The Complete Prebiotic and Probiotic Health Guide: A Vegetarian Plan for Balancing Your Gut Flora

Stay Healthy My Friends
This is an excellent guide in my study of healthy eating and living. Three years ago, my wife and I started our journey in understanding. Starting out with Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s Eat to Live book was instrumental. We followed that up with Dr. Fuhrman’s Eat For Health. Also great. Dr. Fuhrman does not advocate a vegetarian only lifestyle, but one that is extremely light on the meats. This book The Complete Prebiotic and Probiotic Health Guide follows the exact same path. Please do not be put off thinking this is ONLY for those who are vegetarians. The authors specifically state on page 142, right before the 175 great vegetarian recipes start, “Our intent is not to convince you to become a vegetarian, but instead to encourage you to focus on eating a diet rich in high-fiber plant sources.” So my way of looking at this great book, is that you learn a little more about eating healthy and you get 175 fabulous recipes to have by themselves or as a side dish with fish, or chicken or steak. I just think that authors who speak “to us” rather than “down to us” are going to be more successful in changing people’s ideals. It is working for me. I do hope this helps. Please continue to eat and live well as you will feel SO much better if you do.

Pretty good book on understanding gut health — Plus nice selection of 175 vegetarian recipes
This is a good book providing information on the need to maintain a healthy mix of bacteria (mostly in teh large intestine) by making food choices that encourage growth and diversity of bacteria that seem to be related to a number of aspects of our health (including mental health – depression and surprisingly autism) that go beyond gastrointestinal (GI) conditions such as colitis. The book has about 125 pages of easy-to-read backgroun on a number of topics, and overview of our GI tract and the role bacteria play, and also the role that food choices make on these bacteria (i.e., fiber is good!) while laying out the destructive role anti-biotics (as opposed pro-biotics) can have on many good bacteria that reside within our guts. The book argues for a high-fiber vegetarian diet, that includes pre-biotics (foods such as bananas with fiber that feed bacteria) and pro-biotics (such as yogurt) that themselves contain an abundance of “good” bacteria. The book has a good mix of recipes that use easy to find ingredients and don’t look to be too hard to make – directions are clear and nutritional information is provided.I like this book a lot, in that it lays out a lot of information at a pretty high level – it certainly is good introduction to the interesting topic of “gut health,” that admits that science here is new and developing. It doesn’t make a lot of strong claims as some books do but rather steers us towards a way of eating (more plants, less processed food) that surely has many benefits. This is sort of book I like in that most people will benefit from reading it and adopting some of the eating strategies it suggests and types of recipes it provides. It is not an “all or nothing” approach.If you are interested in the topic of gut health (and you should be, especially if you have take large amounts of antibiotics or will be doing so), I’d recommend this book as a good first start. It covers a lot of topics well, is easy to read, and gives you a good eating strategy (with recipes).Well recommended