Book Reviews

To Life! Select Recipes and Nutritional Guidance for a Healthy Heart. Mended Hearts Chapter 188, compilers Review by Jeanne Weissman, Viviana Lombrozo, Louise Felitti

To Life! What a wonderful title for a cookbook designed to guide patients with coronary artery disease through the uncertainties of low-fat cuisine. The goal is depicted clearly on the book's attractive, colorful cover.

Inside, help abounds. The recipes are favorites gathered by Mended Hearts Chapter 188 at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland from individuals and from famous Bay Area restaurants. Famous chef Graham Kerr has contributed a section on basic cooking techniques. Each recipe contains a nutritional analysis of calories, fat, cholesterol, carbohydrates, protein, and sodium.

The dishes described here are not "hospital food." The book contains a remarkable range of recipesreminiscent of the famous, ethnically diverse restaurants of San Francisco but all simple and designed for relatively inexperienced cooks. If you've never eaten cactus (nopalitos), here's a new experience. If you think potato-leek soup is out because of the cream, here's a nice solution. And if you like desserts, the book presents a baker's dozen. William Castelli, MD, former Medical Director of the Framingham Heart Study, once commented that most Americans eat only ten menus. To Life is a cure for dull eating.

Arthur Klatsky, MD, retired Senior Cardiologist from TPMG in Oakland, is one of the people to whom this book is dedicated. He has contributed a most interesting chapter on the role of alcohol in heart disease. And a retired cardiologist equally valued by our Health Plan members in Oakland, Rudolph Oehm, MD, authored the chapter on nutrition. Both cardiologists have obviously extended themselves beyond the usual concept of what cardiologists do.

It would be helpful if future editions of the book mentioned specific brand names. For instance, only one truly low-sodium soy sauce (65 mg/tbsp vs 1000 mg/tbsp) is available in the United States: Bonsai Soy Sauce (800-826-0688). New food items might also be listed: Land O'Lakes nonfat Half-and-Half cream substitute; Trader Joe's Raspberry-Jalapeno Sauce, which makes an excellent fat-free, low sodium appetizer on crackers and a delicious sauce on fish; and Eden brand Kombu, a product used to reduce the gaseous effect of eating beans. Creation of a Web site might help the Mended Hearts Chapter to keep this kind of useful information current.

This book can readily be recommended for providing guidance and motivation for better eating to busy people who want to keep their families healthy or who want to undo the damage created by high-fat diets. The book can be purchased directly from Mended Hearts Chapter 188, c/o the Health Education Center, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, 280 West MacArthur Boulevard, Oakland, CA 94611-5693; or from Morton Schaffran, 700 Hancock Way, El Cerrito, CA 94530, 510/525-5773.

179 p. $15. Oakland, California: Kaiser [Permanente], 1999. Library of Congress 99-63539

About the reviewers: One reviewer is married to someone who recently had coronary artery surgery; another reviewer is a vegetarian artist; and another is a serious cook.