Un-Junk Your Diet

Book excerpt: We don’t need to be instructed to eat apples instead of potato chips. What we need is someone to inspire us to eat well and to show us just how powerful eating that apple can be. This person must be a trusted voice, one that can calm the informational clutter instead of adding yet another discordant voice to the pile. Desiree Nielsen is a registered dietitian, one of the public’s most trusted sources of nutrition information. In Un-Junk Your Diet, she teaches readers about anti-inflammatory dieting in a way that’s engaging, funny, and approachable. This book begins with a call to action to help shake up perceptions of what food means to our bodies and illuminate all the ways that marketers co-opt healthy eating messages to coerce us into choosing food that is unworthy. In addition, an in-depth look at the fundamentals of nutrition—with a splash of myth busting—strengthens readers’ abilities to resist the latest nutrition headline and continue making healthier choices. Because there is no one right way for every individual eater, Nielsen offers a brief exercise in self-discovery before providing four distinct plans for becoming healthier. They range from the gentle and gradual to the two-week kick start that appeals to both detox seekers and vacation slimmers.