cover image The Nashville Diet: The 3-Step Plan to Lose Weight, ""Nutraplenish"" Your Body, and Achieve Vibrant Health

The Nashville Diet: The 3-Step Plan to Lose Weight, ""Nutraplenish"" Your Body, and Achieve Vibrant Health

Marilyn Tucker. Lifeline Press (CA), $21.95 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-89526-118-2

Your paunch is not your fault, assures pharmacist and nutritional counselor Tucker, and neither is your moodiness or your exhaustion. Rather, these problems can be blamed on your diet, which, if it's anything like the typical American diet, leaves you simultaneously overfed and undernourished. According to Tucker, soil depletion, overprocessing, and""green harvesting"" (picking unripe fruits and vegetables) have robbed food of much of its nutrients, and the body needs""nutraceuticals,"" or plant-based vitamin supplements, to get the nourishment it requires. She recommends, for example, a polysaccharide called arabinoglactan for fiber and an immune system boost, as well as methylsulfonylmethane, which delivers""sulfur in the friendly form of sulfonyl, which your body recognizes as food."" Tucker also champions different ginsengs, liver tonics and""alpha-lipoic acid,"" which, she reports, studies have shown can make old rats""do the macarena."" But along with all the pill pushing, Tucker provides some gentle exercise suggestions (pushups, squats) and some sound nutritional advice (instead of sodas, try iced herb teas). Many people may balk at the pharmacy's worth of pills Tucker advocates (""If you like,"" she says,""you can think of food supplementing your nutrient intake"" via pills), but they might also be surprised by some of her facts: if spinach really does contain about 1/70th of the iron it used to, for example, her arguments for supplements get more convincing.