Each week Her.ie will look at a new cook book, giving you the inside scoop whether the recipes cut the mustard. From health kicks, to wholesome foods, we find out what books offer the best insights for budding cooks!
This week: The Beauty Detox Solution and The Beauty Detox Foods – Kimberly Snyder (Harlequin Books)
Part 1 – The Beauty Detox Solution
Nutritionist and beauty expert Kimberly Snyder helps dozens of A-list celebrities get red-carpet ready and her series of books aims to do the same for you. The nutritionist believes that the foods we eat are the ultimate tools that will define our beauty and promises better hair, skin and to banish unwanted belly fat to those who follow her detox solution as outlined in the book.
The book opens to a detailed explanation of how our stomach breaks down each type of food and the effect these foods can cause on different aspects of our appearance. Examining each food group, Snyder recommends eating foods in a particular order to make it easier for our bodies to digest and then absorb nutrients.
Her theory is that if it's easier for our bodies to digest, absorb, and eliminate, our bodies have more time to heal itself (this is where the beauty part comes in) rather than just focusing on digestion 24/7.
The second key focus is removing food that can wreak havoc on digestion, namely animal protein, dairy, alcohol, and anything else that makes our bodies acidic, from our diets and replace them with produce so that we'll be healthier and maintain our weight.
In principle, this book outlines every aspect of her nutrition plan, and even supplies a week of sample menus and a recipe section holding suggestions for breakfast, lunch, dinner, smoothies and snacks.
In theory this is manageable, but there’s a lot of information to swallow, and putting this into practice on a daily routine could be a lot more difficult than whipping up some scrambled eggs before heading out to work.
If you’re vegetarian or vegan, Snyder’s book will fit more easily into your lifestyle, who pushes this lifestyle choice as the healthiest route, but for meat eaters, there are some inclusions in your weekly food plan.
Although Snyder does say that you should only do what you are comfortable with and what fits your lifestyle, this book is ultimately an approach to raw vegan eating and ultimately requires a lot of time, patience and discipline to adhere to ‘the rules’.
Part 2 – The Beauty Detox Foods
If you read the first book, and decide to give it this lifestyle a try, you will need The Beauty Detox Foods to get through to the next phase of eating as a raw vegan.
The book is packed with recipes for salads, dinners, breakfast and recognised family favourites but in a raw vegan format.
To maintain this diet strictly, especially with organic-only produce, you’ll need to invest in this diet lifestyle but users (who claim to have lost weight and seen the benefits of the diet almost instantly) will be prepared for this once they have a chance to flick through the book.
Although this ‘lifestyle choice’ has some obvious merits, we’re not convinced it’ll be a realistic adjustment to make. But if the raw vegan option sounds like something you’re willing to try, this step-by-step guide is probably the most concise way to enter into this pared back food chain.
