Review by Bentley1209+ -- Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks

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Bentley1209+
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Latest Review: Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks by Morton E Tavel, MD

Review by Bentley1209+ -- Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks

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[Following is a volunteer review of "Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks" by Morton E Tavel, MD.]
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4 out of 4 stars
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I have over ten years’ experience in the natural foods industry and grew up on an organic farm. I grew increasingly disillusioned with the retail end of the business as I came to feel at odds with what Michael Pollan calls “nutritionism”: the idea that nutritional value and health is a function of individual nutrients. The retail natural foods industry has become a hyper-manic proponent of this notion as a means of ginning up interest in whatever the newest and most exotic isolated nutrient may be with promises that this one will be the latest magic bullet. The book, “Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks” by Morton E. Tavel, M.D. is an antidote to the hucksterism displayed by Famous Celebrity Doctors who transfer the credibility implied by their degrees to nutritional supplements with dubious scientific research.

I give the book 4 out of 4 stars. As the title suggests, the book is organized according to Tips: aspects of health and nutrition that can be incorporated into daily life; Myths: health claims of dubious credibility; and Tricks: how marketing attempts to separate you from your money. I found the book to be organized so that the most common issues relating to nutrition are right up front with the aspects relating to becoming a smarter consumer developing as the book goes along.

Dr. Morton E. Tavel has done the hard work of surveying the broad scope of credible, peer-reviewed research, boiling down the findings and summarizing the research in clear, succinct language with chapters organized in such a way that the book can be read from cover-to-cover or in small bites, if needed, as a quick and handy reference. This is the kind of book that needs to be kept in a convenient location, accessed whenever a commercial makes a health claim or this month’s Famous Celebrity Doctor touts an exotic nutrient you’ve never heard of.

Natural foods stores have come to look much like any other grocery store, with aisles full of packaged convenience foods. Supplements and packaged natural foods have presented themselves as alternative medicines, touting their use as a way to treat illnesses or prevent illness in the first place. It is this form of claim, as alternative medicine, that the author seeks to debunk. I do not believe the author takes issue with the role diet and exercise play in a wellness lifestyle: one that seeks to keep a level of health at an optimum level, as opposed to focusing illness and how to treat illness through alternative methods.

The author dives right in to the subject of weight loss in the first chapter, which is perhaps the prime driver of claims made by the health food industry and one which causes many of us the most heartache. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book. The book proceeds to cover a wide range of foods, nutrients and health-related topics, always keeping the focus on peer-reviewed research. The author distinguishes between the legitimate value of good nutrition and the exaggerated claims of food as medicine.

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Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks
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