Carbs can indeed be confusing! We’ve written about it ourselves before, but there’s more to be said than fits in a single article, and sometimes a book is in order. This one is such a book.

The authors (an MD and a nutritionist) explain the ins and outs of carbohydrates of various kinds, insulin responses, and what that means for the body. They also then look at the partly-similar, partly-different processes that occur with the metabolism of fats of various kinds, and what that means for the body, too.

Ultimately they advocate for a simple and clear low-carb approach broadly consistent with keto diet macro principles, without getting too overly focused on “is this fruit/vegetable ok?” minutiae. This has the benefit of putting it well aside from the paleo diet, for example (which focuses more on pseudo-historical foods than it does on macros), and also makes it a lot easier on a practical level.

The style is very textbook-like, which makes for an easy read with plenty of information that should stick easily in most reader’s minds, rather than details getting lost in wall-of-text formatting. So, we approve of this.

There is not, by the way, a recipes section. It’s “here’s the information, now go forth and enjoy” and leaves us all to find/make our own recipes, rather than trying to guess our culinary preferences.

Bottom line: if you’d like an easy-to-read primer on understanding how carbs work, what it means for you, and what to do about it, then this is a fine book.

Click here to check out End Your Carb Confusion, and end your carb confusion!

Eat beans & greens, take walks, have a purpose; you can probably list off the top of your head some of the “advices from Blue Zones”, so what makes this book stand out?

This is perhaps one of the most thoughtful investigations; the author (a National Geographic researcher) toured and researched all the Blue Zones, took many many notes (we get details), and asked a lot of questions that others skipped.

For example, a lot of books about the Blue Zones mention the importance of community—but they don’t go into much detail of what that looks like… And they certainly don’t tend to explain what we should do about it.

And that’s because community is often viewed as environmental in a way that we can’t control. If we want to take supplements, eat a certain way, exercise, etc, we can do all those things alone if we want. But if we want community? We’re reliant on other people—and that’s a taboo in the US, and US-influenced places.

So, one way this book excels is in describing how exactly people foster community in the Blue Zones (hint: the big picture—the form of the community—is different in each place, but the individual actions taken are similar), with particular attention to the roles actively taken on by the community elders.

In a similar vein, “reduce stress” is good, but what mindsets and mechanisms do they use that are still reproducible if we are not, for example, Okinawan farmers? Again, Buettner delivers in spades.

Bottom line: this is the Blue Zones book that digs deeper than others, and makes the advices much more applicable no matter where we live.

Click here to check out The Blue Zones, and build these 9 things into your life!