Choice Menus: An Easy Guide with Recipes for Healthy Everyday Meal Planning

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.

Diabetics and calorie-counters are the target market for this unusual
work. The structure of the book is unique: 104 menus on split pages
(flip cards), followed by a section of recipes, diabetic “choice”
equivalents, nutritional analysis, and helpful tips for food purchasing,
preparation, and serving.

The menus are directed to the prevention and management of
diabetes-mellitus (type 2, non-insulin dependent), and are in keeping
with the recommendations of the Canadian Diabetic Association (CDA) and
Canada’s Food Guide. This translates into a high-fibre, low-fat,
limited-sugar diet.

The way in which the flip-card menus are incorporated into the binding
makes it possible to create a different meal plan each day for a month
by simply flipping cards. This mix-and-match approach allows meals to be
planned for specific daily calorie totals without the bother of
calculating the calorie count for individual food items.

Color photos and good page design make the book visually attractive,
and the recipes/menu choices are for foods most Canadians would find
appealing everyday fare. Managing a diabetic diet has always been
complex; Choice Menus does a lot to make the task easier.