Provides a holistic and comprehensive overview of nutrition, including Eastern and Western perspectives. Can be read cover-to-cover or used as a reference. Includes a history of dietary patterns in America, advice on how to plan a balanced diet, and an insightful account of the effects of food and eating habits on the mind and emotions.

I am reading this book for a Holistic Nutrition course that I am doing through home study. It is a very good book that goes into the historical perspective on the field of nutrition as well as nutritional facts. Excellent!

I feel the book has to much technical stuff bunch in together.. More just facts on different areas. Doesn't tell you a specific diet plan. I didn't find user friendly

I first read this book in the mid 80s. I've owned at least 10 copies, I've given them all away. Now I need more. Sheds the light of simple truth on nutrition and diet, dispels fads, confusion and ignorance. Everyone who eats ought to read this book.

I bought this book when it was first published, many years ago. Since then, I have probably bought 5 copies. It still remains one of the best sources for info and basic guide to what nutrition is all about. All of the writers books are good, but this is my favorite one. It really holds up to the test of time. Easy to understand.

This is the best book on the subject that I have ever seen, and I've seen a lot. In a universe of high quality books, this one stands out as exceptional.

The author is both brilliant and original.

He goes beyond telling us that it is important and beneficial to eat our organic fruits and veggies. Most books stop right there, when you really analyze them.

Why do some people need 100 times more Vitamin C than others do? What is the connection between our minds and our bodies? Where another book may tell us that the path to health is through diet, nutrition, vitamins, etc., Ballentine tells us that the most important element is your own mind. You have to deal with your issues.

In this regard, he agrees with Gary Null, who always says that the single most important factor in health is happiness, and that all the vitamins and organics in the world don't match the importance of living a happy life.

I just got to the part in this book where Ballentine explains that our chemistry and physics teachers were wrong when they told us that the elements in the periodic table can't be transformed into each other without a nuclear reactor operating on them. The enzymes in our bodies, and in the bodies of chickens, fish, etc., are quite capable of transforming one element into another, gently, without that nuclear explosion. Potassium, sodium, iron, copper, calcium, are being switched around inside the bodies of living creatures. Nitrogen is sometimes transformed into carbon monoxide. Amazing. Chickens are capable of making their own calcium, out of other elements, in order to make egg shells.

It's nice to find such an original thinker in this field. And you get the impression that he definitely knows what he's talking about. The fact that this book was written decades ago means nothing. We still haven't caught up to him. He's still ahead of us. He was a century ahead of us 20 years ago.