Cholesterol Lowering Cookbooks: Superfoods and Dairy Free for a Low Cholesterol Diet

This book, Cholesterol Lowering Cookbooks: Superfoods and Dairy Free for a Low Cholesterol Diet, was written by Kelly Marcil. The book begins with a table of contents, which does not contain page numbers on which one can locate the beginning of each chapter; however, on the Kindle version of the book, each section and specific recipe is written in a hyperlink fashion. This is done to enable the user to simply click the portion they are interested in prior to being automatically directed to the first page of that section or recipe. I consider the hyperlinks to be a nice, easy method to flip to a certain area in this book. Following a short introduction for the overall diet plan, there is a second introduction pertaining to the first section of the book, superfoods. This section is separated in terms of recipes related to a specific superfood. The recipes for this diet plan are written to include the following information: short introduction (for the broad superfood), title, serving size, ingredient list, specific ingredient measurements, and instructions. There are 7 salmon recipes, 7 spinach recipes, 6 quinoa recipes, 7 bean and lentil recipes, 7 apple recipes, 10 yogurt recipes, 8 sweet potato recipes, 5 kiwi recipes, 5 blueberry recipes, 2 dark chocolate recipes, 1 oat recipe, and 4 pumpkin recipes. The section ends with a short conclusion prior to the start of the second section of the book, revolving around a dairy free diet. This section starts with a short introduction, information as to the benefits of the diet plan, how to cope with transitioning to a dairy free diet plan, and a sample 5 day diet plan. The recipes contain the same information as mentioned in the superfoods section of the book. In the dairy free diet plan recipe selection, there are 14 breakfast recipes, 29 lunch/dinner recipes, and 10 snack/dessert recipes. The dairy free section ends with a short conclusion.I enjoyed the lack of filler information in this book, the lack of grammatical or spelling errors, and the taste of the recipes I have tried. I normally remove a star from my overall rating due to awkward formatting of a book, such as indentation errors, lack of recipes starting on new pages, inability to easily distinguish a recipe title from its ingredients/directions, etcetera. This always detracts from my reading experience. However, the only formatting issues that caught my eye was the lack of beginning the first recipe on a new page from the chapter title and the lack of a similar format transitioning from the first section of the book to the second section. In addition, I would have preferred the table of contents to be formatted for easier differentiation of the sections from the specific recipes (for example: a specific salmon recipe is not indented or italicized to display an overt difference from the “salmon” section head). I will admit that a significant amount of the recipes are recipes I have not made or thought to make prior to the reading of this book. The recipes do not, for the most part, seem overly difficult/time consuming to make and do not require an overwhelming amount of specialty ingredients. A small downside to this book, for me, is that there is no nutritional information and no pictures. In addition, I would have liked to see more superfoods recipes per section (only one oat recipe means to me it should have just been excluded and had another superfood with more recipes added in its place). Overall, this book contains fairly easy recipes with easy to follow directions and a lack of filler information. I would recommend this book to those interested in tasty cholesterol lowering recipes.

I'm trying to work on lowering my cholesterol, per my doctor, and she suggested to make some changes to my diet. If I can control my levels with my diet, then I can stay off medication for the time being. I've been looking for recipes and tips to help with keep my cholesterol levels low. I'm increasing my activity/exercise levels as well.I was drawn to this book because the first part of the title mentions "Cholesterol Lowering." However, only after I started the book, did I realize that the book also mentioned "superfoods" and "dairy free." I'm not looking to go dairy free, so had I caught that, I probably would not have downloaded the book. But since I had received it, I figured I would take a look and see what information might help me in my quest to lower my cholesterol.The author goes into a lot of detail as to why people would need to go dairy free - but making the statement that most commonly, it's done because someone is lactose intolerant. Then she mentions the use of superfoods. I kind of got lost at this point - dairy free, superfoods, lowering cholesterol - seems like too many topics for one book.The next section goes over superfoods - with the explanation that they are "a food that is rich in essential nutrients, phytochemicals and other beneficial compounds. The gist of it is that these are the foods that are the most healthy choices. She goes on to explain that these foods include dark leafy greens, blueberries, kiwis, oats, sweet potatoes and dark chocolate.The next sections explain specific superfoods and gives several recipes for each. I did find this format helpful. And the recipes varied - not just a simple marinade for salmon, but a more complex recipe like "Tunisian Style Baked Salmon." I was thinking that maybe the dairy free part of the book was that most of the superfood recipes did not have dairy listed in the ingredients. But then I got to the section on yogurt. So I realized there must still be addtional information about dairy free.About halfway through the book, the dairy free section starts. I do feel like this section starts out very misleading. It starts by explaining that going dairy free is a way to get junk foods out of your diet. This is simply not true. Plenty of dairy free foods can be considered junk and vice versa. To make blanket statements that just cutting out dairy from your diet will help you lose weight is dangerous. No studies or references are made to back up any of the data.While I felt that some of the recipes looked easy or interesting, some just either had complex ingredients like guar gum, or just didn't sound like they would taste the same in the adaptable dairy free format. There's a lasagna recipe, but nothing to replace the ricotta texture. So it might be better to consider it a lasagna alternative, not a substitution for the traditional recipe.In conclusion, this book would have been better as two shorter books. One for superfoods and one for dairy free. There's no mention of lowering cholesterol, so don't bother. I did find the superfoods section helpful, but more so because it offered new recipes for foods that I already use in my diet - like the Baked Quinoa Breakfast Cereal. But the dairy free section is somewhat wasted on me - many of them would not be considered "healthy" so I don't see them helping me with my goal of lowering my cholesterol.Please note - I received this book for free in exchange for providing a review of my honest and unbiased opinion.

This book has a lot of information, and some good recipes, which I am looking forward to trying out .It does seem to try to cover everything; giving information on special diets, with which the connection to lowered cholesterol may be a little tenuous. However it is a very good all-round reference book for healthy eating.I received this as a kindle book for free in return for an honest review. I personally feel this is the kind of book I would prefer as a hard back book, as that makes browsing easier, especially while cooking.