Eat This, Not That! Thousands of Simple Food Swaps that Can Save You 10, 20, 30 Pounds–or More! (Paperback)
Eat This, Not That! Thousands of Simple Food Swaps that Can Save You 10, 20, 30 Pounds–or More! (Paperback)
Eat This, Not That! Thousands of Simple Food Swaps that Can Save You 10, 20, 30 Pounds–or More! (Paperback) Reviews
This is a great book. Slick and attractive, with fantastic full-color pictures. Very well researched too, which is expected coming from the folks behind one of the most densely-packed, informative magazines, Men’s Health.
The truth is that casual dining restaurants have higher calorie meals than the much-maligned fast food joints. While the fast food restaurants are now required to publish calorie, fat, and sodium contents, the casual restaurants have been quietly fighting against requiring them to release the same information. Thanks to this book and the research behind it, we can now get a better idea of what we’ve been eating at these restaurants. And it is eye opening.
Each two page section has a high-calorie, fat trap food on the right, and a healthier alternative on the left. Lots of reasons for why one is a better choice than the other, as well as quick lists of other good choices (and not so good choices) on the left and right.
This simple, but effective layout conveys a ton of information quickly and easily. The sections are by restaurant, and by situation type (like shopping at the mall, or at a holiday party), so it is easy to read and get good ideas for how to make better food choices.
The only negative is that you might never get fries again, after you see all the things you could eat instead and still not hit the calorie count of the fries. Outback’s Aussie Cheese Fries have 2900 calories. Wow!
Highly recommended book, even if you aren’t trying to lose weight. You’ll learn a ton about the foods you are eating at restaurants, which is well worth the price of admission.
I really like the core message of this book… A year ago I started calorie counting but got sick of it very quickly, then I bought Dr. Shapiro’s Picture Perfect Weight Loss: The Visual Program for Permanent Weight Loss which has a very similar strategy to this book’s – showing you pictures of good and bad choices of similar styles or calorie counts.
From a year ago I’ve lost 35 lb, I’m basically at my ideal weight, and I haven’t had the slightest bit of trouble keeping it off and I don’t feel like I’m “dieting”. In fact, I feel like I enjoy what I’m eating far more than ever before – I’m very impressed! I picked this book up because I’m pretty food-conscious now and I like to be aware of additional practical healthy choices.
What I like about this book compared to the Dr. Shapiro one is that it’s extremely practical – at one point a Quarter Pounder is recommended as a “healthy” choice. I’d more or less agree with this approach; I think things like burgers can be healthy, filling options if you know what you’re doing – whereas a Dr. Shapiro would have you eliminate all meat from your diet.
Where I think this book falls down a little bit is if you were trying to put together a mental “theme” of what to eat and what not to eat based on this book, you really couldn’t. Sometimes shrimp is shown as a healthy option, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you’re better off eating a turkey burger, sometimes you’re not. It comes out after reading a bunch of suggestions that you shouldn’t eat fries or mayo – but you still get the feeling that it’s a bit potluck. The Dr. Shapiro book exaggerated the differences between good and bad foods to teach common patterns – this book just presents a bunch of data points and you need to find your own patterns. The Dr. Shapiro book focused primarily on calories – this one adds things like sodium which in my mind are usually not your first concern. I also find this book to be a little more annoyingly pseudoscientific, citing the results of some studies that sound like one-offs and talking about “foods that cure”. Different target audience I guess.
After reading a few of these books you start to figure out your own patterns and make your own guidelines. Here are mine, which have worked wonders for me:
Don’t eat anything fried – no french fries, fried chicken, potato chips, etc. Only rarely eat ice cream. Don’t eat condiments that are bad for you and don’t add that much to the experience: mayo, cheese, butter, oil. Don’t eat pizza. Eat bread, pasta, and rice less often. Eat tons of seafood: fish, shrimp, etc. Don’t feel like you need to avoid meat or burgers. Be extremely active with substituting off anything bad at restaurants. Splurge when it’s worth it – i.e., when you have the opportunity to eat something really good. I don’t forgo dessert after a really good restaurant meal. Seek out tons of healthier meals that you would honestly prefer eating over what you eat regularly now. Find a few healthy things you like at every restaurant you frequent. Have a wild guess of how many calories are in everything you eat, so you never sit down and eat a 4,000 calorie large pizza yourself 
. Don’t keep anything convenient that’s unhealthy in the house.
PROS
*Easy to carry around. Fits nicely into a purse. Handy on vacation.
*Pretty pictures
*Fun to read
*Easy to use.
*Lots of familiar products/mainstream restaurants included.
*Quickly identifies healthiest items on the menu.
CONS
*Fuzzy Math. Some of the comparisons don’t make sense–like turn to the Baskin Robbins section–why is Rocky Road ice cream bad (290 calories, 15gfat (8 sat), 32g sugar), but Two Scoop Hot Fudge Sundae is good (530 calories, 29g fat (19sat) and 52 g of sugar.) WHAT???? I don’t get it.
*I wouldn’t take the caloric facts as *fact*–For instance under the SONIC section, the authors list the Grilled Chicken Wrap as only having 380 calories but fails to mention that this is without dressing. Double check the caloric content on the restaurant’s website before eating.
*Contradictory. Apparently, Goldfish crackers are bad when they’re coming from a vending machine (p. 193) but good when coming off a store shelf. (216).
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