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When Barbara Kingsolver and her family move from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia, they take on a new challenge: to spend a year on a locally-produced diet, paying close attention to the provenance of all they consume.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle follows the family through the first year of their experiment. They find themselves eager to move away from the typical food scenario of American families: a refrigerator packed with processed, factory-farmed foods transported long distances using nonrenewable fuels. In their search for another way to eat and live, they begin to recover what Kingsolver considers our nation’s lost appreciation for farms and the natural processes of food production. Americans spend less of their income on food than has any culture in the history of the world, but they pay dearly in other ways: losing the flavors, diversity, and creative food cultures of earlier times. The environmental costs are also high, and the nutritional sacrifice is undeniable: on our modern industrial food supply, Americans are now raising the first generation of children to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

Part memoir and part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

Tags: animal, vegetable, miracle: a year of food life, barbara kingsolver, bios & memoirs, health & fitness, food, natural, diet, organic, farm, farming, diet

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"French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure" by Mireille Guiliano Length: 7 hours and 25 min. ISBN: 1-4159-2700-6 New York Times Best Seller Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

Stylish, convincing, wise, funny, and just in time: the ultimate non-diet book, which could radically change the way you think and live.

French women don’t get fat, but they do eat bread and pastry, drink wine, and regularly enjoy three-course meals. In her delightful tale, Mireille Guiliano unlocks the simple secrets of this “French paradox”, how to enjoy food and stay slim and healthy. Hers is a charming, sensible, and powerfully life-affirming view of health and eating for our times.

Now in simple but potent strategies and dozens of recipes you’d swear were fattening, Mireille reveals the ingredients for a lifetime of weight control, from the emergency weekend remedy of Magical Leek Soup to everyday tricks like fooling yourself into contentment and painless new physical exertions to save you from the StairMaster. Emphasizing the virtues of freshness, variety, balance, and always pleasure, Mireille shows how virtually anyone can learn to eat, drink, and move like a French woman.

A natural raconteur, Mireille illustrates her philosophy through the experiences that have shaped her life: a six-year-old’s first taste of Champagne, treks in search of tiny blueberries (called myrtilles) in the woods near her grandmother’s house, a near-spiritual rendezvous with oysters at a seaside restaurant in Brittany, to name but a few. She also shows us other women discovering the wonders of “French in action”, drawing examples from dozens of friends and associates she has advised over the years to eat and drink smarter and more joyfully.

Here are a culture’s most cherished and time-honored secrets recast for the twenty-first century. For anyone who has slipped out of her zone, missed the flight to South Beach, or accidentally let a carb pass her lips, here is a buoyant, positive way to stay trim. A life of wine, bread, even chocolate, without girth or guilt? Pourquoi pas?

Tags: french women don’t get fat: the secret of eating for pleasure, mireille guiliano, health & fitness, the secret of eating for pleasure, diet, food, eat, france

• French Women for All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes, & Pleasure

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"The Fiber35 Diet: Nature's Weight Loss Secret" by Brenda Watson Length: 6 hours and 20 min. ISBN: 978-0-7435-6730-5 New York Times Best Seller Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

Today, we Americans mostly eat processed foods from the supermarket, or foods from fast-food restaurants we drive by on the way home. We used to eat a fiber-rich diet, fresh from the fields (fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes); we now eat food from a box - that is, processed food that has processed the fiber right out of our diets. The result: an epidemic of obesity that causes most of the common diseases of our time.

Unlike low-carb, high protein, and low-fat diet plans, The Fiber35 Diet focuses on the magic of 35 grams of fiber per day as the key nutritional measure for losing weight. This diet is based on the only scientifically irrefutable way that is clinically proven to reduce weight: caloric restriction. Most important, this program corrects one of the dangerous nutritional falsehoods that most Americans now believe: that carbs are bad. Carbs from fruit, vegetables, and other sources are an important source of nutrition.

The Fiber35 Diet provides a weight-loss solution that will help listeners shed pounds. And it’s clinically proven to reduce the risk for all of the contemporary diseases that end life prematurely. Even though much is known about the healthy benefits of fiber, only recently have large food manufacturers, nutrition experts, and the media begun to pay more attention to it.

Fiber35 presents a four-part weight-loss formula, incorporating the following facts:

1. Fiber curbs the appetite, helping to reduce calorie consumption.
2. Fiber actually eliminates calories from food.
3. Fiber-rich foods are low energy-density foods.
4. Fiber slows down the body’s conversion of carbohydrates to sugar, which supports blood glucose stability and in turn assists in weight loss.

Tags: the fiber35 diet: nature’s weight loss secret, brenda watson, health & fitness, self development, fiber, fiber 35, fiber35, diet, carbs, calories, appetite, weight loss

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"The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" by Michael Pollan Length: 15 hours and 58 min. ISBN: 0-1430-5841-X New York Times Best Seller Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

The best-selling author of The Botany of Desire explores the ecology of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the 21st century.

“What should we have for dinner?” To one degree or another, this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore’s dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn’t, which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as America confronts what can only be described as a national eating disorder, the omnivore’s dilemma has returned with an atavistic vengeance.

The cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet has thrown us back on a bewildering landscape where we once again have to worry about which of those tasty-looking morsels might kill us. At the same time we’re realizing that our food choices also have profound implications for the health of our environment. The Omnivore’s Dilemma is best-selling author Michael Pollan’s brilliant and eye-opening exploration of these little-known but vitally important dimensions of eating in America.

We are indeed what we eat, and what we eat remakes the world. A society of voracious and increasingly confused omnivores, we are just beginning to recognize the profound consequences of the simplest everyday food choices, both for ourselves and for the natural world. The Omnivore’s Dilemma is a long-overdue book and one that will become known for bringing a completely fresh perspective to a question as ordinary and yet momentous as “What shall we have for dinner?”

Tags: the omnivore’s dilemma: a natural history of four meals, michael pollan, health & fitness, nonfiction, science, a natural history of four meals, food, ecology, nutrition, obesity, supermarket, organic, fast food

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"You: On a Diet: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management" by Michael F. Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet C. Oz, M.D. Length: 4 hours and 36 min. ISBN: 0-7435-6363-8 New York Times Best Seller Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

For the first time in our history, scientists are uncovering astounding medical evidence about dieting. Now, Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz translate this cutting-edge information to help you shave inches off your waist by giving you the best weapon against fat: knowledge.

Through their signature entertaining style, Drs. Roizen and Oz teach you about your body — how and why it stores calories, burns fat, and reacts to the foods you test your body with. Ultimately, they give you a plan and formulas that will help you lose up to two inches from your waist in two weeks, on your way to your ideal size.

By following the YOU diet and YOU activity plan, you will…

• You: The Owner's Manual: An Insider's Guide to the Body That Will Make You Healt