Reviews for Salad Dressing 101: Dressings for All Occasions

The average rating for Salad Dressing 101: Dressings for All Occasions based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-06-25 00:00:00 Cassandra Williams I was disappointed in this. It starts out well -- cataloging the insane diets of the 1800s and on, you realize just how nutty Americans have been about food for quite a long time. The discussions are all really superficial, however, which was especially frustrating since the book is relatively short. There would have been room for a much deeper discussion, and I felt like I was reading a book aimed at high school students. I was really disappointed, however, at the last few chapters, which were even more clearly thrown together. There was one chapter in particular that briefly threw out words like "health at every size" and "Paul Campos," then dismissed such analysis with a totally conclusory "but it's clear that obesity is a health risk." It really annoyed me -- the book has just spent 150 pages outlining how decades of crazy diets have never worked and often made dieters heavier and heavier, then refuses to even contemplate the thesis of HAES, which is that focusing on health, rather than just the numbers on the scale, will be much more effective. The refusal to even engage the arguments underscored how shallow the book's discussions are. It's still an entertaining read, I'm just glad I got it from the library and didn't buy it (and I suspect mining the bibliography for further reading will be more interesting than the book itself).

Review # 2 was written on 2017-03-15 00:00:00 Pomshk Shk I was interested in this book because I am in the middle of a medically supervised diet plan to try to take off the last few decade's worth of excess weight. I don't recall how I had slipped onto the road to obesity in middle age, but I do remember the half measures I'd tried to get myself off of it on my own. It seemed clear that it was all a matter of more powerful forces than an individual could comprehend unaided. This is a survey through all the attempts to discourage Americans from growing obese, sometimes on scientific principles, sometimes not, starting in the 19th century. The most revealing aspect was to see the way the same ideas would come around a generation or two later. It points to the current-day understanding that appetite and metabolism is controlled by a complicated interplay of many factors, difficult to codify in a simple diet that suits the lifestyle of today. In the second half of the book, they described a number of weight-loss medications which came into vogue in the last few decades. Besides these, there were also the synthetic foods and additives marketed by the food industry with the ultimate goal of increasing profits. The topic has all become harder for an average consumer to navigate without help, and this book is a good way to gain a perspective on how we have all gotten to this state.