Book Nook: Eating Well for Optimum Health...

Eating Well for Optimum Health -- The Essential Guide to Food, Diet and Nutrition; By Andrew Weil, M.D.; Albert Knopf, New York, 2000; 308 pp; Rp 275,000

JAKARTA (JP): Is this yet another in the long line of food help books decided to put fast food junkies on the path to better nutrition? Or another work of quack fiction from some freakish female drill sergeant telling all and sundry to get off their big behinds and "move" (as if that and pep talks will shed those extra 50 pounds).

Well, the bearded, brawny Weil is certainly not the latter. Instead he does his best, in precise, easily understood language, to explain all the dietary options -- and leaves it up to the readers to decide what they want to put down their throats. Already something of a household name in the United States and internationally from his appearances on CNN's Larry King Live, the Harvard graduate outlines different types of diets, including a typical Asian one, with their benefits and drawbacks (one of the minuses of a vegan diet, in Weil's blunt opinion, is that "it is not appealing to many people"). He also features a section on healthful recipes and, in probably the book's only lapse in good taste, a testimonial from his eight-year-old daughter on why she chooses to eat healthy.

Perhaps it is a good idea, as you chow down on that roast turkey, plow through the ketupat and munch on the nastar like there is no tomorrow, to muse about what constitutes good nutrition. Or, on second thoughts, wait until the holidays are over before reading Weil, to find out all the damage you have been doing to your system. It's enough to make a burger-eating clown cry (Bruce Emond).