Superfood Snacks to reignite your love affair with foods
Author: Christine Margaret
Publisher: Christine Margaret, 2011
ISBN: 9780980489385
200 pp including index
RRP $19.95 (on-line)

In my experience, this is a unique book.  It is part cookbook, part dietary compendium, part nutritional encyclopaedia.  It was created out of a need for Christine Margaret to find a way of ridding herself of fibromyalgia syndrome.

The author researched what foods might help her rid herself of a debilitating condition and this led her to ‘superfoods’ – foods that over time or through research had been shown to cure something.  She deals with almost seventy of these in a systematic, easy-to-follow format.

The book includes many common foods that most of us eat already – eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, honey, grapefruit – and some which are more unfamiliar to us – quinoa, mangosteen, amaranth, chia.  Each food has its own page, on which Margaret lists some of its properties and gives at least one recipe using that food.  Her information about each food quotes a reference, so that the reader can find further information (most of it on-line).

The author also gives the reader further and more detailed information about: anti-oxidants and their role in health; organic, biodynamic and chemical-free growing of foods; what to keep in a well-provisioned pantry; making and freezing stocks; making your own medicines; growing your own superfoods; cooking utensils you should not use and those you can use; conversion tables of English/American food names and metric/imperial measurement conversions; foods that ‘feed’ various parts of the body and enhance certain activities; ORAC levels and protein contents of some foods; foods and cancer; and information about water, milk, salt oils and fats.  An extensive table of contents and a good index help the reader to navigate easily.

This is an excellent book to assist in staying healthy, to help those who are not in optimum health to reach that goal and, of course, to give those in a state of ill-health valuable tools to help them towards good health.  The author makes no medical claims but points the reader to other resources.

Keep this book handy to the kitchen and refer to it often.

© 2012 Daan Spijer

[to receive an email each time a new review is posted, email me: <daan [dot] spijer [at] gmail [dot] com>]

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