Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet Book Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and In...( Section Two is the most scholarly p...),Health

Section Two is the most scholarly part of the book and, perhaps paradoxically, the most entertaining. In the lengthiest chapters in the 320-page volume, Dr. Siegal takes the reader on a fascinating, occasionally hilarious journey through centuries of improbable weight-loss diets and nutritional wisdom. An avid collector of diet books (his collection includes hundreds of volumes dating back to 1727), Dr. Siegal resurrects for the reader's pleasure a plethora of largely forgotten diets that, in their day, were widely accepted. Among the most popular of these was "Fletcherizing," the creation of "The Great Masticator," Horace Fletcher, who insisted that the secret to good health was to chew each mouthful of food 32 times (once for each tooth) and then spit it out. Fletcher's system gained a massive following during the early 20th century.

"Lately, the media has been obsessed about how this or that celebrity is on Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet. I wonder if people realize that every generation going back a couple of hundred years has had its share of diets with famous followers. Fletcher's diet had no shortage of eminent disciples including Mark Twain, John D. Rockefeller, and Upton Sinclair."

In Section Three, which is certain to be the most controversial, Dr. Siegal includes a series of myth-busting chapters in which he enthusiastically blasts the nutritional advice with which the public is constantly bombarded by well-meaning but misguided "experts" who, more often than not, have never treated an overweight person. He charges nutritionists, diet coaches, and even some of his fellow physicians with propagating impractical and theoretical advice that is too complicated or demanding for real people to follow.

"I take a practical approach to losing weight," Dr. Siegal explained. "The world is full of well-intentioned nutritional advice. While much of it is nonsense, some would benefit anyone who followed it. Bu
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