This book was alright.

It was pretty extensive in outlining the many reasons that processed foods contribute to mental illness in general, poor development and performance in children, and is overall bad for us..The level of detail was good - not TOO technical, not too brief - but I felt that it lives in a weird middle ground - too technical for the average person, not technical enough for those (like me) who are already well read in this subject.

I didn’t get too much out of this book since most of this stuff (nutrient deficiencies, food additives, politics that inundate us with bad food options) is already very widely discussed in books and social media. I was hoping for more detail about specific studies, and though there was some, it fell short for me.

Several sections discussed actual surveys of children reporting their daily eating. This was interesting and I don’t usually see this in other books. We all know the “average” person eats terribly, but these surveys really spell that out.

It wasn’t a bad book by any means. In 2000/2007 when this was published it would probably have opened my eyes - IF I could have understood it without prior nutritional knowledge, which I am not sure I would have.

I can’t see myself recommending this to virgins of the subject and most of my audience will know most of this stuff already, so I have to give it a thumbs down.