Nutrition is often complicated by experts and people pretending to be experts, weighing in with opinions about how and what we should be eating, and in what quantities.
This book is a series of questions and answers. Because of that it is fairly repetitive in parts, but sometimes things need repeating.

There is no perfect diet. There's no diet that suits all. But if we all stick by basic principles i.e eat wholesome, mostly unprocessed food, mainly plants, beans and nuts, fruit and vegetables, and then add in small amounts of fish and meat if wanted, we would all be a lot healthier.

It really is that simple. Cook your own food rather than rely on ready meals and take-aways. Use unprocessed ingredients. Add herbs, spices, salt, pepper, vinegars, oils. Food that is nutritious can also be very tasty and filling as well.

Whole foods is the answer to the all the questions. Don't spend too much time worrying about small things - e.g the fat content in different types of nuts - nuts are whole foods, so it doesn't matter whether it contains a "good" oil or a "bad" one, or how much oil it has.......eat them unprocessed and iit's fine. All of them.

Eating, and deciding what to eat, should be simple. This book lays out just how simple that is. Forget all the fad diets, just eat good wholesome nutritious food. It really is that easy!

How To Eat was a very interesting book about the many questions people who aren't so educated on diets and what food can do for your body are always wanting to know (in other words me). The book is set out as questions from the public and then answers from the authors on subjects such as what diets are healthy ie looking at the Mediterranean diet, going vegan, intermittent fasting, and the keto diet. It also goes into great detail about Macronutrients, something I have always struggled to understand.

It was thorough in explaining the different diets and food groups but I found it could be repetitive at times. I didn't like the Q&A style as some of the questions could be a bit silly, but I suppose it's important to cater for everyone. It is a book for people starting out and doesn't necessarily dive too deep into each section but more brushes over the top to get in as much information as possible. It's a great starting point for people wanting to learn about diets and what their bodies need, but there are a lot more extensive books out there explaining these subjects in more detail.

I did enjoy How To Eat and I felt that I learned quite a bit, as well as it being an easy guide to come back to if I have any questions about diets in the future but I wish it had dived a little deeper when answering questions and explaining each section.

For anyone bombarded with messages about the types of food they should be eating, How To Eat is a great place to start. It generates a simple message by taking a common-sense approach to food consumption to the level of doughnut bad, apple good.

It's written in a Q&A style which makes the subject better for the reader to understand and take in. There are books out there which will contain the scientific data about the nutritional value of, for example, an almond compared to a walnut. This book is not one of them and conveys a very simplified message of the correct choices to make when choosing how to change your diet to a more healthy one.

At times the approach helps to break up the subject into pieces of data so you do not get overloaded with technical details and the message of the correct choices to make is constantly reiterated.

This is a great place to start if you want to get to the truth about how to change your diet for the better.

This was a very comprehensive, thorough report on literally everything to do with food, eating right, and dieting. I definitely learned some thing, but unfortunately, a lot of it was very repetitive. I felt that, with every new subheading, I was just being told the entire thing all over again. And again. And again.

It was well-written and easy to follow, and there were important points made about eating local, and organic, as well as reducing our carbon footprint. I liked that Bittman and Katz said the Mediterranean diet is one of the best, healthiest out there. Because that's my diet - now I just have to cut out all the processed food...

Check out my full review on my blog:
https://drinkbooks.blog/2020/08/19/how-to-eat-all-your-food-and-diet-questions-answered-by-mark-bittman-david-katz/

I wanted to read this as I am interested in how to eat right and what foods are good and bad but I found this book rather boring and long winded. It was like reading an interview.
Not for me I'm afraid!

I like reading about health, diet and food. I love it when I come across a well-written book. How to Eat is full of great information, and I love the interview format a lot. Although I'm familiar with most of the information, it still felt like new, and it managed to keep my curiosity alive till the end.

A comprehensive, practical guide to food in the 2020s, "How to Eat: All Your Food and Diet Questions Answered" might be just what you need to cut through the noise of self-promotion, greed, and idiocy. Mark Bittman was a NYT columnist for years and has written a slew of books about cooking (his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian occupies a huge slab on my meagre cookbook shelf) and David Katz is a physician specializing in preventative medicine. Using an energetic Q&A format, with both the questions and answers written with verve and humor, the authors walk through all the various diets we know and love, then talk about eating dynamics, then cover the main food groups, before finally discussing more general nutrition issues. The approach is refreshingly science-based: what can be truthfully said based on proper research. And the authors make clear that the science of diet is generally very woolly, simply because it is so complex. From the start, they lay out their thesis, one that makes all the sense in the world: be relaxed about what you eat, aiming for that elusive "balance," but, hey, actually that means mostly vegetables, fruit, whole grains, lentils, seeds, berries, and nuts. Some of the fashionable diets are seen as at least partially sensible, a couple get short shrift. I'm an inveterate reader of books like this and found this one to be the most coherent expression of sanity for a layperson that I've come across, a real boon. The Q&A format does sap How to Eat of narrative flow, but if you're after the real skinny on how to stay skinny and healthy, this is it.

Finally a book that promotes sensible eating as a method to loose weight and sustain a healthy life. Touches on the lifestyle and manufacturers responsibility, and the difficultly and misleading way so many of us end up consuming the wrong foods without even realising.
Explains all the myths and how research can be missed lead from its conception.
Although this book itself won't give you an eating plan or sell you a diet programme, the main ethos of healthy food, cooking and avoiding large amounts manufactured and for vast profit foods is prevalent throughout.
They style of writing is easy to read, light hearted and funny, down to earth and gets to the every day conflicting questions that bounce back and forth in popularity.

We all know what we should be eating to be healthy, but how easy is it really to eat well? In an age of confusion, conflicting advice and pressure to follow trends, this book is a beacon of common sense.

Following a very accessible and readable question-and-answer style, the authors take the reader through a wide range of current diet topics, explaining why certain foods and particular approaches to eating can impair our health and wellbeing.

The overall message is simple, and builds on Michael Pollen's famous quote: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants'. But the authors show how the proliferation of different fads and dietary fashions can blur what this truly means. I particularly welcomed their advice to take a macro approach to what I eat as a whole. It is a relief to know that a meticulous focus on percentages of this or that food group is not necessary for achieving a good diet (in the sense of what we eat, rather than as a way to lose weight).

I am happy to have read this book - it feels like an excellent brain-reset back to an ordinary and obvious way of eating. What a relief!

With grateful thanks to the publisher for a review copy via NetGalley.

Such good stuff! Written with a delightfully casual Q&A style, Mark and David's book is a neat, informative look at better ways to eat. The information here might not be radically new, but there are some really interesting concepts here that you don't normally see in books like this. One such concept is the "instead of" idea when it comes to deciding what's best to eat. "Are eggs good for me?", you might ask. Mark and David suggest that a good way to answer that question is to consider what you will eat eggs "instead of". Are you eating them "instead of" bagels and syrup-soaked pancakes? Then "yes" they are good for you! Much in here is practical, sensible advice that draws from the idea that a plant-based diet is undeniably best, but that it's OK to indulge now and again. And it's also just fine not to obsess over every calorie and macronutrient, so long as your diet consists of lots of leafy greens, nuts, and water (and more). Really quick read, a lot of fun, not preachy -- a great recommendation for readers wanting direct info about the best foods.

How to Eat is an interesting book on what we eat. The Q&A style of the book makes it easy to read and digest, and makes reading a pleasant experience.
While I'm not sure if I fully agree with everything said in the book, it raises some good questions about what we eat and why. (And thus what should we consider changing in our diet). The book is quite informative and there's a list of sources in the back, which came as a pleasant surprise, even though I consider it a must with this type of literature.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Scribe UK for providing me with a free digital copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.*