It doesn’t matter if you have considered yourself a fitness fanatic all of your life, or if you’ve just recently decided to eat healthier—one of the things that you can do to improve your nutritional game is to get some good books on the subject. Books that give you an idea of how the foods you eat every day affect your overall health. There are some great books on the subject, and we know because we’ve reviewed many of them. This includes the following books that we feel are the best nutrition books that can currently be read and are vital additions to any bookshelf.

Quick Summary of the Best Nutrition Books

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Editor’s Choice: Strength Training Nutrition 101

It seems like far too many books present the reader with whatever the latest version of a fad diet is and try to pass it off as sound nutritional advice. It’s no wonder so few people can stick to a diet or build the muscle mass that they’re trying to build. Fortunately, this book takes a little bit of a different tack on the subject. Instead of giving the reader a fad diet that will be outdated in the next year, this book instead tries to lay down basic principles of nutrition that the reader can use to customize their diet to their personal needs.

This book leaves out all of the misinformation and poor advice that can be found in other books and replaces it with the type of information a person needs to truly transform their body into something that better fits their ideal. Some of the chapters that can be found in this book include a chapter on losing fat and building muscles, the seven golden rules of clean eating, breaking from unhealthy eating habits, eliminating the “poisons” from your diet, making the right food choices, and the importance of gut health. It also includes chapters explaining calories, how much protein is needed in a diet, and both pre and post-workout nutrition. It even has a section on supplements.

With this book supplying the reader with so much nutritional information, some people might be wondering what gives the author the qualification to put this information forward. Well, this book is written by Marc Mclean, an online personal trainer, and nutrition coach from Scotland. He also owns Weight Training Is The Way and believes that overall nutrition is better than the typical bodybuilding nutritional information that’s usually offered to people. He believes that the weight lifters or strength trainer’s overall health is more important than the short-term gains they can get from the average bodybuilding diet.

What we liked about it
  • It’s a book that offers sound bodybuilding nutrition advice.
  • It presents sound diet info usable by anyone.

Also Recommended: How Not to Die

The complete title of this book is How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease, and it’s that title that initially caught our attention. After all, one of the motivating factors of just about every human being on this planet is to stay alive as long as humanly possible, so a book that helps towards that goal would be a welcome addition to anyone’s bookshelf. Although the title is what initially brought us to this book, it’s what can be found between the covers of this book that’s the most important and makes this book worthy for anyone to read.

Inside of this book, the reader will find information that will help them understand what foods they need to eat, as well as what foods they need to eliminate, to not die from certain diseases. For example, there are chapters on how to avoid heart disease, lung diseases, brain diseases, diabetes, liver diseases, prostate diseases, blood cancers, infections, Parkinson’s disease, digestive cancers, and kidney diseases. It also has a chapter on the 12 foods the authors recommend everyone eats every day, as well as an overview of some of the most nutritious nuts, fruits, beans, and berries.

This book is written by Michael Greger, MD, and Gene Stone, A former Peace Corps volunteer. Dr. Greger is a fellow and founding member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, a physician, and a New York Times bestselling author. He’s also internationally known for his speeches on a wide variety of food safety, nutritional, and public health issues. He has also testified before Congress and was an expert witness during Oprah Winfrey’s meat defamation trial. Gene Stone currently works for several community organizations and has written half a dozen books including Forks & Knives, Rescue Dogs, Animalkind, The Watch, and Eat For The Planet. These two authors have come together to create this book—one of the best books of general nutrition information that a person can read.

What we liked about it
  • It provides great diet advice that’s designed to help the reader avoid acquiring certain diseases.

Also Consider: Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself

This book is another one in the nutritional category that deals with how the reader can avoid certain diseases. In this book, there’s advice to the readers that tell them how to stave off certain diseases, how to feed their health, how to eat according to their genes so that they can control their genetic fate, how to activate the immune system’s command center, rethinking the kitchen, exceptional foods that should be a part of everyone’s diet, and a sample meal guide with recipes. It also features a worksheet that the reader can use to work up their personal meal plan and diet.

Also found in this book are chapters on angiogenesis, regeneration, DNA protection, and the human body’s microbiome. These chapters give the reader an explanation of how they can use their diet to starve the blood supply to certain cancers, get more nutrition from the foods they eat, and how their diet can be the pathway to a better immune response. And all of this information is presented in a way that’s easy to read—even if the reader doesn’t have any sort of medical background at all. All of this makes it a book that should be on anyone’s bookshelf.

Some of you who are reading this review might be wondering who wrote this massive 496-page book, so we’re going to give our readers this author’s mini-biography. This book is written by William W. Li, MD, a Harvard-trained medical doctor, and researcher. He is also the founder and current president of the Angiogenesis Foundation. His work has made a significant impact on over 5 dozen different diseases including obesity, blindness, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. He also has a prominent TED talk that’s entitled “Can We Eat To Starve Cancer?” This TED talk has over 11+ million views on the Internet to this day. He’s also a frequent contributor and guest to various TV and radio talk shows.

What we liked about it
  • This is a good book on using diet to curb various diseases.

A Guide To Nutrition & Nutrition Books

Now that we’ve covered some of the best nutrition books that are currently available, it’s time to turn our attention to the general subject of nutrition. Although we were simply going to create a guide that helped our readers find the best nutritional book for their needs, we felt that we had a golden opportunity to do a lot more than that—we had an opportunity to offer an important contribution to the subject.

What’s our important contribution to offer to our readers? It’s just some general advice that’s too broad for most books on the subject but is important nonetheless. After we offer this unsolicited advice to our readers, we then plan to list a few more nutrition books that we feel that some of our readers might be interested in reading. Having stated that fact so eloquently, let’s get started. 

[wc_fa icon=”book” margin_left=”” margin_right=”10″ class=””][/wc_fa]Evidence-Based Nutritional Facts

Okay, before we begin this section of our guide, let us begin by stating that we aren’t doctors, nurses or medical professionals of any kind. We’re just a bunch of folks who like books—and in this case, like nutritional books. So before any of our readers go on a diet or take any nutritional advice from us or anyone else, then they should consult with their doctor first. Now that we’ve stated that, below are some of the tips we’ve found on nutrition that are actually based on real scientific studies that have been done over the years. 

Reduce Calories From Sugar

The first piece of advice we’d like to offer is for our readers to cut down on the amount of sugar they’re putting into their bodies. And this not only means the granulated sugar that you place in your coffee or cereal but also avoiding drinks that have high amounts of sugar. This means avoiding not only soft drinks but also many fruit juices that are packed with unnecessary amounts of sugar. 

Feel Free To Drink Coffee

Coffee has gotten a bad rap over the past few decades, but fortunately, that has all changed with the release of a new study that states that a few cups of coffee a day is not only unlikely to be harmful to your health but might be good for you. What makes coffee an unhealthy drink is the creamers and sugars that many people add to it. So, if you enjoy black coffee, and aren’t sensitive to caffeine, then there is no reason you can have your cup of morning Joe. 

Add Salmon To Your Diet

The one thing that a person can do to improve their heart health is to add fish to their diet 3-times a week. Fatty fish such as salmon have large amounts of Omega-3 fatty acids that studies have shown reduce the risk of heart disease, depression, and even dementia. 

Eat Plenty Of Fruits & Vegetables

Another thing that a person can do to improve their health is to add plenty of vegetables and fruits to their diet. That’s because fruits and vegetables are not only loaded to the gills with fiber, but also contain an assortment of vitamins, minerals, trace elements, and probiotics that have a significantly positive effect on a person’s health. 

Add Nuts To Your Diet

Nuts are also a good snack for a person to add to their daily diet. Although nuts are high in fat, many of them have healthy fats such as Omega-3s. Nuts are also packed with fiber, vitamins, and minerals, too. Just be sure not to eat too many of them because they’re calorie-dense and eating too many of them can cause weight gain. 

Avoid Junk & Fast Food

A fast-food burger or a handful of chips every once in a while isn’t too big of a deal, but eating it regularly can lead to weight gain and various diseases such as heart disease. It’s best to minimize junk and fast foods as much as possible, so they don’t cause health issues for you down the road. 

[wc_fa icon=”book” margin_left=”” margin_right=”10″ class=””][/wc_fa]Some Additional Nutrition Books To Consider:

Okay, let’s take note of where we so far. We’ve already reviewed the best books on nutrition, and we’ve covered some very basic nutritional tips, so we think it’s time to point our readers towards some other books that we’ve liked. Although the following books weren’t good enough to make our top three books on the subject of nutrition, we do feel that some of the books might benefit some of our readers. 

  • Keto Your Way By Julie Smith
  • Fast. Feast. Repeat By Gin Stephens
  • Dairy-Free Keto Cooking By Kyndra Holley
  • Paleo Principles By Sarah Ballantyne
  • Nourish By Heidi Schauster