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    Eating on the Wild Side: The Missing Link to Optimum Health
    Unavailable
    Eating on the Wild Side: The Missing Link to Optimum Health
    Unavailable
    Eating on the Wild Side: The Missing Link to Optimum Health
    Audiobook11 hours

    Eating on the Wild Side: The Missing Link to Optimum Health

    Written by Jo Robinson

    Narrated by Erin Bennett

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The next stage in the food revolution – a radical way to select fruits and vegetables and reclaim the flavor and nutrients we've lost.

    Eating on the Wild Side is the first book to reveal the nutritional history of our fruits and vegetables. Starting with the wild plants that were central to our original diet, investigative journalist Jo Robinson describes how 400 generations of farmers have unwittingly squandered a host of essential fiber, protein, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. New research shows that these losses have made us more vulnerable to our most troubling conditions and diseases – obesity, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, chronic inflammation, and dementia.

    In an engaging blend of science and story, Robinson describes how and when we transformed the food in the produce aisles. Wild apples, for example, have from three to 100 times more antioxidants than Galas and Honeycrisps, and are five times more effective in killing cancer cells. Compared with spinach, one of our present-day "superfoods," wild dandelion leaves have eight times more antioxidant activity, two times more calcium, three more times vitamin A, and five times more vitamins K and E.

    How do we begin to recoup the losses of essential nutrients? By "eating on the wild side" – choosing present-day fruits and vegetables that come closest to the nutritional bounty of their wild ancestors. Robinson explains that many of these jewels of nutrition are hiding in plain sight in our supermarkets, farmers markets, and U-pick orchards. Eating on the Wild Side provides the world's most extensive list of these superlative varieties. Drawing on her five-year review of recently published studies, Robinson introduces simple, scientifically proven methods of storage and preparation that will preserve and even enhance their health benefits:

    • Squeezing fresh garlic in a garlic press and then setting it aside for 10 minutes before cooking it will increase your defenses against cancer and cardiovascular disease.
    • Baking potatoes, refrigerating them overnight, and then reheating them before serving will keep them from spiking your blood sugar.
    • Cooking most berries makes them more nutritious.
    • Shredding lettuce the day before you eat it will double its antioxidant activity.
    • Store watermelon on the kitchen counter for up to a week and it will develop more lycopene.
    • Eat broccoli the day you buy it to preserve its natural sugars and cancer-fighting compounds.

    The information in this surprising, important, and meticulously researched book will prove invaluable for omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans alike, and forever change the way we think about food.

    A Hachette Audio production.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateJun 4, 2013
    ISBN9781619694729
    Unavailable
    Eating on the Wild Side: The Missing Link to Optimum Health
    Author

    Jo Robinson

    Jo Robinson is a freelance writer specializing in books about personal and social change. She is the co-author of four other books, including Emotional Incest, and the best-selling Getting the Love You Want. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and son.

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    Reviews for Eating on the Wild Side

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this audiobook, but this is definitely a book that you want in physical copy as a reference. glad I listened through Scribd, so that I can still buy a hard copy to have at home.
    • 5/5
      Great information detailed enough but not boring.
      I enjoyed it
    • 4/5
      I really just skimmed the book to get a feel for it, but I think I've gathered enough to have a good opinion. Robinson gives natural histories and laboratory results of chemical analyses, likelihood of pesticide residues, and shopping tips to get the optimum in taste and food values.Several surprises. Imported fresh foods will likely have much less pesticide residues. Processed tomatoes represent riper fruit and thus are superior in nutrition and flavor compared to tomatoes sold fresh, because they are picked at vastly different points in ripeness. Sour cherry juice is an active reducer of muscle pain.I may re-visit the book in the winter when I have more reading time.
    • 5/5
      In Eating on the Wild Side, nutrition researcher Jo Robinson turns the produce aisle into a medicine cabinet. She has sorted through massive quantities of food studies to reveal the fruit and vegetable superstars and how to select, store and prepare them to maximize absorption of vitamins, minerals, fiber and antioxidants.

      Each fruit and vegetable is introduced with a description of its wild ancestor and a brief history of its domestication and resulting nutritional changes. Some cultivars have retained more of the wild nutrients than others. Robinson discusses the cultivars most available in U.S. supermarkets or farmer's markets, the relative merits of each, and when canned or frozen versions may serve as well as fresh.

      I learned, for example, that purple carrots are the richest in bionutrients, and for all carrots, nutrients are more available if the carrot is cooked rather than raw. The best practice is to steam the carrots whole and slice them after. She also recommends eating them with a little oil or fat.

      At the end of each chapter, Robinson provides a chart of recommended types and varieties of the fruit or vegetable for shoppers and home gardeners, as well as a good-better-best summary.

      This book is highly useful. I have it out from the library but intend to purchase a copy to keep as a reference.