Food and Our Bones: The Natural Way to Prevent Osteoporosis (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Why take hormones and supplements to ward off osteoporosis--the bone-thinning disease that many postmenopausal women worry about--when you can get calcium and other nutrients needed for healthy bones from eating the right foods? That's the message from Annemarie Colbin, a food therapist who authored a previous book, Food and Healing. While she acknowledges some people would rather pop pills than go to the trouble of cooking healthy foods, she argues her philosophy persuasively.

First, Colbin describes foods that studies suggest may weaken the bones, such as caffeine and tomatoes. Then she presents evidence for bone-strengthening foods, going beyond the conventional wisdom that dairy products are the best way to get dietary calcium. In fact, she writes, the Chinese vegetable bok choy provides the most calcium per calorie of any food--more than double the amount per calorie in skim milk. The book includes more than 60 recipes to help put Colbin's philosophy into practice, although many of the recipes call for ingredients such as seaweed. Detailed nutritional analysis of the recipes takes up more than 60 pages, space that might have been better spent, perhaps on recipes using more easily available ingredients.

Even if you're not interested in following Colbin's philosophy exactly, her book provides insight into how what we eat affects our bones. "Eating well is the best prevention," Colbin writes. "I hope you will find some ideas here that apply to you, to help you remain strong until the day you decide to leave the earth. Once you know the facts, your own individual course of action will become clearer."

From Library Journal

Natural health expert Colbin (Food and Healing, 1986) takes an approach to treating osteoporosis that is contrary to current medical practice. Instead of promoting dairy products as a way of obtaining calcium, she argues that calcium can be obtained via vegetables such as broccoli, kale, parsley, and butternut squash. She also offers her antipill philosophy (which includes vitamins), stating that the body does not absorb calcium supplements and other medications effectively. Colbin justifies her against-the-norm ideas by providing a lengthy bibliography of resource books, articles, and newsletters and by citing the experiences of her mother and aunt, who were reasonably healthy. The result is not that convincing. Large libraries may purchase only if their patrons want a radical, alternative treatment for osteoporosis. Otherwise, libraries looking for texts offering sound standard medical and nutritional advice regarding osteoporosis should consider Robert Haas's Permanent Remissions (Pocket, 1997), which includes a good chapter on osteoporosis.?Connie Weaver, Bosler Free Lib., Carlisle, PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Plume; 1 edition (July 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452278066
• ISBN-13: 978-0452278066
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #626,956 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful Advise for Strong Bones, December 10, 2001

By	Dr. Glenn B. Gero "NJnaturaldoc" (Clifton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Annemarie Colbin has writen a wonderful, concise and palatable manual for understanding the relationship between lifestyle and bone health. She systematically details the causes of bone deterioration and establishes a course of action to counteract its progression. I would recommend this book to anyone, practitioner or patient, who either has a family history of osteoporosis or will be older tomorrow than they are today. I guess that includes us all. Great job Annemarie!

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for those who care about their health, December 4, 1998

By	C. Feldman "jcafeld" (Bay Area, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As usual, Annemarie Colbin's voice of reason brings hope to a field of health awareness where hype and misinformation dominate. This book is fascinating and, like her other books, forces one to THINK about the things we put into our bodies every day. The approach she proposes is unconventional to most Americans but please don't dismiss it. Remember, osteoporosis is thriving in the countries (like ours) where dairy products are freely consumed by the majority. Give this book a read and you won't be sorry!

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally something I can believe and follow, April 24, 2006

By	Judith L. Bonhiver - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am thrilled to discover this book by Annemarie Colbin about such an important issue for me and many other women of my generation. I have a heart problem so when my Kaiser physician told me I should take Fosamax for my osteoporosis I decided there must be another way. When you take Fosamax, it sends calcium to your bones. But, your heart needs calcium too. So, how do you know if you are doing more damage to your heart and other tissues if you take this drug? What's more important - my heart or my skeleton.

With the information from this book, I have a way to improve both my skeleton and be good to my heart. I like the way she writes - with good data, lots of resources and references, but in a way someone not very technical, like me, can understand why things work the way they do. And the recipes look great. I haven't tried any of them yet, but plan to, once I get my own book (I found this in the library). To me one of the most important points she makes is that calcium isn't the entire answer - it's all nutrients and the amounts of them that are so critical. And, every body is a little different in the way it needs to receive these nutrients. If your ancestors didn't traditionally eat milk products, milk probably isn't the best way for you to get the needed nutrients for your body.

I learned that maybe my joint and back pains might be from eating too many tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants and peppers - these are nightshade vegetables and have 'alkaloids' which mess us the calcium metabolism. If cultures included a lot of these foods in their diets, they typically also included a lot of dairy products because "dairy and nightshades are opposite and complementary; if you eat one, you need the other".

I also learned that chocolate and "caffeine consumption increases the excretion of calcium (away from the bone) as well as magnesium through the urine, which indicates bone loss. Young women seem to be able to compensate for this loss and make it up faster through increased and more efficient calcium absorption from the intestines. Older women, on the other hand with age- and hormone-related calcium imbalances, do not seem to be able to compensate as efficiently, and are at higher risk for thinning bones, especially if their calcium intake is low." P34 - 35

She goes on to talk about studies of how much is too much, and if de-caf is an alternative (it isn't). This information is fascinating.

I plan to give a copy of this book all my friends and family.