I've been reading a lot in the general field of dieting/lifestyle and, among twenty or so other books, came across three I'd highly recommend. I'll tell you about them in no particular order.
I had read and enjoyed "The Omnivore's Dilemma," Michael Pollan's previous book in the field. Now I found his newer book, "In Defense of Food", published in 2008 by Penguin. Pollan has three simple rules for what we should eat to aim for health and they make a lot of sense. I'll let you find out how he words the rules, but basically he advocates staying away from processed foods, eating primarily fresh veggies (plus fruits and whole grains) and limiting your overall caloric intake. It's a wonderful read!
Next up is David Kessler, a former med school dean at UCSF and Yale and an ex-FDA commissioner. Dr. Kessler's 2009 book is titled, "The End of Overeating," and is published by Rodale. This one is more scientific in its verbiage, but its main theme, I thought, was spot on. He believes the food industry has used a variety of combinations of sugar plus fat in their creations and in doing so has hooked us, nearly addicted some of us. They've also thrown in salt and lots of chemicals, but their approach to the complicated preparation of processed food seems to me to be a deliberate attempt to sell more "food," whatever the consequences to the customer. I've read that some of that is finally changing, but we just don't eat "fast food:"
The third author is Dr. Dean Ornish. We own several of his books, cook from them and actually contacted his Preventive Medicine Research Institute recently about one of our long-time favorites, fruited grain. Dr. Ornish's 2008 book, "The Spectrum," published by Ballantine, is superb. It has a detailed discussion on Ornish's approach to lifestyle and diet, a DVD of guided meditations, and lots of recipes by Oprah's personal chef, Art Smith.
These three books provided, for me, a cross section of current thoughts in the diet/lifetsyle field. They're all different; they're all worth reading