one line of their rambling text was, sugar free cocoa and splenda...end of story,

I was really excited to order this book, but I found it to be very unrealistic for real world living. The information given seemed hard to follow at times, and the recipes were a huge dissapointment. Now I understand why I couldn't find this book in book stores. It looked self-published.

A healthy diet is oh so important if someone has Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia. However often it is hard to get these folks to eat healthy. Plus usually a caregiver does not have time to prepare healthy foods. This book is the answer. The recipes are easy to follow and simple to prepare. In fact you can have the dementia person help you make the recipes.

Even better, eat healthy before you or anyone you love develops dementia.

This book will help you eat right without sacrificing great taste.

by Susan Berg author of Adorable Photographs of Our Baby: Meaningful, Mind Stimulating Activities and More for the Memory Challenged, Their Loved Ones, and Involved Professionals

Too many mistakes in text and index. Cauliflower crisp is tasteless, as well as hot cocoa made with water.
Book is now sitting on shelf collecting dust.