Wednesday, November 30, 2011

The 5 Minute Snack Diet by Benjamin Swartzman

I'm just not sure where to begin with this book. I was excited to get to review a diet book and this one sounded like a great one. However, pages into this work red flags began to pop up for me. This is one scary book and I hope people are not so caught up that they don't notice. The first thing that caught my eye was the author mentioned studies but didn't cite a single one. For me, that's important. It says several things - one the author is honest enough to share the data's source, two the studies are real and three the author has enough education to know how to write a real paper (even grade school kids learn to cite their information).
I started wondering what the author had to hide and I wanted to know who this man was that wrote the book. The book does not come with an author biography. I checked his website - none there, not even so much as a mention of anything personal about the author. I went to Smashwords where I got the book - nothing there either. This is where I begin to have problems with self published books. There is a reason why it's difficult to get a nonfiction book published - you have to have some expertise. When it comes to dieting, you really need someone who has some medical or nutritional background. I'm not saying that the author has to be a registered dietitian but have working knowledge of health.
With that aside, this is a terrible book and had it not been for the fact that I feel like I need to warn the world away from this book I would have totally skipped reviewing it. It's poorly written. The information is confusing and contridictory. The description of the book claims that the reader will learn to cook their meals in five minutes but the book lacks standard recipes. There is some cooking information but it's poorly designed and a small part of the book. The language is off putting. I don't care why someone diets but having the author tell me every few pages that this diet will make me "hot" makes me want to buy him a thesaurus. There is probably some good information in this book but I can't tell you where. It's not worth anyone's time to find out.
If you want a good diet book - there are tons out there or better yet join a group that will support you while you work towards becoming more healthy. Maybe it's my age but I found the idea of being "hot" to be less important than trying to be healthy.

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