The Vegiterranean Diet: The New and Improved Mediterranean Eating Plan%E2%80%93With Deliciously Satisfying Vegan Recipes for Optimal Health

Hever (The Complete Idiot's Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition) makes an uneasy attempt to map her vegan eating plan onto the popular Mediterranean food pyramid. She makes the questionable assertion that the Mediterranean diet's essence "is (and always has been) a whole food, plant-based diet," within a context of slow eating, and that the roles of fish, olive oil (or any oil in significant amounts), and wine are minimal in terms of the health benefits offered to diet adherents. Otherwise, Hever offers solid, practical nutritional advice, with plentiful charts to demonstrate that, except for B12, all the nutrients you need can be provided by plants. Unusually, she suggests eating a wide variety of foods rather than carefully balancing the contents of each meal to optimize benefits or calorie consumption. Hever also includes a 60-page section for recipes, though these tend more toward the Middle Eastern than Italian, with the hummus, tabbouleh, and baba ganoush, and only a single pasta dish. Seasoned diet book readers will be relieved, though, that she avoids the Asian-style recipes common in other vegan collections, and only dips slightly into current trends like the ubiquitous kale chip. (Jan.)