I picked up The Gorgeously Green Diet, because I enjoyed Sophie Uliano’s first book, Gorgeously Green: 8 Simple Steps to an Earth-friendly Life. I was not trying to lose weight, but I was looking for ways to improve my diet.
Uliano explains that her book is primarily about “rediscovering the joys of eating real, whole foods so you can become the healthiest Green girl imaginable”. Her mission is to “create outrageously delicious food with the freshest ingredients possible at the lowest price” and “… to create meals that are speedy and fun”. She offers three eating plans in different shades of green – light green, bright green and deep green. Each eating plan covers menus for two weeks including a shopping list. Uliano encourages you to find food choices as eco-friendly as possible, but is not advocating buying everything organic. However, there is a chapter on organic food in the book that lists the top ten foods to buy organic.
In my opinion, Uliano promotes a healthy nutritious diet. She advocates “healthy (=sexy) as opposed to thin and unattractive”. She teaches you to value quality over quantity and to have a little bit of anything you crave. To get leaner (and save money), she recommends cutting your portion size down; eating half or 2/3 of what you would normally eat. To have a more sustainable diet, Uliano promotes buying minimally processed and packaged food and if possible, buying locally produced and organic food.
The Gorgeously Green Diet is witty and inspiring. It also includes chapters on exercising as well as gardening and composting. It concludes with a resources section, recommended reading and index. One of my favorite parts of the book is the list of top gorgeous snacks. Sophie Uliano helped me to replace chips and candy with prunes, figs, walnuts, dark chocolate, etc. I also learnt some new delicious recipes, made my own stock and rediscovered whole milk yogurt. I learnt to eat less, but better quality food. After all, we are what we eat. Highly recommended.