Meals That Heal: 100+ Everyday Anti-Inflammatory Recipes in 30 Minutes or Less: A Cookbook

Love this book! Tons of recipes, lots of informative and educational information. Great tool for learning how to eat better, cook better for every aspect, inflammation, heart health, brain health. Beautiful pictures, well organized and put together.

What a great surprise! This book is so valuable. The introduction is written so clearly and explains all about food and inflammation in the body. I love the way the book is laid out so clearly with beautiful photographs all throughout. There are so many delicious looking recipes. I'm so excited to dive in! I'm very happy to have come across this book. There were a lot of books to sift through, but the best thing about this one is the author clearly believes in what she is presenting and has spent a lot of work and research putting it together. Being able to see the photos of the recipes is so motivating and especially because there are so many to choose from. I'm so glad I found this book! The book arrived packaged with a piece of cardboard protecting a soft cover. I'm so thankful for that because the last cookbook I ordered a few days ago from another seller arrived bent. When I buy a new book. I love that it looks new in every way! I'm so happy with this seller and this great find.

For the most part, this is an amazing book. Full of great info presented in a beautiful way, with engaging graphics, charts, and photos. The recipes I've tried have been tasty and relatively easy, and made with common and easy to find ingredients. The one thing I found in this book that had me weirded out was her inclusion of pork in the category of white meat. Red meat and white meat are misnomers, really. They should be called mammal meat and non-mammal meat. This is because mammal meats (and a few other foods) contain a type of sugar molecule that humans do not have, and it likely promotes inflammation and cancer progression. This is the most up to date and accepted reasoning for why red meat is correlated with inflammatory conditions like heart disease, autoimmune disorders, and diabetes and with certain cancers. In other words, it isn't the color of the meat that is important - it's what is in the meat that makes "red meat" unhealthy when eaten too frequently. And pork has that same sugar, just like the other mammalian meats we commonly eat. The reason pork is often confused as "white meat" in the same class as chicken and turkey is that in the 80s, the pork industry decided to make people believe that. There was a huge marketing campaign with the line, "pork - the other white meat," and it made sense to people because pork is lighter in color than beef or lamb. I'm honestly disappointed and confused as to why these pretty well-known facts in the world of nutrition and medicine are glaringly missed in this otherwise outstanding book by this clearly competent author. It's so egregious, in my opinion, that it warrants removing a star. I really hope to see future publications from this author, and I hope they incorporate the latest science on red meat.

Easy to use and adaptable to the food recipes that we are looking for.

Update on 8/16/2023: I've tried a few more recipes from this book. They are all good and very easy to make. The polenta veggie bowl is something I did not think I would like but ended up loving (I've already made this three times). The citrus-soy chicken thighs were delicious, too. The seared scallops with roasted tomatoes were so flavorful with only a few ingredients. I can keep going on and on about all other recipes. I feel really good physically and emotionally. I'm so glad I bought this book! I will try more recipes and may update this review, but the one recipe I made was the chicken, quinoa bowl with berries. I had been on the keto diet for a while and started to get orthorexic, feeling scared of eating anything with carbs and sugar (including grains and fruits). I had lost a lot of weight but I didn't want to live in fear, so I wanted something to help me eat in a more balanced manner, and feel better about myself and food. I have been interested in the anti-inflammatory diet for some time. I don't think I've had a lot of inflammation now but I know prevention is important and a lot of the diseases are caused by inflammation. After all, the reason why I really wanted to try the keto diet in the first place was to eat healthy... Not only the recipes in this book are easy with everyday ingredients (and look absolutely delicious), the author provides education on inflammation and how to keep it away through diets. Yes, she still recommends we avoid 'bad' carbs, but she clearly explains which 'good' cards to take every day or in moderation, which will help me a lot with this annoying orthorexic mind. The grain bowl was so delicious, and guilt-free. With any food, portion control is important. These recipes seem to get it. It has been almost 12 hours since I had the grain bowl but I still feel satiated, energized, focused, and in a good mood.

I am cooking my way through this book and am About 2/3 of the way through. Trying to switch to anti-inflammatory/Mediterranean diet and this book has been such a help. Lots of helpful information and great recipes. Since cooking entirely from this book for a few weeks, I feel great and food tastes so much better. My favorite recipes are chicken fried quinoa, zucchini frittata with goat cheese, Thai salmon brown rice bowls, and spinach-quinoa bowls with chicken and berries. My book fell apart at the binding after a couple weeks of use, but I think I will spiral bind it since I will be using this book so much. One thing I would love to see in this book is serving suggestions or sides to complement the meals on the same page as the recipe (there are some in the back but have to flip back and hard to find). Also a list of all the recipes for each section would be nice. (I made my own and inserted in the front).

This book popped up on sale before Christmas. I already own a few anti-inflammatory eating cook books, but because of the great reviews, and the discounted price, I decided to purchase it. I'm always looking to expand my list of recipes, so I figured, "Why not?" Overall, I'm pretty disappointed in it. First, it's set up to provide information on anti-inflammatory diets and give shopping tips rather than just focusing on recipes. That would be fine (and is helpful for someone new to this way of eating) but it's done in an odd way. I included a photo of a page as an example. There's a half page section about bone broth and whether or not it has actual benefits vs. being a hyped up trend...but that section is included on a recipe that doesn't contain bone broth as one of the ingredients. That's a weird place to put that information. One would think it might be included in say, a soup recipe. The book is filled with this strange sort of placement for information, so it makes it annoying to return to for references. Second, the recipes themselves, while delicious (so far) do not have a ton of variety. The section on lunch...EVERY LAST ONE is a salad. Don't get me wrong, salad is fantastic, definitely trying to eat more of them, but I don't want to have salad for lunch *every* day. (Winter especially, is hard to have salad every day in a northern climate. We've got limited fresh produce options because everything is covered in snow, so at times salad can feel impossible to eat, regardless of my preference for variety.) Other sections of the book have a lot of overlap too. There are a few different recipes for tostadas, and the majority of the seafood section focuses on shrimp (which is highly problematic when you're allergic. Half the book is out!) The repetitiveness would probably be less noticeable if there were more recipes overall. Each section has roughly a dozen, so when you're flipping through looking for ideas while meal planning, it's really obvious that there isn't much variety being offered. Many of the recipes will not work well for families either. I know my kids are gonna flat-out refuse the majority of them, but even if they didn't, the portion sizes may or may not be enough for our family of 4. I've got to read the recipes carefully to know if I need to double ingredients before I go grocery shopping. It'll say it feeds 4, but when you look at the amounts of ingredients, it doesn't line up with what 2 adults and 2 pre-teens would be satisfied with. I think one of the recipes had a quarter pound of meat for 4 people?? And that was the main substance of the dish. Finally, I'm disappointed with the book quality itself. The signatures weren't aligned properly with the spine, and the glue is really weak. I bought this early December, put it under the tree as a Christmas gift, and have opened it up to flip through for recipes 3-4 times (if that many). Today is January 9th, and I can already see pages starting to pull away at the bottom of the book, though they're still tight at the top. You can see it in my photo. It's only a matter of time before pages will be falling out. In the sea of great reviews on this book, perhaps I'm an anomaly, but I much prefer my "Fix it with Food" books from Michael Symon as well as "The Anti-Inflammatory Diet & Action Plans" book by Dorothy Calimeris. I feel like those are much more user friendly than this title. I'll still keep this on my shelf, but it's not one I would recommend as a must-have.

My issue with most anti-inflammatory cookbooks is that they are full of unrealistic, unsustainable, and unappetizing recipes. But Meals That Heal is the cookbook I've been waiting for! Not only are the recipes simple to make AND tasty, they're practical and easy to fit into your lifestyle. Carolyn does a beautiful job giving clear cut guidelines on how to adhere to eating an anti-inflammatory diet and is one of the first authors in this field that is grounded in common sense (vs just spouting trendy words and ideas). She empowers you to take your health into your own hands and makes you feel like it's doable (because it is, based off of how she lays all the info out for you). This cookbook is THE only one to buy if you need to work on your gut health. Hands down my favorite!

It was a huge disappointment to discover the majority of the book are meat recipes... Immediate return.

Fabulous book. Highly recommended. Easy to read and follow. Delicious meals. I'm wearing mine out. X

I think this is the most intuitive and well put together cookbook I’ve ever seen, recipes are great but most impressive was the layout helping pick and choose and create meal combinations/ salads and dressings all while fitting under anti inflammatory diet. Just a great book to have 100% recommend

Great book, very informative, great recipies.

No lo he leído a detalle solo lo revise y esta muy completo aparentemente, vienen recetas interesantes, cuando las haga y vea los resultados voy a saber mas, por lo pronto bien, apero sin experimentarlo