A must-read for families dealing with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
This one is personal. My lovely mother-in-law is dealing with Alzheimer’s, and it’s tough to watch. When I saw the title of this book, The Healthy Mind Cookbook: Big-Flavor Recipes to Enhance Brain Function, Mood, Memory, and Mental Clarity
Layout and design:
The book is organized into ten chapters: Your brain on food, the culinary pharmacy, building mind-blowing taste & flavor, soups, vegetables, meat & seafood, anytime foods, dollops, tonics & elixirs, and sweet bites. The layout and fonts are user-friendly.
Photography:
A gorgeous full-page, full-color photograph by Maren Caruso appears every 3-4 pages, showcasing the beautiful food.
Recipes:
Recipes include gingered butternut squash soup, technicolor slaw, Big Cat’s turkey meatloaf with not-so-secret sauce, coconut curry cashews, pomegranate olive mint salsa, Simon’s genius elixir, and fall pear crisp. Think amped-up Mediterranean diet, with plant-forward recipes.
What I liked about the book:
The author is an excellent food writer with a strong voice, so the book is an outright pleasure to savor. It’s packed full of useful nutrition tips, cooking how-to’s, and humor. The recipes are mouth-watering in addition to being crazy-healthy. Plenty of recipes for vegans, paleo, and everyone in between, so long as you know your ingredients. Since the book provides nutritional analysis, people on low-sodium diets can enjoy (just know that some recipes are not low-sodium and check before making). Recipes do include meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs. The baking recipes seem to use nuts, nut meal, and coconut flour over wheat. While it doesn’t explicitly say so, the book seems to be completely gluten-free.
I wasn’t so keen on:
Recipes were not coded for special diets.
Recommended for:
all diets (see notes above)
A note about my cookbook reviews: In the past, I tested at least three recipes from each book, took photos, and described my experience. Due to my dietary limitations (extremely-low-sodium for my Meniere’s Disease and trigger-free foods for migraine relief), it is no longer possible for me to test the recipes and do them justice.
Required FTC disclosure: I received one copy of this book from the publisher for the giveaway on March 31st, 2016.
Here’s the book if you want to see more:
My mother ate mainly organic foods all her life, vegetables fresh from her garden, made her own whole-grain bread, never ate processed foods and walked at least half an hour every day in the woods behind our house and worked as a teacher into her 70’s. She didn’t have a television, didn’t drink much alcohol and gave up smoking in her 50’s and yet sadly she died of Alzheimers in her 80’s. My mother-in-law who lived a much more sedentary life, hardly ate vegetables and only ate sliced white bread and lots of sugar has no sign of dementia and just celebrated her 90th birthday. Unfortunately, I think it has a lot more to do with genes than what we eat. Having said that, eating healthily and being active is good for all of us as we get older, but unfortunately I don’t think its going to stop us from getting an hereditary disease.
Angela, thank you so much for your heartfelt response to this book review. I can tell it really struck a nerve. To be fair, the book isn’t selling itself as a cure for Alzheimer’s or dementia. It combines the best research that’s currently available and then provides recipes that support that research. I agree that heredity is a big factor, and that there are many people who are struck down by illness despite them doing “everything right.” I am so sorry for your loss. We’re watching my mother-in-law decline right now and it’s a terrible illness.