Food: What the Heck Should I Eat? The No-nonsense Guide to Achieving Optimal Weight and Lifelong Health

Hyman (Eat Fat, Get Thin), a bestselling health author and practitioner of the “functional medicine” approach, revisits the topic of his earlier books: why a lack of understanding about good nutrition, coupled with misleading, conflicting media hype, leads to poor food choices and makes people sick and out of shape. Thus, Hyman recycles his diet plan once again. It remains a sensible, anti-inflammatory, whole-food/“real food” approach. Now called the Pegan Diet, it’s intended to combine the best of the paleo plan with a vegan regimen. Pegan is a silly, paradoxical misnomer: no diet can be simultaneously paleo (meat, fats, and few vegetables/fruit) and vegan (with no animal products whatsoever). However, the diet’s recommendations are basically sound: fresh, locally sourced, preferably organic food; nothing refined or processed; and a focus on not raising blood sugar. Adding to the impression that Hyman’s book itself is less than fresh, he spends some time recapping the “10-Day Detox” from his earlier book The Blood Sugar Solution as a lead-in to the Pegan plan. The result is nothing new, but it should prove as popular as Hyman’s earlier efforts with health enthusiasts who believe in the promises of functional medicine. (Feb.)