Great Healthy Food for the Menopause
by Elaine Myers
(Carroll & Brown ISBN 1-903258-32-4)
review by Ysanne Spevack
Half of us are women. When reaching the menopause, we can greatly reduce symptoms such as hot flushes, fatigue or mood swings simply by eating appropriate foods. In Japan, there was no word or phrase for hot flushes until recent years, because the traditional soya-rich diet of these islands protects the inhabitants from them. It is only since Western foods like hamburgers have started to infiltrate Japan that women there have begun to experience difficult menopausal symptoms.
So how can busy Western women gain such immediate and strong benefits from their diets without adopting a lifelong macrobiotic diet? Great Healthy Food for the Menopause is an excellent place to get advice and ideas. The concise introduction outlines the menopausal symptoms that can be addressed with diet, and lists a brief table of symptoms with foods or herbs that can help.
The rest of the book gives some great easy recipes for everyday meals broken down into Soups and Starters; Light Lunches; Main Courses; Side Orders; and Sweet Treats. There is also a recipe list in the back with nutritional analysis of each dish. There’s nothing too esoteric here — this is everyday food, selected by experts to make life easier. Pea and Broccoli Soup, Lentils and Red Pepper Pasta, Cider Chicken with Tarragon and Caramelised Figs are all simple dishes from an elegant but unfussy daily home menu. And as stated in the introduction, there’s nothing here that couldn’t be served to the whole family with equally healthy and happy results.
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