Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Here's To Your Health with Flax, June 11, 2000
By A Customer
Flax - the Super Food - Book Review The Introduction, provides a helpful background on flax that's easy to understand. The author speaks from his experience, having developed, marketed, and distributed flax products for the health food market as well as studied flax farming and pressing techniques. Covered is the history of flax, from before Christ, to the present, including where flax is raised today. The author gives illustrations of how flax has helped both animals and humans. Flax can be a food and a medicine, both on the inside (in food and as a laxative) as well as on the outside (as poultices for healing wounds and healthy skin). There is a good explanation of the fiber, mucilage, lignans, and oil in flax and their health benefits. There are helpful consumer tips on how to purchase, use, and store flax oil and flax (both the brown and the newer gold varieties of flax.) The author stresses how to buy flax oil in small quantities, in dark containers, and "cold-expeller-pressed" as heating and refining changes the flax oil into unhealthy trans fats. The recipe section, written by two cookbook authors, features a variety of healthy, vegetarian recipes that include not only flax but also soy foods such as tofu and soy milk. Each recipe has a helpful nutritional analysis. To eliminate confusion ,it might help to explain whether a recipe calling for "ground flaxseeds" means to measure the flax before or after grinding. Some other helpful additions to the book might be: o A mini conversion chart of how much whole flax seed equals how much ground flax o A nutritional analysis of flax and flax oil, such as found on a food label, that would include the calories, fat, fiber, protein content, etc o A few more documented human research studies from places such as NCI (National Cancer Institute) to further substantiate the many health benefits of flax. o A bit more discussion by a nutritionist discussing omega 3 and omega 6 fats, including possibly a chart showing the fat composition of flax and flax oil by the percentage of each type of fat. o A list of flax resources (books, web sites) and places to get flax in the US and Canada - such as the Flax Council of Canada.
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32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Everything you need to know about flax!, February 12, 2001
This book is a quick and easy read since only about 16 pages, the introduction, are text. The rest of the book contains recipes for using ground flaxseed and flaxseed oil. That is not to say that it's not worth the money-it will tell you everything you need to know about this essential part of the vegetarian diet. Many of us have missed the boat on flax. We have heard about omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, but it's often unclear exactly why we need them, why they are so important. This book goes into detail on that subject without being boring or difficult to understand. And it gives you over 80 ways to incorporate flax in your diet, recipes for breakfast, breads, spreads and dips, salads and dressings, soups, entrees, side dishes, and desserts. Two of the authors, Barb Bloomfield and Judy Brown, are well-known vegetarian authors. Siegfried Gursche, has a long history as a researcher and developer of flax. He is also the publisher of alive magazine and alive books and the author of Healing with Herbal Juices.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not enough information about flax, June 18, 2004
This book has a brief introduction about the benefits of using flax seeds and flax oil. The bulk of the book consists of vegan recipes that use either flax seeds or flax oil as ingredients.The introduction has a useful explanation (short, not worth buying the book for) of why you can bake with flax seeds and not lose the health benefits of the omega 3 oils found in the flax seeds. The introduction is very short, does not do justice to the health benefits of flax, and seems to have a huckersterish tone to it which turned me off. The recipes actually use very small amounts of flax seed and flaxoil. They look like regular recipes recycled for the book by adding a dash of flax to the ingredients list. People interested in making very flax rich recipes would be better served by reading the recipes on barleans.org. People who are interested in reading a well documented account of the health benefits of flax seeds would be better off reading FLAX YOUR WAY TO HEALTH by Jane Reinhardt-Martin RD, LD.
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