The Healing Foods: The Ultimate Authority on the Creative Power of Nutrition »

Miriam Polunin has specialized in writing about healthy eating and preventative medicine for 20 years. Her previous books include The Health and Fitness Handbook, The Wholemeal Kitchen and The Natural Pharmacy which she co-wrote with Christopher Robbins.

The Knopf Canada Book of Healing Foods is a guide for everyday living, and the fastest way to understand how the foods you eat can help to heal, and help you remain healthy.

There's a healing food for almost every common health problem - from colds, stress, insomnia and high blood pressure to more complicated illnesses - and most are as close as your local grocer. Healing Foods is an indispensable guide to choosing the best foods for an active life - a bright and friendly market of knowledge that makes the time you spend at the dinner table an investment in spirited living.

In beautiful colour, it also highlights health-giving foods and their nutritional and medicinal benefits. Information on buying, storing and preparing healing foods is clearly listed, and each item - from pineapples and chilies to almonds and apricots - is linked to delicious, easy-to-prepare recipes from around the world.

A questionnaire helps you assess your diet and general health to pinpoint problem areas, while a section on ailments and treatments makes it easy to address individual concerns. Fully indexed, illustrated throughout in full colour, Healing Foods is a goldmine of information and recipes to treasure.

Publishers Weekly

Hausman ( The Calcium Bible ) and Hurley, food columnist for Prevention magazine, have written an alphabetical compendium of more than 100 foods (from bulgar to carrots) and the diseases or physical conditions that are helped or hindered by diet. The authors identify scientific and quasi-scientific links between food and disease-prevention, and offer helpful buying, preparation and cooking tips. Also provided are easy-to-understand nutritional charts, lists of food sources for vitamins and minerals, recipes and menu plans. In exalting the benefits to health of variety in eating, however, the authors neglect certain considerations. For example, they make no mention of the potential dangers in eating pollution-contaminated fish (especially swordfish or tuna), or the risk of hepatitis in eating raw clams, and dismiss too quickly the potential health hazards of estrogen replacement therapy when discussing ways to prevent osteoporosis in pre-menopausal women. A suggested reading list and citations for studies discussed here would have been useful to readers hungry for more information or left less than convinced. Illustrations not seen by PW. (May)