Average Rating: 
Rating: - The best nutrition information I've found
This cookbook has changed my entire approach to eating. It has helped me understand why I still feel hungry after eating a very filling meal and why eating the "bad" carbs makes me unsatisfied and crave sweets. I have followed the recommended way of eating for a week and feel unbelievably good. I no longer have intense headaches before I go to bed or when I wake up. I no longer feel as tired or irritable. While the first part of the book does feel somewhat like a medical textbook, it is all valuable information and has helped me more than I can say. I have also really enjoyed the recipes. They certainly don't make you feel like you are on a restricted diet. My husband has said that a few of the meals are the best I have ever made. So, for many reasons I am grateful to have found this book.
Rating: - Great for Metabolic Syndrome or Hyperinsulinemia
As a person newly diagnosed with hyperinsulinemia (a.k.a. Metabolic Syndrome) my diet had to change drastically. And I mean DRASTICALLY! I was put on a low glycemic index diet and I started out eating celery and peanut butter - and being really surly to everyone around me - until I found this cookbook. It contains an overview of what eating complex carbs is all about, including information about the relationship between food and different disorders and conditions. It also discusses the glycemic index itself and provides a good list of common foods and their ratings. But the best part is the recipe section. On a low glycemic diet, my usual bagel or pancake or cereal or toast breakfasts were history. Sandwich for lunch? Forget about it. This cookbook offered plenty of alternatives including a really good oatbran blueberry muffin recipe that I love. It also has terrific Beef Paprikash and Zesty Chili recipes that even impressed my food-snob father. I highly recommend this book!
Rating: - Control Your Carbs Plus Recipes
"The Good Carb Cookbook" is an excellent guide for enhancing your health through carbohydrate control. It can benefit you if you have diabetes/insulin resistance, or weight or heart disease problems (hypertension, high cholesterol/triglycerides) which have not been resolved from a low fat diet. I personally feel that it's also generally good diet advice for everyone, and have heard that Weight Watchers is now advising their customers about good and bad carbs."The Good Carb Cookbook" has two sections. The first explains that the carb kingdom is made of good carbs and bad carbs, and what the bad and good carbs do to your health. Woodruff then identifies which carbs are good vs. bad, then makes specific dietary recommendations which include proteins, carbs, fiber, and fat. Although not a really "diet", there are ranges for how many calories and grams of nutrients you should be getting. The book is concise yet packed with helpful tips and specific food suggestions for cooking and eating out. There is also a fairly complete glycemic index appendix (Glycemic index is a number which indicates about how much/fast, relative to other foods, that a specific food will affect your blood sugar). I would consider it a good basic to intermediate diet guide. For people who don't want to read more than one nutritional/diet book, this is a good choice. In the second part of the book are recipes which should help you keep your blood sugar low by controlling your carb intake/reaction to carbs. I haven't made a lot of the recipes yet, but of the few I have made, some (3 out of 5) are excellent. The ones that were not scrumptious tended to be simple ones that anybody could make (sandwiches, omeletes); it just needed to be put in the book as a suggestion of what you can eat without messing up your carbs intake. Even though this is more of a cookbook than a dietary guideline (recipes are 2/3 of the book), the dietary information in here is worth the cover price alone. Although you do have to count calories and grams at first, I don't think this is beyond the average person's understanding. For $(...) you get information which will improve your health yet not get overcomplicated.
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