THE AMERICAN HEALTH FOOD BOOK: Nutrition News for the 90s

From the editors of American Health magazine comes this combination cookbook and food guide, arranged by 27 categories of foods (wheat; the ""new"" grains; soy foods; fish; meat; fruit, etc.), each of which gets a general report on its nutritional or medicinal qualities, then general cooking advice and a sampling of health-conscious recipes--over 250 in all. The division of foods into categories defies logic--along with the broad headings listed above, there are entire separate sections devoted, for example, to mushrooms and ginger--but no harm is done. The nutrition reports are balanced and sensible on such hot topics as meat and coffee, and they generally highlight without exaggeration findings of anticancer and antiheart-disease properties of a whole range of foods. For what it's worth, there's also an interesting list of medicinal values of a variety of herbal teas. The recipes, from various sources (including Marian Burros and the Four Seasons Spa menu), are generally decent and uncomplicated if unexciting--in the aggregate they smack of contrived, service-magazine origins. The book ends with a table of ""profiles,"" one-paragraph descriptions plus nutrient profiles taken from USDA tables, on the foods already covered. Uninspired, but sound and handy.