Eating Clean by Amie Valpone: reviewed by Recipe Renovator. Amazing story of self-healing through food and detoxing.

I was excited to learn that my inspiring pal Amie Valpone was coming out with her first book—Eating Clean: The 21-Day Plan to Detox, Fight Inflammation, and Reset Your Body—as her story is incredible. I met Amie at the Dole Salad Summit a few years back and at the time her diet was even more restrictive than mine. Amie got incredibly, mysteriously sick very early in her 20s, and spent ten years on a mission to figure out what was wrong with her and how to heal. She teaches classes, has private nutrition clients, and runs the uber-successful Healthy Apple website.
Eating Clean by Amie Valpone: reviewed by Recipe Renovator. Amazing story of self-healing through food and detoxing.

Layout and design:

The book is organized in four sections: How to detox your diet and your life (which includes Amie’s story), How to prep it, cook it, and make it taste (really) good, Delicious, delectable detox recipes, and the Appendices, which include a 21-day detox meal plan, a pantry list, information on integrative medicine testing, and Amie-approved products and vendors. The design of the book is beautiful. I did find that the fonts are very small for my middle-aged eyes, and the light green highlight text was a little hard to read.
Eating Clean by Amie Valpone: reviewed by Recipe Renovator. Amazing story of self-healing through food and detoxing.

Photography:

Full-page, full-color photographs by the talented Lauren Volo appear every few pages, inspiring the reader with how incredible Amie’s food is.
Eating Clean by Amie Valpone: reviewed by Recipe Renovator. Amazing story of self-healing through food and detoxing.

Recipes:

Recipes include the golden bell pepper soup I featured earlier this month, mushroom kale and caramelized onion savory oats, divine paprika chickpea croutons, sweet pea crostini with dairy-free creamy cashew cheese, magical peach arugula salad, Swiss chard-wrapped portobello burgers, roasted sweet potato bites with presto pesto drizzle, dandelion liver detox tea, easy lentil herbed hummus, and West coast vanilla mango popsicles. I tried the grain-free lemon peppered crackers, the zucchini pad Thai (which inspired the recipe on Monday), and the sunset sesame and poppyseed cauliflower pizza crust. All yum.

All recipes are gluten-, soy-, dairy-, and egg-free and free of refined sugar. While the book isn’t expressly vegan, all the recipes are plant-based. The recipes use nuts, seeds, beans (except soybeans), and gluten-free grains (except corn). Amie’s philosophy is that no diet works for every person, so she encourages you to use the book as a tool and starting point.
Eating Clean by Amie Valpone: reviewed by Recipe Renovator. Amazing story of self-healing through food and detoxing.

What I liked about the book:

I love her story and I’m sure the book will inspire and help many people. The 21-day meal plan is such a useful tool, as are all the specifics about products, functional medicine testing, and all the resources Amie has packed into the book.

I wasn’t so keen on:

Nutritional analysis is not provided, which would be helpful for low-sodium eaters.

Recommended for:

vegan, vegetarian, celiac, gluten-free diets; okay for low-sodium eaters if you omit the sea salt in her recipes.

Not recommended for:

Migraine or paleo diets

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 (low-sodium for my Meniere’s Disease and trigger-free foods for migraine relief), I don’t usually test the recipes; I was able to find a few in this book that I could try and they were delicious.

Required FTC disclosure: I purchased one copy of this book for the giveaway on March 31st, 2016.
Here’s the book if you want to see more: