Eat Your Way to a Healthy Heart: Features Chocolate & 99 Other Foods That Help Your Heart

Applegate (Power Foods), a nutrition and fitness consultant and Sunkist Orange spokesperson, explains the risks of and reasons for heart-related illnesses, then espouses her ""Simple Six Eating Plan,"" which relies on ""100 Miracle Foods."" She lists six food groups (soy, grains, fruit, vegetables, meats and dairy, fats), a balance of which, she maintains, will promote healthy eating--and a healthy heart. Unfortunately, in trying to make her book widely accessible, Applegate seems to have hit the supermarket tabloid market with dumbed-down scientific explanations, including an analogy of LDL (""bad-guy"") and HDL (""good-guy"") cholesterols to ""buses that drive through arteries""; oxidation ""makes the bus driver mad."" Still, for those who wade through such excesses, Applegate offers sensible dietary advice; most useful are her tips on eating out, including how to order a relatively healthy fast-food meal. The larger second half of the book details the ""Miracle Foods,"" from abalone to zucchini, and offers such easy-to-prepare recipes as Tomatoes Stuffed with Tofu, Fiery Pork and Bean Chili and Caribbean Chicken. (May)