The Mediterranean Prescription: Meal Plans and Recipes to Help You Stay Slim and Healthy for the Rest of Your Life Author: Visit Amazon's Angelo Acquista Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0345479246 | Format: EPUB
The Mediterranean Prescription: Meal Plans and Recipes to Help You Stay Slim and Healthy for the Rest of Your Life Description
Amazon.com Review
Dr. Acquista Cooking From The Mediterranean Prescription
Dr. Acquista prepared delicious
spaghetti with seafood fra diavola.
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Dr. Acquista preparing seafood paella.
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Dr. Angel Acquista, physician and chef.
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Review
Advance praise for The Mediterranean Prescription
“We have a saying, ‘He who enjoys good health is rich.’ If that’s the case, my dear friend Angelo is a very wealthy man. If you follow his delicious recipes and nutritional expertise, you, too, will be rich–body and soul.”
–Giuseppe Cipriani
“The Mediterranean Prescription is the ideal weight loss plan–you lose weight and keep your heart healthy without even realizing it. Since you always feel like you are eating gourmet meals, you will be able to stick to it for life and keep the weight off permanently.”
–Lyssie Lakatos, RD, LD, CDN, CPT, and Tammy Lakatos Shames, RD, LD, CDN, CPT, The Nutrition Twins, authors of Fire Up Your Metabolism: 9 Proven Principles for Burning Fat and Losing Weight Forever
“I have enjoyed Angelo’s delicious meals, and I’ve cooked beside him as well. His supreme knowledge of food will make you feel like he’s right in your kitchen with you, too!”
–Ivana Trump
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- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (April 11, 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0345479246
- ISBN-13: 978-0345479242
- Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
I've had the book for 3 weeks, and every single recipe I've made has been fantastic. I've always hated to cook in the past, because every time I tried to make something, the results just didn't seem worth the time and effort. I actually look forward to cooking now. I feel like I finally learned how to cook food that I actually want to eat!
It was also very difficult for me to cook because I'm what is known as a pescetarian. I don't eat red meat or poultry, but I still eat fish and dairy. There aren't a lot of cookbooks out there for pescatarians, but this book is great because the majority of the recipes are for veggies, beans and fish/shellfish. Perfect! There are also some poultry and red meat recipes as well. My husband loves the Balsamic Chicken.
The diet is basically a lot of fish, veggies and beans. The only fat is olive oil, no butter or vegetable oils. There's only a minimal amount of bread/pasta, and whole grains are encouraged. No sweets, but lots of fresh fruit. It seems like a very heart-healthy diet. It's also a great diet for anyone with IBS, I notice my symptoms have diminished greatly since being on it.
As far as the recipes, the tuna salad using olive oil and vinegar instead of mayo is a revelation, and I don't think I could ever go back to the mayo version again. I made the Shrimp Oreganata, along with the Baked Eggplant and Zucchini for my mom when she was visiting. She's always been an excellent cook, and she said it was the best meal she'd had in a really long time, and raved about it the whole week she was here. I made a lot of meals from the book while she was here, and she liked everything so much, I bought her a copy.
I haven't lost any weight yet, but I haven't strictly adhered to the diet, either.
I've been eating in a Mediterranean-type way for years, and it is truly one of the healthiest and best-studied ways of eating in the world. I've enjoyed many health benefits from this diet, and I'll never return to the SAD diet. Therefore, I'm not giving this book only three stars because it's a bad book. It's a decent book on healthful eating in general. Yet, I had a few problems that simply annoyed me too much for me to even consider a four-star rating.
1. The author bases most of his claims of the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet on studies done in Crete. This is fine for the most part, as the diets of Sicily and Crete are similar (though Greece in general has a lot of healthful influence from the Near East missing from the Italian diet). However, when the two diets differ (such as in the amount of fish/meat eaten), he sides with Sicily for no good reason, it seems, other than cultural bias. The traditional Cretan diet used meat rarely and almost only as as a seasoning or during holidays. Fish was eaten a couple times per week. This author wants you to eat fish several times per week, which brings up the danger of mercury poisoning. It doesn't seem very scientific to use a study done in one area and then change it to fit your own personal ethnic history. There is nothing intrinsically superior about the Sicilian diet nor has any study been done to show that it is more healthful than the traditional Cretan diet.
2. This brings me to another point. The author seems dismissive of vegetarians, even claiming that he can offer no help to them despite the fact that the traditional Cretan and Greek diet (upon which most of the Mediterranean-diet studies are actually based) was widely, though not completely, vegetarian.
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