by Julie Feldman
2003

If you think healthy meals take a lot of time and preparation - far too much to fit into your busy schedule - then prepare to be proven wrong. The No Diet Diet is loaded with recipes that take 5 minutes or less to prepare. The whole key is in the ingredients - you'll find lots of whole, unrefined foods. Some recipes consist of take-out chicken and vegetables, dressed up to give them more personality. There's a whole section of sauces that can be used as marinades, or drizzled over veggies and salads. And these quick meals are low carb and low glycemic.

This is not a diet book per se, as there's no meal plan and the recipes don't contain caloric, carb or fat values. But if prepared and eaten in the proper proportions, these recipes will help keep you (or get you) slim and healthy. To aid you in achieving this, author Julie Feldman devotes the first part of the book to explaining how to get started - the ingredients and utensils you should have on hand in your kitchen (there aren't all that many), how to put meals together, and why it's necessary to opt for low glycemic carbs - whole grains - instead of filling up with refined bread and sugar, white rice and the like.

The best aspects of this book? It's loaded with cooking shortcuts, and the lunch and dinner recipes have a code key to tell you the dish's taste, texture, macronutrients and more. It's also spiral bound, so it's easy to lay flat. The downside? The recipes have an awful lot of brand name ingredients, but these can easily be replaced with a different brand that may be more readily available in your own health food store. After all, the whole point here is to make cooking an easy, no hassle process, so why stress over finding the exact brand mentioned? With this book, even people who dislike cooking will discover that 5 minutes in the kitchen is time well spent.

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