Fit to Cook: Why "Waist" Time in the Kitchen

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

This book demonstrates that sensible is not only boring, it’s also
confusing and insulting.

The authors want to make healthy eating and exercising easy by doing
all the planning for us. All we have to do is follow orders, and be
grateful for the enormous effort they’ve extended to help us hopeless
folk. We simply need to eat what we’re told to eat, shop only for the
items on the cut-out list, exercise on cue. To help us the authors even
tell us when to shop (Saturday before lunch) and how to unpack the
groceries when we get home from the supermarket.

In the recipes, nutrition dominates taste and the dictatorial attitude
has a field day. Apparently generalized doom awaits those who don’t
measure the chives, prepare tomorrow’s lunch before washing
tonight’s dinner dishes, or who forget to warm up before stretching.

A surplus of nutritional information, rigid weekly meal plans, and
preachy sidebars add to the oppressive tone. The recipes are organized
by the week in which they’re to be eaten, rather than by type of dish,
making retrieval an experience in frustration. A scattering of
ineffectual color photos make the food look mediocre and do little to
inspire imitation. That running shoes are on the lunch table in one of
the photos gives you a good idea of the authors’ priorities and sense
of presentation. Bumph on exercising shows up in the midst of the
recipes, giving the killing blow to any remaining desire to eat.
Recommended only for fanatics.