THE COMPLETE BOOK OF NATURAL FOODS

Nonconforming nutrition advice from a former natural-foods retailer who advocates a diet he calls ""omnivorian."" To the extent that it is based on whole gains, consists of unprocessed fresh foods, is high in variety and low in refined sugar, this conforms with both current expert advice and ""alternative"" tradition. Other elements are familiar tenets of the health-food movement--oils should be cold-pressed, milk should not be pasteurized, vitamin supplements from natural materials are better than synthetic--though Rohe does express skepticism about offs labeled ""cold pressed"" (most are not). His major departure from the Dietary Goals is his insistence that cholesterol and saturated fat are okay (two eggs a day are permissible, whole milk is better than skimmed, and butter is a ""real food""), whereas all refined oil, polyunsaturated though it may be, is bad. In choosing a diet, says Rohe, you should first determine your metabolic profile, via a 40-question quiz included here and self-tests with megadoses of ascorbic acid or niacin. (""If your skin turns red within a half-hour, and you feel hot and itchy, you have a parasympathetic metabolism."") To suit your profile, you then adapt his ""New American Cuisine,"" actually a New-Age regimen which approaches money-saving, time-consuming self-sufficiency in three stages. For the committed third-stagers, there are recipes and directions for doing your own grinding, canning, freezing, baking, sprouting, and butchering--all covered more extensively in Rodale publications.