Reviews with content warning for Cancer - Food Isn't Medicine: Challenge Nutrib*llocks & Escape the Diet Trap

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Food Isn't Medicine: Challenge Nutrib*llocks & Escape the Diet Trap by Joshua Wolrich

4 reviews

marcostorin's review against another edition

informative fast-paced

5.0

I know I'm buying several copies of this book to gift out to my friends and one for myself to re-read. This book is amazing and breaks down several myths about food and health, while being completely respectful to people from different backgrounds and belief systems. I think that if you or someone you know is interested in what changes you/they should do to their diets to be healthier, you should absolutely buy this book. It doesn't tell you "do this and you'll be healthy", it tells you "don't believe people who sell you miracle cures, health is complex and multidisciplinary, your relationship with food is the most important aspect of a personal diet, the BMI is full of shit". I stumbled upon it on accident and couldn't be happier about it.

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aislinn_mcd_harrison's review against another edition

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informative

3.0

This gets three stars for having its heart in the right place and I think a good chatty tone for a book that’s an intro to the subject, but I didn’t learn literally anything I didn’t already know so if you are already interested in the science of food and / or the impacts of diet culture, I’d say this is probably too basic for you. And that’s ok! Not every book is written for me

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kimberleyb's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

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loudgls89's review against another edition

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challenging informative

4.5

“Would you rather be healthy and fat or unhealthy and thin?”

Wolrich poses that the fact that you hesitate when you’re faced with that question is part of the problem which has lead to such huge problems of weight stigma in the western world. Fat is somehow seen as a problem not just a descriptive word, no matter the health. And thin is hailed as the goal no matter what.

In the first part of the book, Wolrich debunks some of the common arguments for this stigma, including an enlightening history of the BMI scale. This section really made me think about my relationship with my body and how I talk to myself. It’s so easy to internalise what society tells you without thinking about it and we don’t deserve to do that to ourselves.

The second part of the book then turns to debunking some common myths about food, what Wolrich calls ‘Nutribollocks’ – my new favourite word.

He talks in detail about how people praise this or that food and claim it can heal you from certain illnesses because of the nutrients they have in them. But as Wolrich says, we eat food not nutrition. Just because a food has a nutrient in it doesn’t mean it has those properties. Monster drinks have a chemical in that can help with PCOS, but that doesn’t mean monster is prescribed as a cure and you would never think it did, so why do we (as a society) fall for this with so called ‘healthy’ foods and miracle cures.

Food is not medicine.

I’ve been following Dr Wolrich on Instagram for a long while now, and he’s such a recommended follow, calling out posts for being misleading or just downright lying, and bringing a voice of reason into a field of shouting buffoons.

The audiobook that I listened to (thanks to NetGalley) was narrated by the author and I was so glad for this, he has such an easy voice to listen to, presenting everything clearly and in a really straightforward manner, which must have been difficult given the nature of the book and some of the more complex topics being discussed.

I was given this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review, but I’ll be heading straight out to buy a copy of this as I think it’s so important.

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