Customer Reviews

The Good Fat Cookbook

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

 

 

Fran McCullough has for the past few years been an advocate of low carbohydrate eating and has produced a number of superb low carb cookbooks. This time she takes on fats and has written a splendidly researched, extremely thorough and highly-readable book on the virtues of good fats and the evils of hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated fats.

This book is sure to ruffle a lot of feathers because is turns the so called "Food Pyramid" into rubble. This book is a top notch overview of the history of fat and how it got such a bum rap.

I highly recommend this book to readers who are interested in the science of nutrition. I do wish though that there were more recipes in the book but the information presented in it more than makes up for that!

As much diet discussion guide as cookbook, McCullough's ("The Low-Carb Cookbook") newest presents the latest scientific thinking on fats - processed hydrogenated, versus natural animal and vegetable, saturated and unsaturated, trans fats and butter and lard and vegetable oils. And not only does she make it comprehensible, she's even witty. She talks about why Americans are fatter than ever, why it's good for us to eat things we like (as long as they're not "reduced-fat anything," frozen dinners and processed foods). There's advice on supplements, discussions of pollution contaminants, like mercury in fish, reviews of ingredients from canned fish to dairy products and oils from avocado to safflower.

Recipes - the second part of the book - offer 100 dishes, breakfast through dessert, from Coconut Waffles to Moroccan Red Pepper Soup, Smoked Trout Salad with Grapefruit and Avocado, Smoothies, Tuna Burgers and Buffalo Chili. A clear, concise, accessible and in-depth introduction to low-carb, good-fat nutrition thinking.

As an an avid devotee of food information I wasn't sure when I received this book as a gift. But it came from a respected source, so I sat down to read in earnest. I read it with Udo's book on fats and oils next to me and checked all her claims. Wow! I threw away my canola oil and bought some coconut oil. I bought some bacon for my husband who couldn't believe it this morning when I served it to him. For a couple of years I have been narrowing down my "food wisdom" to two words, "Pure Food". She verified my thinking. I've long vanquished hydrogenated oils from my cupboard but canola was a real surprise. Read it.

For years I have been trying to learn about nutrition. I've always thought that there was more to it than just eating "low-fat." A nutritionist at my college's health center simply handed me a copy of the old food pyramid. I was frusterated that I'd never learn the real details for myself. But I finally FOUND IT! THANK YOU Fran McCullough for knowing that not all of us are just mindless cattle!! Thank you for realizing that some of us are interested in more than just being told to "eat your veggies" or given a bunch of low-fat recipes! After reading this book, I feel EMPOWERED to make healthy food decisions for myself, with or without a recipe! I UNDERSTAND now what I should be putting into my body, specifically. There aren't a LOT of recipes in this book, but there are just enough to get me started. Now I have the knowledge to create my own recipes as well as the ability to decide whether the recipes in other cookbooks are really good for me or not!! There are a lot of diet cookbooks out there that have recipes that aren't really good for you, but just prey on people who want to lose weight and just want to be told what to do. Now I won't be duped ever again. This book is a MUST for every human being on earth. It's not just about being thin...it's about being HEALTHY!

_The Low-Carb Cookbook_ and _Living Low Carb_ are two of the most consulted works on my cookbook shelf, but _The Good Fat Cookbook_ is comparatively thin in content, and conspicuously packed with plugs for specialty health food supplements. (Yes, you could pay $70 a gallon for "virgin" coconut oil - or maybe pick it up from a warehouse club, Asian market or restaurant supply house?) The book also strays considerably from Low Carb dietary principles - which may cause some confusion for some LC'ers who have come to equate the author's nutritional works with a Low Carb philosophy. From a strictly subjective viewpoint, it's disheartening to see the author "move on" or tweak her nutritional philosophy in this direction - hight carb plus high fat reads an awful lot like "have your cake and eat it, too." Gone or nearly gone from the author's latest here is beef, pork, and an elegant array of menus with an emphasis on a variety of popular flavors - "in" are canned, salted and smoked fishes galore (despite the mercury-in-fish issue, Omega-3 rich seafood dominates the non-vegan entrees), breakfasts that would use up a month of atkins allowances and, I'd argue, a fair number of dishes that just seem like quirky, minimalist experiments in fusion cusine. Watermelon sandwitches with goat cheese? Brocolli in Peanut Butter (sans Asian spices, even)?

Also, the Usenet acronym "post proof or retract" (PPOR) was my gut response to some of the authors' health claims, especially those about irradiation. McCullough claims that since embarking on a massive national food irradiation program, that 10% of its population (yes, 10%!) now dies of liver cancer. These kind of claims demand painstaking citation, especially in the context of a book that prominently advocates a plethora of commercial health food products. (I'm just as skeptical of big health food/Peta/vegan/whatever claims as big agricorp claims, and you should be, too!)

The ever shortening half-life of dietary fads and taboos make for strange bedfellows - pp 155-156 warns ominously of the potential ill effects of most soy products, and yet this book is forwraded by the same Dr. Barry Sears who made a big hit with his book _The Soy Zone_ not two years ago.

In short this book veers into faddishness and product touting to a degree that just wasn't the case with the author's previous works, which I believe *remain* some of the very best nutrition-minded cookbooks out there, for those who have "failed on low fat".

This book is a favorite of mine. It contains helpful information on good fats found in things like coconuts, butter, fish, olives, nuts, and avocados along with delicious recipes that allow you to work these good fats into your diet.

It's a pity that this book didn't get the traction that it needed to get back in 2003. If you look at all the mainstream paleo books today, and the Gary Taubes clones out there, they all say that lard is good and vegetable oils are bad. It's a fact that lard is better to use for fries. It doesn't kill us, it doesn't make us fat. It's simply a better fat. If you happen to find a copy of this book, heed its advice, it may just save your life.

I received this book as a gift - thank goodness. It is not really a cookbook - it is more of a fact book. The recipes do not include any nutritional information - something I consider a must for anyone on a low-carb diet. The serious dieter needs to know the amount of carbs, fiber, fat, etc., for a low-carb diet to be effective. I wanted to buy her Low-Carb Cookbook, but I am hesitant to do so after reading this book.

Never really ever dieting before in my life and wanting to lose a few pounds after my first baby, I turned to a diet program which relied on eating low carb and low fat without it being explained why these were the things that I was no longer eating except for this is what makes you fat. I constantly felt deprived from foods even if I did not want it and it was because I knew I could not have it and I ended up eating completly non-satisfying, low-fat,processed foods(with a list of ingredients twice as long asthe nutrition facts full of 10 syllable words).

I think everything needs to be read with a weary eye and taken in moderation, and I say this becasue I do not believe now that I know butter is a good fat I will go out and eat it on my steak, but I will use a small amount of butter or olive oil in my cooking instead of cooking spray or Canola oil. I am not going to be a nut on absolutely cutting out everything processed (I am a working mom of a toddler on a budget), but I will significantly cut down on processed, pre-packaged, and low-fat foods and just focus on eating more 'whole' foods and incorperating healthier and more organic foods into my family's diet. I feel this book educates one about fats in general and about our low-fat obssesed dieting in this nation that is not working; the book makes you think, but I don't feel it is a guide, it is too opinionated.

This appears to be a way for the author to justify eating the fatty foods that she likes and to ignore dietary advice provided by the American Heart Association and other medical groups. If she followed a low-fat diet and still didn't lose weight, I submit that perhaps she didn't count calories carefully enough! By the looks of the photo of her in this book, however, it doesn't look like she lost weight even after changing her eating habits. Hmmmm... Could it be that she takes in more calories than she burns, and is consequently overweight?

Also, I think any diet as restrictive as the one outlined in this book is flawed and potentially dangerous, particularly when not backed up with decades of well-documented scientific evidence. I prefer to follow a sensible and moderate, medically sound approach to eating.