Product Description

Optimum nutrition means giving yourself the best possible intake of nutrients to allow your body to be as healthy as it possibly can. This guide shows how to achieve this, and also: what a well-balanced diet really means; how to boost your immune system; how to increase your energy and fitness levels; how to prevent cancer and turn back the ageing clock; how to avoid heart disease and lower your blood pressure without drugs; why the wrong fats can kill and the right fats can heal; and how to increase your IQ, memory and mental performance. Answer the questionnaires in the book to discover exactly which nutrients you need to supplement, then follow the step-by-step plan to create your own personal supplement programme.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90187 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 351 pages

Customer Reviews

The BEST book on the influences of nutrition on physical and mental health
I first read this book in 2005 and have referred to it on many occasions since. It is an excellent guide to a range of health conditions.

I recommend it as an absolute must for anyone interested in improving and maintaining their health. Holford separates myth from fiction, tackling subjects such as The Fats of Life, The Protein Controversy, Sugar - the Sweet Truth and Conquering Cancer. Whether you are reviewing your nutrition from a prevention, maintenance or therapy perspective, Holford tackles the many key questions and provides detailed guidance on how to put together a balanced diet. Vitamin and mineral supplements are put under close scrutiny, their synergistic and antagonistic effects are explained and a nutrient fact file describes the effect, deficiency signs, Optimum Daily Amounts and nutritional sources of the main vitamins and minerals. If Glycaemic Index, EFAs and Homocysteine are all a mystery to you, get this book and learn how you can optimise your diet to feel well, now and in the future.

Unjustified Patrick bashing...A fabulous book for ultimate health
This book is ideal for those who are fed up of feeling lethargic, tired, stressed,depressed and generally unhappy with their well being.

Patrick Holford tells you how to lose weight and lose those binge eating
cravings by balancing blood sugar levels, fight modern day disease epidemics like heart disease and cancer by opting for an organic based diet and supplementing with power packed antioxidants and even how to reduce "female" problems...heavy, irregular periods, PMT and montly migraines by eating more whole grains and essential fatty acids.

There are indepth chapters explaining how vitamins and minerals are vital and how lack of these can affect our health and well being, making us prone to illness and disease.
Holford does get verbally thrashed for this on several anti-supplement sites on the internet, claiming that he advocates supplements for financial gain rather than sound medical advice...(he has links to several companies that sell health supplements).
However what these ill informed hacks appear to forget is that in
todays modern climate of pesticide riddled foods, pollution, questionable tap water, daily over exposure to toxic chemicals, smoking, drug taking (illegal and legal) and excessive drinking etc, the body is consistently depleted of it's vitamin and mineral supply leaving little to defend against cancer causing free radicals, obesity causing blood sugar irregularities and cardio vascular disease promoting trans-fats.

Food alone can no longer give us all the nutritional va va voom that we require.
A top quality range of supplements is the only way to protect and fully energise the body in such a toxic world.

This book is easy to read, full of interesting nutritional facts, giving inspirational tips and guidance and most importantly leaving the reader
feeling upbeat and optimistic...It's never to late to improve your health, re-engerise your body and become your very best physical self.

Patrick Holford - Supplement Salesman
Although, this book has some good advice such as eating oily fish and fresh fruit I do feel its use for the general reader is rather limited.

Rather worryingly Mr Holford concludes many of the chapters with advice to take supplements. This is contrary to the view of most dieticians and the Food Standards Agency who do not think there is any reason for a healthy adult to spend money on vitamin and mineral pills. He does not make clear in the book that he has big financial interests in promoting supplements. Until recently he was an advisor to supplement company "Higher Nature" and devised a range of products for them such as "the optimum nutrition formula". Although, he mentions them in his "Directory of Supplement Companies" he forgets to inform us of his own involvement ....

He claims that taking supplements can dramatically improve conditions such as schizophrenia. What he does make not clear is that most specialists dealing with, for example, schizophrenia do not share his views. Many references in "The Optimum Nutrition Bible" are to the Institute of Optimum Nutrition (ION) and the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine (JOM). His mentor, Abram Hoffer, was one of those involved in setting up the JOM back in 1967. These two organisations can hardly be regarded as trusted sources of information! It is little wonder that on two occasions - March 2003 and September 2007 - Mr Holford's companies have been taken to task by the Advertising Standards Authority for misleading the public.

A much better book is "Nutrition for Dummies" written by two registered dieticians. The book is extremely easy to read and sums up the latest scientific evidence in a way the average person in the street can understand.