FRANCINE PRINCE'S VITAMIN DIET

Hot on the heels of The I Love New York Diet, and using the same 1958 N.Y.C. Health Department Bureau of Nutrition's ""Prudent Diet"" as its basis, this guide throws in iffy advice on vitamin supplementation--as well as cookbook author Prince's recipes. The diet itself, as Myerson and Adler pointed out, is a sound, quick-result, positive reinforcement regimen--alternating strict (600 calorie) and ""binge"" (1800 calorie) weeks for rapid weight loss, with a lifetime maintenance diet and instructions for special circumstances (such as eating out). Prince puts this forth as personal gush (""I didn't just write this book--I lived it""), and pads it out with answers to the usual diet queries (""A friend told me if I eat slowly I'll lose weight faster. . .""), some brief encouragement on exercise, those questionable recommendations for vitamin supplements. In stepping away from the original diet and recommending C,A,D,E, and B complex supplements (nowadays, she maintains, foods don't have as many vitamins as they did in 1958), Prince is on shaky ground. So stick with The I Love New York Diet for a simpler presentation of the original ""Prudent Diet""--and stay away from Prince's expensive extras.