Book Review: Eating the Greek Way

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:22:44 GMT

I'd been wanting a good Greek cookbook, so when I was offered this book for review I jumped at the chance to take a look at it. I wish I could recommend this book and maybe it's appropriate for some folks but in my mind it's just another one of those fad things where everyone has some angle as to why eating some particular ethnic cuisine is healthier than anything else.

This book, Eating the Greek Way: More Than 100 Fresh and Delicious Recipes from Some of the Healthiest People in the World, is basically this Greek doctor's version of a diet. The first 50 pages are all about eating healthy and provide background for his particular theories.

Then the book is divided into the normal categories for chapters. So far, so good. But, since the doctor's theories revolve around the glycemic load you'll find that the recipes only contain fructose - no sucrose, glucose, honey or maltose (beer).

And it's not even natural fructose, but fructose powder is used in place of sugar in recipes - with no alternative given. And since fructose powder is sweeter than sugar you can't just do a 1 to 1 conversion, you'd need to experiment to turn these into non-fructose versions. But the thing that I found disturbing was that fructose was added to recipes I wouldn't add sugar in the first place - tomato soup, salad dressing, moussaka, baked eggplants - if we are so concerned about glycemic load, wouldn't an option be to reduce sugar all together?

So while the recipes are appetizing I don't buy into the concept and while they can be converted, I'm sure, I found the book to be disappointing.

Culinary Fool: Books

Book Review: Eating the Greek Way