The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet
- ISBN13: 9781605296449
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Groundbreaking new from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
In The Kind Diet, actress, activist, and committed conservationist Alicia Silverstone shares the insights that encouraged her to swear off meat and dairy forever, and outlines the spectacular benefits of adopting a plant-based diet, from effortless weight loss to clear skin, off-the-chart energy, and smooth digestion. She clarifies how meat, fish, milk, and cheese—the very foods we’ve been taught to regard as the cornerstone of excellent nutrition—are really the culprits behind escalating rates of disease and the cause of dire, potentially permanent hurt to our ecology. Yet going meat- and dairy-free doesn’t mean suffering deprivation; to the contrary, The Kind Diet introduces irresistibly tasty food that satisfies on every level—it even includes incredible desserts to keep the most stubborn sweet tooth pleased. Alicia also addresses the nutritional concerns faced by many who are new to a plant-based diet, and shows how to cover every nutritional ba… More >>
The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Fantastic, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet
I have mixed-feelings about this book. On one hand, it is presented nicely. The quality is fantastic and there are pictures to go with some of her recipes. The recipes themselves are of decent quality and there are lots of helpful information bits. She brings up some excellent points about the modern day food industry.
On the other hand, it is hard to believe this much concentration and passion goes into not killing animals when people do it to un-born babies all the time. It is illogical. Having grown-up on a farm, I have been around and am compassionate towards animals; but, we did eat them.
I try to support humane treatment of animals, but I reckon she is a small overboard in her thoughts that man was never meant to eat meat. I grant you, we probably eat too much of it and not enough plants, nuts and fruits.
The agenda I don’t recommend, but there is some excellent info and tasty recipes here.
Rating: 3 / 5
Man’s best friend is a gorgeous and affectionate an ideal pet.
Cats are the same, we make up their names and our like for them is real.
Listen up, I gotta question it, how can we be so cruel?
You say you care, that’s a lie.
My right compassion is for all living things
and not just the ones who are cute so I do what I can.
I wanna save lives and I’ve got a plot.
Under the table he’ll eat your dinner like the veggies we can’t stand.
What kind meal would he make? We don’t want to question it.
Tradition is all that keeps him alive.
Listen up, I gotta question it, how can we be so cruel?
You say you care, that’s a lie.
My right compassion is for all living things
and not just the ones who are cute so I do what I can.
I wanna save lives and I’ve got a plot.
Why am I so upset. Don’t even own a pet.
I am not trying to press my will.
I am not the first to say…THOU SHALT NOT KILL
Full is all we want to feel.
We eat to stay alive, but it’s their lives we steal.
I reckon we’d like to change, but most of us are stuck,
that’s why cats and dogs have ALL THE LUCK.
Rating: 5 / 5
When I had the chance to pick a book to review, I could not contain my excitement. TWO vegetarian cookbooks to choose from. Well, based upon the write ups I went for THE KIND DIET by Alicia Silverstone. This book looked so full of information and exciting.
When it arrived yesterday I hunkered down in my pothole couch and started to read. Within minutes I burst out laughing. I tried to control myself. Then a few minutes later, I could not stop laughing.
Finally, wanting to be in on the fun that I was having, my kids came over and questioned me what I was laughing at. When I started to read parts of this book to them, they also laughed and questioned what kind of drugs this girl was on.
MY BACKGROUND
Before I continue, I want to let you know that my family has grown up eating only whole natural foods. We have been doing this since Alicia was a young child. I have explored and studied health and nutrition for many years and have lived a pretty strict lifestyle naturally speaking. This laughter was not due to being a scoffer at all. It was due to – well, this book is really … bizarre.
If you happen to remember the movie CLUELESS that Alicia was in some years ago, this book could easily be titled, Cher’s Clueless Diet Cookbook. Seriously. For the first time in my life, I said to myself, this is really how this girl is!
BASIC LOGIC OF THE BOOK
Okay, back to the book. I am not sure where to start- perhaps the long chapter on freaky farting cows (with an ode to Queenie the escaped slaughterhouse cow that fled through NYC), or perhaps it is that no fish is excellent to eat because they are all poisoned.
I could address the entire section where she clarifies her choice to eat raw foods and then was stopped in her tracks when she was chided about it. After all, you have to eat what is grown in your area. So, instead of papaya and mango which are supposed to be for people in hot climates, she opted instead for only apples because that is what is grown in NY area where she was living at the time. Then she proceeds to tell of her new favorite foods now that her thinking was corrected as being Umeboshi plums, rice, daikon radish, miso, and seaweed. Wow. Those rice paddies in NY are certainly everywhere you look- and I have never seen so much miso and umeboshi plums as I have seen made from things grown in NY. The raw diet was no excellent based upon the fact that the fruits she was eating were not local (hence wasted fuel on pineapple and mango importing), but she has no problem with the fuel wasted bringing Japanese foods here.
The excessive use of the word fart and other such words as *badass skin hair and nails* makes this book seem like it is written by an eighth grader who hangs out on You Tube all of the time.
Much of the food she likes is processed but that is okay because people that process organic foods are not going to do hurt like the other people would. So some recipes involved using these much better processed foods.
Also, a lot of the *information* in this book is highly inflated propaganda from the animal rights industry, and the *chicken small* perspective that we are all gonna die from global warming so we have to stop the farting cows and waste of time and resources feeding them (words SHE uses).
Don’t get me incorrect, I prefer to eat more vegetarian- mostly vegan, but realistically speaking, I reckon that going off the deep end with anything closes you off from reality to a point. I prefer cows and poultry being fed naturally and humanely treated as that is healthy for those who prefer meats. Meats and poultry have been hurt by the dreadful way they are raised for meats.
There is so much propaganda in this book, but, that it makes it even more hard to read than it already is with her random approach to logic.
PHOTOS AND LAYOUT
The photos are VERY amateur. Some of the photos are so non-fascinating, they really make me NOT want to eat healthy by looking at them.
There are three levels of eating that Alicia attempts to outline in this random book- FLIRT, VEGAN and SUPERHERO.
The layout is okay, but rather mushed around. The chapters all run into each other and I find them to be a bit confusing and hard to follow at times.
There are some meal plans in the book and some recipes too.
FINAL COMMENTS
I have to say that this book is one of the weirdest and most hard books to read on the topic of natural foods eating of any that I have read in all of the years I have eaten this way.
On the plus side, at least Alicia is trying to get people to eat more healthy. If someone gets that way from reading this book- then at least they are moving in a excellent direction. I honestly don’t reckon that there is enough information in this book to KEEP someone wanting to eat naturally. The Kind Diet is so all over the map that I am just not sure how much solid foundation a person would get from it to keep them living a natural lifestyle long term.
At least she is not a fan of sugar or white flour or hydrogenated oils. Although some of the products she recommends seems to indicate she is not THAT opposed.
All in all, this book is not worth a high price tag. There are much better books out there which are laid out better and have more information to help someone seriously fascinating in improving their lifestyle.
There are some fascinating recipes in here that I might try out, but on the whole they are not overly motivating.
I have eaten the high level diet she suggests and once Alicia hits 45, it will be fascinating to see how she changes her approach to healthy eating. The disturbingly low level of raw foods in her photos and diet might take a change for the better, but only time will tell.
What kind of sums it all up was my son’s earnest question after a few moments of reading excerpts to him.
“Wait, Mom, are you SURE this is not meant to be some kind of a joke?”
Rating: 2 / 5
Haven’t had the chance as of yet to really look this over, but the small I did read I see she is in to as healthy eating as possible. She believes in organic food. This will be a fantastic asset to my healthy eating regime.
Rating: 4 / 5
I am not a vegan, nor do I want to become a vegan. This book was all about trying to convince a person to become a vegan. It was an fascinating read, full of anecdotes about other well-known vegans (Woody Harrelson among others).
I wanted simple to make vegan recipes to make for my vegan friends, and occasionally for myself and my family as a healthy alternative on occasion. But the recipes tended to be very complicated, full of ingredients not available in my area and more full of advice of why a person should become vegan (”Would you cook and eat my arm instead of that hamburger? Because if you are not eating vegan, that is what you might as well be doing…”)
It was full of “People want to know how I stay so gorgeous and thin, and my secret is being a vegan”…
So give as a gift to those that are already a vegan, not to those just thinking about becoming one…
Rating: 3 / 5