Nina Planck. Bloomsbury, $17 paper (262p) ISBN 978-1-59691-394-3
An expert on whole, unprocessed, local, traditionally produced food, Planck here follows up her Real Food: What to Eat and Why with this book specifically for women and children. Planck is an activist and founder of the urban Greenmarket movement in New York and London, and practices what she preaches in this memoir cum guidebook. Like Michael Pollan, she is an advocate of “old food,” the ample and diverse menu untouched by modern science, and urges readers to embrace and fully enjoy nature’s bounty. Far from deprivation, the nutritional plans here for fertility, pregnancy, nursing and young kids propose a wide variety of whole grains, seasonal vegetables and fruits, and raw milk and organic animal fats necessary for healthy pregnancies and fetal and childhood development instead of skim milk, “carbage”(junk carbohydrates) and trans-fats. There are only two real rules: first, learn to recognize industrial food, new to the human diet, and don’t bring it home. Second: buy the best real food you can afford. It tastes better and it’s good for you. Plank gives more comprehensive pre-pregnancy and pregnancy diets than those in What to Expect, and her lively, genuine and personal approach makes it easy to absorb a lot essential information.
