24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
If you're looking for real "low carb" this isn't it, April 16, 2005
This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Low-Carb Meals (Paperback)
The book contains a reasonable number of recipes and lots of 'hints' that if you've done ANY reading about low carbohydrate eating, will be superfluous.
The recipes run the gamut of carb counts, though I thought that the bulk of them were much higher carb than is helpful. Following the suggestions in this book and the recipes, it wouldn't be all that hard to hit 80-100++ grams of carb per day... which is simply TOO HIGH for many people who are following low carb lifestyles.
Many recipes call for sugar, white flour, semi-sweet chocolate and cornstarch. Come ON... those are NOT "low carb" ingredients.
This is more or less a repackaged low fat/lower cal cookbook with "low carb" thrown on the cover to try to generate some market share. My copy is being donated to a charity, it isn't worth the space on the shelf for someone interested in real "low carb" cooking.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
For best health, ideal weight, and overall well-being!, April 20, 2004
This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Low-Carb Meals (Paperback)
You can actually make "flourless chocolate tiramisu cake," "pasta-less lasagna," and "tortilla-less chicken quesadilla." Let Beale and Couvillon in their book, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Low-Carb Meals," give you detailed instructions on how to pull off these low-carb favorites.
The book intros with this statement: "The challenge of low-carb cooking is to cook up the most delicious foods with the right amount of carbohydrates-enough to satisfy your palate and your tastes, but not so many that you exceed your daily carb allotment. An additional challenge is to make every carbohydrate count nutritionally for your best health, ideal weight, and overall well-being."
Beale, a weight-loss expert and coach, and Couvillon, a registered dietitian, succeed in writing a recipe book that meets the low-carb cooking challenge. Each chapter overflows with not just detailed ingredients and cooking procedures, but also nutrition info on each dish. For each recipe, there are notes on prep time, cook time, serving size for how many, and exact measures of grams of carb, fiber, nutritive carbs, and total protein broken down into grams from animal and plant sources.
The book also has valuable nuggets of wisdom scattered about in side-boxes, like the Recipe for Success, Table Talk, Hot Potato, and Low-Carb Vocab. At the end of each chapter is the segment on "The Least You Need to Know," which lists the chapter's highlights. Plus, there's a "Glycemic Index and Carbohydrate List" indicating the glycemic ranking and carb content of each ingredient mentioned in the book.
I especially appreciate the chapter intros, like in the section on Chocolates. It tells you everything you ever need to know about chocolate - a little background, varieties of chocolate, ingredients it goes well with, and why it's good for you.
Whether you're watching your carbs, looking for seven egg salad variations with zero cooking time, or meeting challenges like "how to make lunches without sandwiches" and "what to substitute for pasta and potatoes," this is the recipe book for you! - Ruby Bayan, (www.OurSimpleJoys.com)
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Complete Idiot;s Guide to Low-Carb Meals, October 27, 2007
This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Low-Carb Meals (Paperback)
Having worked in the medical field for 25 years I thought I knew everything about nutrition, but this book is fabulous. The beginning is an easy to follow explanation of how the carbs we love so much cause our blood sugar to spike; how adding fiber (veggies and fruits) to carbs can help lower their impact on our blood sugar; how eating more veggies along with protein, fruit, and carbs (in that order) can supply us with a great source of energy and fuel for the day, without a constant feeling of hunger (which spikes in blood sugar cause). I lost 15 pounds the first month I followed this eating plan. Yeah, yeah, it helps to add exercise, of course...but exercise is easier to do when you have the energy to face it !!!
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