Customer Reviews

The Get Healthy, Go Vegan Cookbook: 125 Easy and Delicious Recipes to Jump-Start Weight Loss and Help You Feel Great

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It's a no-brainer: Wanna be healthy? Go Vegan! But the truth is, it's very easy to eat an unhealthful vegan diet: Just load up on refined flour, sugar, oils, and heavily processed foods, and you'll be on the fast track to becoming an unhealthy vegan. Sadly, it's a mistake newbie vegans often make. Instead of embracing whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes, many seek to replace their unhealthful omnivorous diets with vegan versions of their favorite junk foods.

Now don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that there isn't a time and place for veggie burgers, non-dairy milk beverages, yogurt, cheese, and ice cream. (Heaven knows I LOVE my coconut milk ice cream!) But to eat more healthfully, we need to choose whole, organic fruits, vegetables, legumes, and grains as the centerpiece of our diets. And having a collection of plant-based recipes that offer us simple and delicious ways to prepare these foods is essential.

When I heard about Dr. Neal Barnard's latest book, The Get Healthy, Go Vegan Cookbook: 125 Easy and Delicious Recipes to Jump-Start Weight Loss and Help You Feel Great, it sounded like just the kind of book to help anyone quickly learn to achieve and maintain vibrant health through sound nutrition. Turn to the very first page of the book, and you'll read, "This book holds the culinary secrets to lifelong health." It's a promise that was fulfilled in the pages that followed.

The bulk of the book contains simple recipes for eating healthfully and enjoying every bite. But it also includes many thoughtful tools that will help you revolutionize your kitchen and your life, easily and effortlessly. You'll learn the science behind making health-promoting food choices and how to make your foods fit your health and weight-loss goals. You'll discover all the essentials for stocking a vegan kitchen and even find a recipe for making your own vegetable broth. (A staple for many wonderful dishes.)

Many recipes include a neat little "Did You Know" sidebar, with tasty tidbits of information about the dish or one of its ingredients. I picked up quite a few little culinary morsels from reading these boxes! For example, did you know that you can use your rice cooker to cook quinoa or that you can use chickpeas to make brownies? Nutritionals are thoughtfully provided for each recipe, and I noticed immediately that the recipes in this book are consistently low in fat and calories (even the desserts!) But after tasting several dishes, I quickly learned that they are also high in flavor!

A sampling of just a few of the recipes in this book, proved that although easy to prepare, they were equally palate-pleasing. Since in my mind, there are few foods more beautiful, sweet, rich, and juicy than fresh pineapple, the recipe for Tempeh Burgers with Pineapple Salsa was first to catch my attention. The tempeh is first bathed in a tasty ginger-citrus marinade, then pan-seared and topped with a delightfully fresh and fruity pineapple and mango salsa.

The recipe for mixed Vegetable Curry with Whole What Couscous blended together two of my favorite spices, coriander and cumin, with a medley of colorful vegetables. It was absolutely scrumptious!

Finally, tried the Udon Noodles with Shiitake and Button Mushrooms. What I really liked about this dish is that it was quite tasty either hot or cold. And it was so simple and quick to prepare, I didn't get overheated in my kitchen making this dish, even though it was a sweltering 96° the day I made it.

The Get Healthy, Go Vegan Cookbook is the perfect book for anyone who wants to eat more healthfully and deliciously and do so using simple, wholesome, widely available ingredients. It has become a cherished addition to my own collection of vegan cookbooks, and I will be buying many copies to give as gifts to family and friends.

Ten months ago I started a low cholesterol diet. I dropped all meat except for fish. I lost 17 pounds in three months. My A1c was better along with my blood pressure and cholesterol. Then I saw Dr. Barnard on PBS. I bought his book and dropped fish from my diet, too. I lowered the amount of olive oil I use and followed his recommendations. As of last week, I have lost 24 pounds. I am always satisfied and full. My blood pressure is 122/60, my A1c is 6.5 and my cholesterol is great. My doctor told me if she did a "patient of the year", my picture would be on her wall. I have energy and I look so much better - I'm told this all the time now. He changed my life - he actually saved my life. Thank you Dr. Barnard and Amazon, too!

This book helps make the vegan diet less confusing to the average American and presents a lovely collection of simple recipes. The ones I've tried have been delicious - Edamame & Quinoa Salad is my favorite so far. Best of all, I can make all these recipes with ingredients I can find in my small town! I highly recommend this book to new vegans, but the recipes make it a worthwhile addition to anyone's collection.

I've used the McDugall plan for 5 years. This author is very similar in terms of do's and don'ts but gives a far more understandable rationale as to why certain techniques work. Fat causes diabetes-- not sugar. It is nicely explained and easy to understand. If you want to take charge of your life, feel better about yourself, reverse diabetes and heart disease, this is the book for you. Be prepared for criticism from the so called "people who are concerned." But adopt the practices in this book and you will feel better, and I'm convinced add 10 years to your life.

Heart disease runs in my family, but you can change your numbers: bp & lipid numbers drastically and rapidly if you choose. I'm in a pair of 32 skinny jeans formerly 36 as I tap this out and have lost over 30 pounds.

Follow the script and you can too. No expensive meal packets to buy, just lots of good honest thinking, techniques that work.

Finally a great vegan cookbook for the average person. Wonderful, tasteful and simple to make.

I really enjoy the scientific information that is given in this book. The authors have included research on people that switched to a vegan diet, and who reaped wonderful health benefits in return. The book includes 125 no-fuss, low-fat recipes that are easy to prepare. The one drawback to the recipes that I found is that they are rather bland. I have had to add additional spices to some of the recipes to suit my palate. The great thing is that they are easy to prepare, using ingredients that are easy to find - nothing exotic.

The recipes in this book are simple, delicious and healthy. I've already made 4 recipes and loved them all. Even my meat-eating husband loved the dishes. I think my favorite dish so far is the 3-layer Tortlla Casserole. Yumm!

This review is for the Kindle version of this book. I became aware of this book when it was advertised on TV, where they showed it chock full of beautiful color photos of the food, which I find very useful in a cookbook when trying to decide what to prepare and how to present it. Since the table of contents of this book is listed by meal rather than dish type (i.e. soups, salads, pastas, etc.) and was not very helpful to me, I also looked at the index which I was able to preview on Amazon's listing of the hard copy version of the book. The index showed me that there were some great recipes for various type of dishes. So based on the great photos I saw on the TV presentation and the index I had found for the hard copy version, I bought the Kindle version, which is my medium of choice these days. Unfortunately, the Kindle version does not contain any of the photographs, and the index is not hyper-linked, so I am unable to locate anything I want. For some reason, the search function alone did not work well for this Kindle book, so I could not easily find most of the things I looked for; I had to use the index to look up specific dish names and then type them into the search function and I still needed to make several passes in order to locate anything. Also, for some reason, the layout of the book appears as if it was put together quickly without any thought. Perhaps the publisher removed the photos and cobbled everything together without reformatting it. I'm going to get the hard copy format and hope that it is as I had originally been led to believe, as the actual content looks great, but needs more work to be presentable for easy access as a reference in Kindle format.

I have to admit that I was a bit put off by the cover. But I'm always on the look-out for lower fat vegan recipes. This book delivers just that. I didn't really need the background information, I'm already vegan. But it was a good reinforcement. I have really enjoyed the recipes I've tried so far. I do modify them, but I modify almost everything. They also don't require many 'specialty' ingredients, which is nice. My recommendation would be to put a nice picture of a finished recipe on the cover since that's my favorite part of the book. Although I do 'get' that they're trying to promote the healthy part. I would love to see more recipes from the co-author.

I am a junk food vegetarian and admit it without shame. Well, maybe some shame. I'm trying to turn over a new leaf, and have reduced the junk to a new low. Adding more whole grains, fruit, and vegetables while reducing added fat has had a profound effect on my taste buds and junk isn't as appealing. There is no junk whatsoever in his cookbook and I love it!

If you are new to low fat and low sodium cooking, the recipes may take a little getting used to. My husband, for example, went crazy with the salt shaker and called a few dishes bland. To me they were delicious. I've been stuck on soup and stew recipes for the most part and they have been mostly well receive by the omnivore family. The French Country Stew in particular has been in heavy rotation since I received my copy in December.

If you are looking for healthier alternatives to your usual veg fare, then this is a must-have.