Healthy cookbooks: how to choose a good recipe book

What makes a good healthy cookbook?

Cooking at home more often can help you eat better. A review of 34 studies on cooking programmes for adults found that most reported improvements in eating habits and greater confidence in cooking [1]. Many studies were small and had no comparison group, so the finding should be interpreted cautiously. A good cookbook can do the same in your own kitchen if it meets four criteria.

Qualified authorship. Check who wrote it and what qualifications they have. A chef can teach you to cook wonderfully. On its own, that does not guarantee that the overall mix of dishes makes sense for your health.

Clear serving sizes. Each recipe should say how many people it serves and give the quantities. Without serving sizes, you cannot tell whether a stew is one meal or two. And a balanced dish stops being balanced if you serve yourself twice as much.

Vegetables, pulses and fruit at the heart of it. The Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) recommends at least three servings of vegetables and two or three servings of fruit a day [2]. For pulses, it recommends at least four servings a week [2]. A useful cookbook has plenty of recipes with these ingredients.

Techniques you can use for anything. The best books explain how to cook pulses, sauté vegetables so they do not turn soft, or dress a dish without drowning it in sauce. One technique works for a hundred dishes; one recipe works for one.

Can cookbooks help you lose weight?

They can help you eat better, which is no small thing, but no book makes you lose weight on its own. When a title promises a number of kilos, a deadline or a named method, read it with the same caution as diets that promise rapid weight loss.

A book’s rule matters less than whether you can follow it. A review of 121 trials compared 14 popular weight-loss approaches. Almost all led to modest weight loss at six months, and much of the effect had faded by twelve months [3]. Losing fat and keeping it off depends on habits you can sustain. That is what we explain in our weight-loss diet guide.

If you want to organise the week, a cookbook gives you the dishes and a menu gives you the order. You can find an example, with its shopping list, in how to prepare a weight-loss menu.

Our review of “Las recetas que adelgazan” by Marta Aranzadi

We reviewed it in 2013, when the publisher sent us a copy. Marta Aranzadi is a doctor specialising in nutrition. She wrote the book to help the people she sees eat and cook better.

The title promises more than the book argues. In the introduction, the author recalls Professor Grande Covián’s idea that the only food that makes you lose weight is the food left on your plate. This undercuts the promise on the cover.

Where we disagree is the method. The book proposes a dissociated diet, separating foods according to four rules:

• Do not combine two types of carbohydrate in the same meal
• Do not combine carbohydrates with protein, except for one meal a week eaten away from home.
• Eat carbohydrates only at lunchtime on three non-consecutive days
• Always have vegetables with protein for dinner

We do not recommend this way of eating, either for weight loss or as a balanced diet. Separating foods has no demonstrated advantage over a complete meal and makes life unnecessarily complicated .

The recipes, on the other hand, are appetising and original: marinated cauliflower, salmon and broccoli pie, Italian red salad, stir-fried tofu with vegetables and nori seaweed, stewed leeks with potatoes, or vegetarian meatballs.

The fruit desserts are inventive too, such as watermelon and melon balls with lime and mint, a mango jelly crown, or apple and pear compote. They are easy, different recipes for the whole family. The method, however, is best set aside.

Our review of “Veganomicon” by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Romero

We reviewed it when it came out in Spanish, in September 2013; the original English edition was published in 2007. It is a classic vegan cookbook, designed for everyday use, without a single photograph. That has its advantages: you do not have to compare your dish with a retouched image.

It runs to about 350 pages and has more than 250 well-organised recipes. The first part is a short cooking course, useful whether you are vegan or not. It explains basic ingredients, kitchen equipment, vocabulary and techniques for cooking grains, pulses and vegetables.

The recipes include helpful markers. They say whether a dish is quick to make, whether the ingredients are available in any supermarket, whether it contains soy or gluten, and whether it is light. Many are ready in under 45 minutes, and some in under 15. It also includes menus for special occasions. Measurements are American, in cups and ounces, but a conversion table is provided.

If you have coeliac disease or a soy allergy, those markers can help you choose. Even so, check the label of every ingredient you buy.

Can a vegan cookbook help if you are not vegan?

Very much so. That is one of its best uses. Most people have a short repertoire of dishes with vegetables, pulses and nuts. They find it hard to imagine a meal without eggs, dairy, meat or fish. A vegan cookbook solves exactly that problem and gives you ideas for eating pulses more often during the week [2].

If you also want to eat vegan, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the US association of dietitians, considers vegetarian diets, including vegan diets, healthy and nutritionally adequate when properly planned [4]. And planning is exactly what a book does not do. It gives you dishes, but does not distribute nutrients across your week. On a vegan diet, it is sensible to plan with a professional how to meet some nutrient needs .

What mistakes do we notice in consultations when people use cookbooks?

A cookbook is more useful when you treat it as a tool. These are the mistakes we see most often in consultations, and how to address them.

• Trying to cook the whole book. Choose two or three recipes a week; keep the ones you make again.
• Buying unusual ingredients for a single recipe. Choose recipes that share ingredients so they are less likely to go off in the fridge.
• Serving yourself the portion in the photo. Adjust the amount to your hunger and your day.
• Giving up on a recipe that does not work the first time. Make a note of what you change; by the third try, it will be your own.