Product Description An ancient cuisine reveals secrets that will change the way you eat, feel, and look.
Lorraine Clissold always loved food, but like many Western women her enjoyment was tinged with guilt. She lived in constant fear of piling on the pounds. Then she discovered a nation of people who positively stuffed themselves and never worried about counting calories or getting fat.
During Clissold's ten year journey into the 3,000 year old Chinese food culture, she discovers the 15 secrets that make it possible to enjoy delicious meals three times a day, and keep slim and feel fitter. Why the Chinese Don't Count Calories brings a commonsense approach to eating—one which has worked for billions of people over thousands of years—into American kitchens for the first time.
Customer Reviews: Great book for learning how to eat healthy without starving yourselfNovember 22, 2008 N. Ellison(DC) 5 out of 5 found this review helpful
The book is very interesting and shows how to eat healthy without starving yourself. It explains the Chinese culture of achieving balance in everything, including choosing the type of food to eat -- which makes for fewer bloated, upset stomachs after eating. Overall, it is a very insightful book with lots of lessons on how to eat healthy, and be full after a meal, without the bloating or indigestion.
Great Historical Perspective On Chinese Food Culture, But There's Too Much High-Carb Vegetarian TalkOctober 26, 2009 Livin' La Vida Low-Carb Man(Spartanburg, SC) 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Counting calories is widely considered in the United States as a means for managing your weight and health. But try telling that to the Chinese people who find it incredibly strange to obsess over every calorie you put in your mouth. Instead, they put the focus on the enjoyment of the food itself, eating to satiety, and experimenting with flavors and spices to tantalize your culinary desires. This is the point of Lorraine Clissold's Why the Chinese Don't Count Calories.
Clissold takes her love for recipes and her personal experience living in China for 15 years to educate people about the secrets to the Chinese diet. She even had her own television cooking show to educate the Chinese people about their historic traditions in the art of food preparation. Many of these concepts are shared within the pages of this book.
The 15 "secrets" from China were certainly eye-opening in places, including stop counting calories, think of vegetables as dishes, fill up on staple foods like noodles, rice, and bread, eat until you are full, consume liquid foods, bring yin and yang to the kitchen, balance your flavors, become a master of your ingredients, choose "live" over "dead" or processed foods, respect the body's climate, use food to keep you fit, make an occasion of meals, drink green and herbal teas, engage in restorative exercise, and avoid extremes in all areas of life. While much of this is cutting-edge information for people who hope to do something productive for their health, some of it can be misleading for people who aren't designed to eat like someone who lives in China. That's one of my biggest concerns about the message of this book.
While I enjoyed being educated about Chinese food culture, I could never eat the way Clissold describes in her book. I know that carbohydrates like bread, rice, and pasta will balloon up my weight, raise my blood sugar and insulin, and lead me down a path of morbid obesity and disease. And while I can respect a vegetarian-styled diet for someone who chooses to eat that way, I believe it is unhealthy to omit the tremendous health benefits of consuming meats like grass-fed beef, free-range chickens, lamb, bison, and wild game. One glance at the "Further Reading" in the back of the book shows a deference for vegetarianism with T. Colin Campbell's The China Study cited.
It would have been great if Clissold had openly discussed why the Chinese people tend to be thin eating a very high-carb diet. As a connoisseur of this culture and the food consumed, it would have been a perfect opportunity to make the case for why carbohydrates do not seem to produce any negative effects on the weight and health of the people of China. Research studies combined with anecdotal stories would have certainly hammered home the overall message of the book, but it was nowhere to be found. That's truly unfortunate.
Overall, I enjoyed reading this book because it gives a pretty decent historical perspective of the 3,000-year old Chinese food culture. Clissold does not get caught up in the subtle nuances of the diet debate and simply shares from her firsthand knowledge of her experience studying and living in China. Why the Chinese Don't Count Calories is worth checking out for anyone wanting to find a comprehensive look at Chinese culinary cuisine.
Not for the critically-enabledDecember 17, 2008 Matthew Henricksen 8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I picked this book up at an airport from the 'self-help' section on an impulse. I could do with some weight reduction, have lived in China, and love Chinese food.
The book starts off very beautifully, with lots of discussion about how the Chinese view their field, how to balance different dishes (the most important section to the aspiring cook in me), and some simple recipes to try out, such as congee and gong bao chicken cubes.
Lots of talk about ying and yang didn't set off any warning bells, since the book is entitled to document all kinds of aspects of Chinese food culture. But by about page 150, the book sets off on an unwelcome tangent being tied up with lots of dogma about traditional chinese medicine and qi being so superior to western medicine.
Sure, I am biased, but I find statements like "Walnuts boost qi, nourish the hair and complexion and are believed to help the brain as they look like one. Traditional Chinese medicine worked this out long before the West discovered esseential fatty acids and Omega-3" (page 169-170) too much too take. In isolation it may be ok, but there are pages and pages of this pre-germ theory bilge.
It's irrelevant as advice to me, since I work for a Singaporean organisation that refuses to honour medical certificates by Traditional Chinese medical practioners, but I find the author's lack of critical assessment depreciates the other advice that she offers. At least the recipes look tasty.
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