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 All Thumbs Book Reviews
Healing Secrets of Food: A Practical Guide for Nourishing Body, Mind,
and Soul
By Deborah Kesten
Review by Willa Keizer
When the cover of the January, 2002 issue of New Age Magazine
enticingly invited readers to "Learn the Healing Secrets of Food," I
was hoping that new-agers had finally gotten over their dedication to
lowfat veganism and were finally going to show people the true way to
health. I was disappointed.
Deborah Kesten's new book contains many dismaying statements including
this one: "Not only do diets high in 'sat fats' make you feel sluggish
(by lowering the amount of circulating oxygen in the blood), they may
impair memory and alter your mood by encouraging depression." (!!) No
sources were given for this tidbit.
Deborah is a nutritionist who works with Dean Ornish. Her goal in writing
this book was to "bring ancient food wisdom into the twenty-first century,"
a goal similar to that of the Weston A. Price Foundation. As we know,
high-quality saturated fats are the key to health and longevity. Kesten
disparages fats in almost any form, without even referencing any research
to back up her disapproval.
In chapter three, "Healing Secrets of Feelings," she exhorts readers
to "calm down with carbohydrates," "perk up with protein," and discusses
"memory-dimming [saturated] fat." She cites the ideas of Richard and
Judith Wurtman who claim that eating fats may slow down the production
of serotonin, and therefore cause depression. This directly contradicts
research which shows that vitamin D, whose only food source is animal
fat, can fight chronic fatigue, depression and seasonal affective disorder.
Weston Price found that people who ate traditional diets, which were
high in saturated fat, were strong, healthy and cheerful. Mood disorders
and depression go hand in hand with poor nutrition.
Kesten has several chapters on "healing secrets" and the importance
of being mindful, appreciating food and socializing while eating. Although
she has some good ideas, they are eclipsed by her dismal dietary advice.
Chapter seven is devoted to urging people to eat fresh, whole foods.
She then makes the strange statement that "technically, because they
are not plant-based, meat, poultry, fish, and dairy products aren't
whole foods." Huh? I guess making up your own definitions is one way
to make your plan seem logical!
She then addresses "the Paleolithic perspective" and makes the false
claim, based on the work of Dr. Boyd Eaton, that our Paleolithic ancestors
ate a lowfat diet. She claims that wild game has a fat content of about
4 percent. As readers of this journal know, this figure is false. Not
only do most wild animals have a much higher fat content, native peoples
prized the fat and internal organs over the lean muscle.
The bizarre grand finale of the book is her description of a Christmas
dinner of "optimal foods" in Norway, 1995. She describes the typical
Norwegian Christmas foods of fresh cod, lutefisk, pork ribs and sausages,
dried mutton ribs--all true traditional foods that nourish and sustain
during the dark cold winter. For this dinner, however, they came up
with a menu that only contained plant foods with a little dairy. The
first course was melon soup with freshly squeezed juices. She admits
that it was difficult to find fresh produce in Norway during the winter
months and how difficult it was to go against custom! This ought to
have given her a clue--she's going against nature with her weird ideas
of healing food! How serving a meal consisting mainly of fruits and
veggies during a frigid Norwegian winter has anything to do with "ancient
food wisdom" is hard to understand. Kesten and her colleagues are welcome
to create any strange dietary scheme they like, but please, don't call
it "ancient food wisdom" –-we know better!
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