The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet
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Save the Planet
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Ms Silverstones book is very sweet. She is a very nice woman, trying hard. However, everyday she nastily kills many many organisms just by existing. Something must die so she can live. This is Nature of which we are a part. Yes, it is a cruel system but there it is. Being old and having known quite a few vegans, i will tell you that they all got sick eventually from lack of protein and other meat(beef,fowl,fish,etc) provided nutrients. We are omnivores because we need the nutrients provided in all those foods:grains, veggies, fruit, meats,etc.in a balance which varies from person to person. Now could we raise our food animals with compassion instead of the horror we allow now? Of course, and i wish we would and hope we do. But before you adopt Ms Silverstones plan or any other vegan diet, really think about about Nature, how it operates and how humans are of it and dependent on it for EVERYTHING. If we disappear Nature will go on. If Nature disappears we will not. As with all else, we should manage everything we do more carefully, certainly more compassionately but we can not divorce ourselves from
Nature and how it works. As George Carlin once said, The earth will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, if we become too hard for the earth to handle. The earth and Nature are bigger, stronger, etc etc etc than we will ever be. Natures plan need be our plan, even if one believes it cruel.
We are omnivores who require food from all food groups for optimal health.
Rating: 1 / 5
I have mixed-feelings about this book. On one hand, it is presented nicely. The quality is great 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 good 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 think she is a little overboard in her ideas 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 good info and tasty recipes here.
Rating: 3 / 5
Man’s best friend is a beautiful and affectionate an ideal pet.
Cats are the same, we make up their names and our love for them is real.
Listen up, I gotta ask it, how can we be so cruel?
You say you care, that’s a lie.
My true 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 plan.
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 ask it.
Tradition is all that keeps him alive.
Listen up, I gotta ask it, how can we be so cruel?
You say you care, that’s a lie.
My true 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 plan.
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 think we’d like to change, but most of us are stuck,
that’s why cats and dogs have ALL THE LUCK.
Rating: 5 / 5
It’s a well written book about plant based diet. Some of the tips are really useful, while others too radical. Alicia talks with a lot of authority when she says people should stop eating dairy and other animal based products. She must understand that this is a big change for most. Unless there is extensive research done showing that dairy is truly bad for us, I doubt people will give it up. On a positive note, some of the recipes are really good. They seem delicious and worth trying.
Rating: 3 / 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 began 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 asked me what I was laughing at. When I began to read parts of this book to them, they also laughed and asked 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 good to eat because they are all poisoned.
I could address the entire section where she explains 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 definitely 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 good 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 damage 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 little* 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 wrong, I prefer to eat more vegetarian- mostly vegan, but realistically speaking, I think 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 damaged by the awful way they are raised for meats.
There is so much propaganda in this book, however, that it makes it even more difficult 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-interesting, they actually 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 difficult 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 good direction. I honestly don’t think 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 interesting in improving their lifestyle.
There are some interesting 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 interesting 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