The Longevity Kitchen

Eating for Better Health with The Longevity Kitchen

Starting the new year off with healthier eating is much more appealing with The Longevity Kitchen: Satisfying, Big-Flavor Recipes Featuring the Top 16 Age-Busting Power Foods [120 Recipes for Vitality and Optimal Health] by Rebecca Katz and Mat Edelson, with a foreword by Dr. Andrew Weil. This cookbook not only helps you understand how to eat better, it also inspires you to want to eat better through its use of easy-to-find ingredients, flavorful dishes, and complete nutritional information for each recipe. I really wish all cookbooks included nutritional guides for their recipes to make it easier for home cooks to accommodate dietary needs like watching carb and sugar intake. The Longevity Kitchen makes it simple to find recipes that meet special dietary requirements in our family.

The first third of The Longevity Kitchen is a complete guide to understanding how nutrition and health go hand in hand. It is like a primer for life-long healthy cooking and eating, and I find it to be the most important part of the book. Chapters on “Food, Nutrition, and Your Body,” “The Healing Power of Food,” and “Making the Most of This Book” provide the basics to get started with the actual meals.

My only complaints about the book are that there are not many photographs, and I prefer cookbooks that show me pictures of the prepared foods. In addition, some of the recipes in this book require a long list of ingredients, so they are a bit more complicated to make. However, I feel that the benefits of this cookbook far outweigh these negatives. There are some really delicious choices, and unlike some “healthy” cookbooks that feature odd, hard-to-find ingredients, The Longevity Kitchen features meals that are appealing and family-friendly, such as Braised Chicken with Artichokes and Olives, Gluten-Free Blueberry Mini Muffins, and Herby Turkey Sliders. As the year goes on and we cook through this book, my family will be healthier and will discover some new flavors with our meals.

The publisher provided a review copy of The Longevity Kitchen.