[.ca] Dr. Mercola's Total Health Cookbook & Program: 150 ... (ISBN 0970557469)

Waste of money:
This book is a total and complete disappointment. I ordered it because it claimed it had the metabolic type test, but all it does it to tell where to find the complete test - another book to buy. The test in the book consists of 9 questions. The real test is 60 and can be found in Wolcott's book - "The Metabolic Typing Diet". Of course, if you want, you can call Dr. Mercola's office and they will be happy to perform the real test for you (and the consequential personalized plan) for the amount of $179USD... This book is like an advertisement of Dr. Mercola's website and his on-line store. There is noting the book that you can't find on the website or on the Internet - Google "metabolic typing". Do not buy this book, unless you are ready to spend at least $1000/mo for food (example from the book - grass-fed bison meat- like I did not know that this is a healthy choice?). Do not pay to read advertisement.

Better than I thought it would be:
This book has much information about healthy diet, lifestyle and medicine. Dr. Mercola pointed out in a recent talk we attended in Philadelphia that the third leading cause of death for Americans was --doctors. Sorry, doc, but iatrogenic (doctor-caused) complications are plentiful. Still, this statistic may be misleading as a lot of doctoring goes on in the expensive, last few months of life for terminally-ill and geriatric patients. So the number of complications due to procedures and drug interactions is possibly skewed here--if you read the medicare reports and read between the lines. STILL, I prefer prevention. Dr. Mercola is a sort of Dr. Weil for the millenium, similar advice, more detail and his own slant on diet and health. Essentially, he advises vegetables, low to no grains--reduces insulin fluctuations, and healthy meats. He insists most people find that they are not served well by a vegan (no milk, meat, egg) diet and actually it could harm them. Yes, some folks are more than well on a vegan diet; it depends on your metabolic type, according to Mercola. For many, meat or fish are important. This is the "Atkins" type diet with an emphasis on healthy choices. We liked a lot of the recipes in this book. Some were even delicious; "zucchini spaghetti" is a boon for the low-carb eater, thin strips of squash serve as a low-carb base for a tasty sauce. And a home-made sausage patty I liked, plus a spicy Jamaican rub for chicken or fish. The recipes in "Total Health" are for the most part, pretty easy. The ingredients are what's more difficult to come by--for example, free range poultry, bison (buffalo), raw milk and Alaskan salmon, tested free of detectible mercury. But even in our rural area, we can order bison and salmon to be shipped in, and the raw milk is available over the border in Amish country. So while not every area in the US can obtain organic veggies and meats by walking to the store, even remote areas can find ways to get these items. If you were to adhere to the Mercola diet, a chest freezer could be helpful to freeze sporadic purchases of organic perishables. How to get in those vegetables for brekkie really stumped us, until we tried the fearsome green shake, consisting of vegetable juice, whey powder, egg and greens powder, with coconut for flavor and its own benefits. This powerful smoothie is a quick pick-me-up for the morning rush and easily assimilated. We liked it, surprised how much so. This diet and lifestyle is not easy, and the guy at home frankly said "No WAY am I eating veggies for a snack, thank YOU very much!" but adding the additional greens and of course healthy choices is doing us good, we are sure. A provocative book, with a great number of resources.

Simple and tasty recipes:
This book outlines some of the fundamental eating habits that we all need to integrate into our lives. I have worked in the natural health industry for almost 20 years and have followed many different trends. In my opinion, this program offers a basic, comprehensive and logical approach to eating for today. We need to work together to support sustainable agriculture. Dr. Mercola is clearly aware of the issues surrounding the food industry. Instead of finding excuses, we need to go out of our way to find real food from real farmers. Although I would have appreciated seeing more resources in the appendix section, the book helps increase your awareness about obtaining the healthiest ingredients possible in order to increase one's own health. The recipes were clearly written to accommodate our fast-paced lives. Not only are the recipes easy to prepare and healthy, they taste great! Metabolic typing is an interesting method and merits consideration. It is a progressive approach that surpasses other popular programs currently available. This is a multi-dimensional book which emphasizes emotional, spiritual, environmental, agricultural and physical health. The authors have done a wonderful job conveying this information in such a concise, clearly written format. Overall, it is an excellent book.

Top-Notch!:
Great content on how to live a healthy lifestyle, excellent nutritional advice, interesting metabolic typing quiz to test for your type, and very good recipes. This is the only cookbook anyone would need.

Will help you overcome and prevent disease and illness, live longer and better and enjoy many truly delicious meals:
Dr. Joseph Mercola's book: Dr. Mercola's Total Health Program: The Proven Plan to Prevent Disease and Premature Aging, Optimize Weight and Live Longer, took over twenty years to complete. Not the physical writing of it, of course, but the book's most important aspect: the dietary and lifestyle plan it is founded on. The story begins in the late 70's when he was still in medical school, Mercola believed that nothing was more essential to health and healing than proper diet. A few years later, as a young physician, He began to determine through committed investigations and practice the true ideal diet to help people prevent chronic disease and weight issues, and to reach their highest potential living a long life full of energy and free from pain. It wasn't until the late 80's he experienced what he called 'some major transformations of my own' regarding his perception of the conventional healthcare system--namely, that its foundation was fatally flawed, as it was almost exclusively centered on treatments and mere patchwork, but not prevention and reliance on the intrinsic healing capacity God gave each and every one of us. He further recognized that people were confused about what the right diet was. They had major amounts of conflicting advice about fats and proper nutrition, and were intentionally being misled toward devastating food choices and perceptions of healthcare by the fast food and pharmaceutical industry that had much to gain in the way of money and power from doing so. People deserved the real answer, not information tainted by politics or greed, and Dr. Joseph Mercola's was committed to finding that answer. Dr. Joseph Mercola's dietary plan is filled with many breakthroughs obtained through years of investigations and review of the medical literature and, even more so, his own clinical experience with patients over the past two decades. Once he implemented them into patient's lives, he improved their conditions dramatically. They main points of Dr. Joseph Mercola's dietary plan are: -- Your health, whether you have disease, or you're in decent health already, will improve dramatically if you eliminate, or vastly reduce, the amount of grains and sugars you consume. -- Your emotional health is directly related to your physical health, and by using the emotional health tools discussed in his book, you will greatly improve your ability to permanently optimize your weight, fight and prevent disease, and live longer. -- You, like all people, have a unique biochemistry, or metabolic type. And there are specific foods, at specific levels, that are most ideal for your type. Conversely, some foods that are generally considered healthy may not be as healthy for you as you think. One of the important keys this book will help provide is learning your metabolic type and major metabolic typing principles so that you can both vastly and rapidly increase your dietary success. These and more are covered in detail for you in Dr. Mercola's Total Health Program: The Proven Plan to Prevent Disease and Premature Aging, Optimize Weight and Live Longer, as are all the other tenets of his dietary plan that you need to know in order to use the recipes for their healing, preventative, weight loss, performance-enhancing and life-extending abilities. By the time you finish Dr. Mercola's Total Health Program: The Proven Plan to Prevent Disease and Premature Aging, Optimize Weight and Live Longer, you will have a true total health plan customized to you. The wonderful thing about the plan is that it's entirely designed around what's naturally right for your body, so sticking to it, you will find, will simply be following a diet that your body naturally gravitates toward. Eating according to your metabolic type is not the challenge you may fear it will be and you will be astounded by the results.