Joel Weber - The Mens Health Big Book of Food & Nutrition: Your completely delicious guide to eating well, looking great, and staying lean for life!

Chapter 1: Your Most Frequently Asked Food Questions, Answered
Why eating eggs won't give you high cholesterol, ordering rib eye won't escalate your risk of heart disease, and picking fish isn't always the healthiest choice.

Chapter 2: So You're Thinking About Going on a Diet...
What works, what doesn't, and why standard diet advice simply doesn't apply anymore.

Chapter 3: E-A-T-S, the Best Nutrition Plan Ever
The unbelievably simple strategy for eating all the foods you love and staying lean, fit, and healthy for life!

Chapter 4: Unlock the Power of Food
What you eat fuels your bodyand you can optimize your performance by fine-tuning your knowledge of carbs, fat, and protein.

Chapter 5: Stop Swallowing Food-Label Lies!
Your weight isn't entirely your faultand that's exactly what the folks engineering your meals don't want you to know. Find out how you can bite back.

Chapter 6: The Healthiest Foods in the World
A complete visual and nutrition guide to the very best foods on the planet.

Chapter 7: 100 of the Healthiest Meals on the Planet
Build a better omelet, salad, sandwich, pizza, pasta, burrito, soup, burgerand more!with these go-to recipes.

Chapter 8: What's in Your Food?
From essential vitamins and minerals to the most unpronounceable artificial additives, here's your A-to-Z glossary of the good, bad, and ugly stuff found in the foods you eat every day.

M any good people helped The Men's Health Big Book of Food & Nutrition arrive in your hands, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them. First among them are Rodale Inc. chairman and CEO Maria Rodale and the members of the Rodale family. Rodale is a truly unique publishing company and never ceases to inspire and enable people to improve their lives and the world around them. My parents were Organic Gardening subscribers many decades ago, and the wisdom from those pages nurtured the gardens that fed me during my childhood. Thank you. I also praise Men's Health senior vice president, editor-in-chief, and brand leader David Zinczenko. DZ's Midas touch is simply phenomenal, and it's been an honor to work with him. Ditto Stephen Perrine, vice president and editor-inchief of Men's Health Books, who has opened so many doors for me that I'll probably never be able to fully thank him. A sincere, heartfelt thanks for giving me so many wonderful opportunities.

The world-class brand that is Men's Health is a testimony to the editors, writers, copy editors, researchers, designers, photographers, illustrators, Web producers, doctors, personal trainers, advisors, nutritionists, and internspast and presentwho have worked tirelessly to create the world's best men's magazine. Thanks to all of them, and especially Matt Goulding, Adam Campbell, Paul Kita, Carolyn Kylstra, Laura Roberson, Clint Carter, and Adina Steinman for their contributions and guidance on the subject of nutrition.

The very fact that The Men's Health Big Book of Food & Nutrition made it into your hands is a testament to a handful of very special people: Mike Zimmerman, one of the hardest-working writers I know, who helped bring the book across the finish line when the going got tough; Senior Managing Editor Debbie McHugh, whose presence always made me feel a little bit better; Erin Williams, whose attention to details surpasses everyone's I know; nutrition number-crunchers Sara Cann, Andrew Del-Colle, and Sean Sabo; Lila Garnett, who guided the photo front; Chris Krogermeier, Brooke Myers, Liz Krenos, and Keith Biery at Rodale Books; and designers George Karabotsos, Mark Michaelson, and especially Courtney Eltringham, who created such a visually arresting book in such a short period of time. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Last but not least: my wife, Laurel. In many ways we first bonded over food, and I look forward to cooking many meals together and tasting a multitude of flavors for years to come.

Eat wisely, America.

Joel Weber

H ere in 21st-century America, where we've become experts at building bridges, erecting skyscrapers, and posting cat videos to YouTube, we've also become experts at producing food. In 1920, the average American farmer could harvest 20 bushels of corn an acre. Ninety years later, his greatgrandson can bag upward of 180 bushels on the same acre. Food is everywhere in America, and it's dirt cheap: 890 crunchy tacos, $1 cheeseburgers, and $5 footlongs. Take your pickit's all been engineered to taste pretty darn good.

The problem with all that easy food? Humans are hardwired to feed. We're animals, after all, so when it's feeding time, our instinct is to feast mindlessly until we can feast no more, just like pigs lining a trough, cows entering a pasture, or chickens wandering a coop. If there's still soup in the bowl, you'll slurp it. If there's still food on a plate, you'll eat it. If there's still Coke in your Big Gulp, you'll drink it. Your gut basically just steamrolls over your brain; it'll alert you once you've chewed through the takeout and hit Styrofoam or reached an inedible wrapper. Food researchers call this phenomenon mindless eating.

And mindless eating is exactly why so many of us carry too much weighteven as we're taking in too little nutrition.

Feeding has become so easy that since the Carter administration, Americans have added the equivalent of two extra meals to their days. We now consume 2,533 calories daily21 percent more than we did in 1977, according to a 2010 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. And the results are predictable: Obesity and diabetes rates have grown as much as 50 percent since 1960.

We've given ourselves the power to produce and consume food at will. But we haven't given ourselves the information we need to manage all that power. What we've done is the equivalent of giving a brand-new Harley to a 9-year-old who's been taught to ride a 10-speed. No instructions, no training, no speed limitsjust a lot of horsepower, set loose on a dangerous obstacle course. It's no wonder there are so many wrecks.

Well, here at last is the rule book, the authoritative guide to eating in the 21st centurythe book they should have given all of us the first time we picked up a fork and a knife. Armed with the information within, you'll become a much smarter eater, one capable of harnessing the power of food. You'll learn to eat what you want, but in a smarter, leaner, healthier way. You'll learn to enjoy more, better, and less-expensive food. And, to quote that hairy guy from the Men's Warehouse commercials, you're going to like the way you look.

This is not a diet book. Most diet plans force you to cut calories until you're practically starving, leading you to lose not just fat but valuable muscle as well. And muscle is crucial to protecting you from injury, helping you burn fat, and developing the lean, firm shape you desire. What's more, it also keeps your metabolismyour body's internal furnacefiring. Sacrifice muscle by restricting calories, and you're priming your body to gain weight back more easily than before. That's what happens in yo-yo dieting, and it's exactly why this book won't teach you to eat less. It will teach you to eat better.