The New American Plate Cookbook: Recipes for a Healthy Weight and a Healthy Life

Published by the American Institute for Cancer Research (www.aicr.org), this book sheds light on how to compose meals that reflect the new food pyramid with an emphasis on portion control. The beginning of the book outlines the difference between the "old American diet" (8 oz. steak, potatoes and peas, for example) and the recommended "new American diet" (5 oz. animal protein, 2 vegetable servings and 1 starch flavored with herbs and less salt and oils). The book's focus is to steer people away from eating so much protein and to eating more complex carbohydrates. I would not recommend this book to those who are backlashing against the FDA's recommendations for a healthy diet. There are no recipes that include fois gras, brie, etc. The book's recipe section is organized into 3 parts. The first two parts are two different approaches to composing a meal. The first part consists of recipes for vegetables, salads, animal proteins, sauces, etc with their own respective sections. Most of these recipes have suggestions (in their introduction) of what other items could be served with it to make a complete meal. The second part is one-pot meals, i.e., casseroles (yes, casseroles!), stews, stir-fries, pilafs, entree salads, frittatas and chilis. The third part consists of items that really should be eaten more in moderation, i.e., appetizers, soups, breads/muffins and desserts, with soups being the exception. All recipes have nutrition summaries (calories, fat, carbohydrates, protein, dietary fiber and sodium) and most recipes include the nutritional benefits of certain ingredients and recommendations on how not to destroy the nutrition in what you set out to cook (brussels sprouts, for example). The photography is beautiful with an appetizing photograph on every second or third page. Having cooked nearly half of the recipes in this cookbook, most of the food really looks like the recipe's photograph and tastes delicious too. This fact makes it difficult to stick to the recommended portions. Ingredients that one may not have cooked with before, such as millet, quinoa, and kasha have very appetizing recipes as well. The recipes are diverse and include many common ingredients. Also, the recipe layouts are easy to read. The book has a valuable section at the end which summarizes cooking basics and specifics on healthy foods (vegetable descriptions). Overall, this book gets a full workout in my kitchen and I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to incorporate healthy foods and cooking methods into their daily diet. Just do not forget to focus on portion control!

I absolutely love this book. The lamb & green bean stew, veggie chili, chili burgers, beef stew, citrus tofu, corn muffins, chocolate angel cake... all so good, it is hard to believe they are low fat. The pictures are beautiful and make you want to head to the kitchen.

As a physician and an experienced innovative cook, I am thoroughly delighted with this cookbook. It is right on target for what I believe to be the changes we must make as a culture: eating healthy,high quality food, adjusting our portions, and finding ways to exercise more. In addition, it is an exceptionally good cookbook; the recipes are clearly well-tested and the presentations divine. I've loved every recipe I've tried so far. If anyone is interested in learning more about glycemic index and glycemic load, I have found The New Glucose Revolution by Brand-Miller to be the most authoritative reference. The New American Plate Cookbook is one of the best cookbooks I've ever read (and I read it from cover to cover within days.)

Absolutely the most wonderful cookbook I have ever owned. I have been buying cookbooks for many years, and if you must have only one cookbook, this is the one to have. The recipes are easy to prepare and the ingredients are easy to get (you don't have to go to gourmet and specialty stores for ingredients you never heard of). It is chock full of useful information, beautiful color pictures, and worth every penny. An absolute keeper. You can be happy cooking for a very long time just using this book and no others.

This book somehow ended up in the "special diets" section of my local bookstore, and I don't know why. This is my favorite new cookbook, period. Fresh ingredients, paired in interesting ways. (There's a citrus sauce for pasta that my finicky family loves.) Meat used to impart flavor and texture, not as the sole focus of a given meal. Processed sugar, flour and saturated fat nudged aside in favor of natural foods, prepared simply and elegantly. That said, there's a bunch of "comfort food" type recipes, updated so they're a bit lighter and more interesting. I NEVER thought I'd find myself making a casserole (too many memories of Mom's canned cream o'mushroom soup suprises) but there's a great potato, green bean and lamb casserole that turned me around. There's a great deal in the book's appendix about the science behind the recipes, and nutrition principles, and how phytochemicals (natural plant chemicals)protect health, and I suspect that's why people are lumping this in with the health cookbooks. Me, I bought the book because of the photos, (they're quite lovely) and because I suspected that my vegetable-hating 8-year old would love the curried cauliflower recipe on page 26. And I was right.