SuperFoods Rx: Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life (Hardcover)

by Steven G. Pratt (Author), Kathy Matthews (Author) "The foods you eat every day, from the fast food you mindlessly consume to the best meals you savor in a top restaurant, are doing..." (more)
Key Phrases: surpass page, live active cultures, health span, Trader Joe, Health Study, Golden Door (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

SuperFoods Rx is based on a simple but profound premise: some foods are dramatically better than others for our health and longevity.

Sure, everyone knows that an apple is a better snack than potato chips, but do you know that a daily handful of walnuts or a bowl of blueberries can actually improve your well-being and longevity?

Steven Pratt, M.D., witnessed the positive results that occurred when his patients with age-related macular degeneration changed their diets to include certain powerhouse foods -- those he has identified as SuperFoods. Backed by proven research on fourteen of the most nutrient-dense foods, this book puts these tools in your hands, and on your plate, to give you more energy, greater protection against disease, and a healthy lifestyle now and for the future.

Whether you're 63 or 23, now is the right time to start eating the SuperFoods way. By making these foods part of your regular eating habits, you can actually change the course of your biochemistry and stop the incremental changes in your body that lead to diseases such as type II diabetes, hypertension, certain cancers, obesity, and Alzheimer's.

What are the fourteen SuperFoods? Many may already be part of your daily meals, while some may make occasional appearances. But all are supermarket-friendly nutrition powerhouses:

Beans • Blueberries • Broccoli • Oats •
Oranges • Pumpkin • Salmon • Soy • Spinach •
Tea -- green or black • Tomatoes • Turkey • Walnuts • Yogurt

SuperFoods Rx not only outlines the amazing health benefits of these fourteen foods, it also includes delicious recipes, kitchen tips, and shopping suggestions that will make the SuperFoods lifestyle simple and irresistible.

Don't like tomatoes? Not to worry; almost all of the SuperFoods have sidekicks -- or substitutions -- that you can enjoy instead. Have some lycopene-rich red watermelon or pink grapefruit instead of tomatoes. Can't bear the thought of spinach? Choose from a list of other dark leafy greens, romaine lettuce, or orange bell peppers.

In SuperFoods Rx, Dr. Pratt leads you from the twentieth-century world of macronutrients -- proteins, fats, and carbohydrates -- into the twenty-first-century world of micronutrients -- phytonutrients, carotenoids, and antioxidants. You'll find:

Individual chapters dedicated to each of the fourteen SuperFoods, with the health benefits for each outlined and supported by Dr. Pratt's research, along with ideas for simple ways to get more of these foods into your everyday meals.

Fifty original recipes featuring SuperFoods, especially developed by Chef Michel Stroot of the world-renowned Golden Door Spa.

A shopping list of brand-name foods to ensure you're buying the most nutrient-dense SuperFoods available.

Guidelines for formulating your daily nutrient goals and supplement recommendations.

With Dr. Pratt to guide you through the new nutritional frontier, you will be able to choose and enjoy the foods that are most beneficial to your health, well-being, and longevity.

SuperFoods Rx. You'll feel super.

About the Author
Steven Pratt, M.D., is a world-renowned authority on the role of nutrition and lifestyle in the prevention of disease and optimizing health. He is a senior staff ophthalmologist at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, California. He lives in Del Mar, California.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (December 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060535679
• ISBN-13: 978-0060535674
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (116 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #11,378 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

161 of 167 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superfoods by Pratt, January 10, 2004

By	Joseph S. Maresca "Dr. Joseph S. Maresca CPA,... (Bronxville, New York USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is an excellent reference work for your personal health
library. The author describes strategies for maximizing
antioxidants in the diet by eating blueberries,pumpkin and
strawberries. Isoflavones may be found in soy-based foods.
Fiber and B vitamins may be obtained from beans. Vitamin D
may be added to yogurt to potentiate the calcium added to the diet. This work contains many superfood menus which are easy
to interpret and reproduce for your eating pleasure. A main
theme of the book is to provide badly needed nutrients by
eating a variety of foods which introduce antioxidants and
fiber into the body. This will help deal with the natural
inflammation which many middle age people find difficult to
manage. i.e. gut inflammation, irritable bowel syndrome etc.

60 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sound Nutritional Advice and Not Trying to Sell a Product, January 2, 2004

By A Customer

This book is an excellent summary of the latest research from the past few years about the benefits of certain foods like salmon and spinach. The things I like about this book are: 1) no product is being sold - The author doesn't make supplements or creams or anything the way that Perricone (The Wrinkle Cure) does. 2)The book only promotes whole foods, not supplements 3) there are excellent recipes using the 14 superfoods 4)The book doesn't focus on the "dont's" just the "do's" 5)It isn't a difficult program to follow.

This is a great book for learning about the health benefits of certain foods and getting the inspiration to eat them.

250 of 269 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good for what ails you, and tasty too, February 18, 2004

By	B. Marold (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This excellent new book by medical doctor Steven Pratt pulls together a lot of recent nutritional research in an easily digestible format by focusing on the fourteen most healthy foods, the foods which can be grouped with these fourteen to provide variety, and some basic methods for preparing these foods.

This is a presentation to the layman of scientific results. By it's nature, this leads to simplifications and potentially misleading statements. My biggest concern with any book of this type is that it is overstating its case. There is no question in my mind that eating these 14 foods (and avoiding worthless foods) will improve your health. The book is very careful in not quantifying potential gains, but it does come dangerously close to making medically unfounded statements. One I detected is the suggestion that eating cholesterol-reducing foods such as oats and cabbage family vegetables will remove the need for drugs to reduce cholesterol. When I posed a similar question to my physician, he kept to the medically sound albeit very conservative line that the tendency of the body to produce cholesterol is genetic and keeping cholesterol within safe levels for me requires medication, probably for the rest of my life. This is a case study of why books like this tend to overstate their cases. Response to improvements in diet is determined by one's genetic makeup. What works for some may not work for others. The bottom line for the skeptic's view of this book is to take all the statements on benefits from these foods with a grain of salt. They may be right for you, and they may not.

Having made the skeptic's case for this book, I turn to the advocate's case. The advantages of the book's simplifications is that you can cruise your megamart with these fourteen (14) foods at the top of your list and focus on those products which are on the list or are allied to the items on the list. While I am not a clinical scientist, I am an informed layman, having developed information systems for medical professionals for 35 years. With those credentials, I believe that eating these foods will, in the long run, be better for your health than not eating them.

One of the best aspects of this book is the list of `sidekicks' to each of these fourteen foodstuffs. Having been a big fan of green vegetables from way back, the list of sidekicks to broccoli is positively erotic, including my favorite Brussels sprouts, cabbage, turnips, and Swiss chard. The only food without a sidekick is tea. Sorry, coffee doesn't make the list. Another favorite sidekick is peanuts. Nuts are on the list, but peanuts actually makes the list because it's a legume, like beans, and not a nut. A little misdirection there.

The best thing about this list is that, to my mind, only three of these foods (oats, soy, and yogurt) are uninteresting. I personally find all the others to be range from being pleasant (broccoli, salmon, spinach, pumpkin, tomatoes, beans, and turkey) to being positively delightful (blueberries, oranges, tea, turkey, and walnuts). One great thing about the tasty foods such as blueberries and walnuts is that they can brighten up the taste of the bland stuff (oats and yogurt especially).

With the warning that I am neither a medical nor a nutritional professional, I believe this book tends to raise questions about the currently very popular low carbohydrate diet doctrines. I say this not because many of the foods on this list are high on the devil's list of low carb advocates, but that high carbohydrate foodstuffs are often the best of mates to some of these foods. Two famous pairings are beans and rice and berry jam and bread.

The book contains a very nice section of recipes by a very talented and recognized spa chef. They are all very tasty looking and the notes to the recipes contain a lot of hints, such as the most nutritious varieties of sweet potatoes and the method for making yogurt cheese. But, I will probably never make any of them. Instead, I will file away all of the food combinations and use them when I select recipes from other cookbooks or improvise recipes on my own.

If these fourteen foods represent a `kosher' or best selection, it would be nice to see a selection of `parve' foods. That is, foods which fall into a neutral to good category. Two prime candidates would be olive oil and red wine. The book mentions and recommends both and is wisely careful in citing wine as a beneficial food. This interest is addressed to some extend with the Lifestyle Pyramid which endorses whole grain products, healthy fats, and reasonable portions of red meats and eggs.

In spite of the opening skeptical paragraph, I believe this is a delightfully promising book which gives easy to follow guidelines without oversimplifying things too much. For those who are not already fond of spinach and turkey and tomatoes, I recommend they establish a relationship with a good book on Italian food and start with turkey Florentine (turkey and spinach) and vegetable lasagna.

With a list price under $25, I recommend this book to everyone.