Eat Up, Clean Up By Manjari Chandra | Book Review

Books are our best friends.

We, all ThinkerViews Team Members believe in this line.

So, we keep exploring all kinds of books (well, with a few exceptions). And, we are fortunate that we get a chance to read books from across genres. And, books about Health are no exception. In fact, all of them teach different aspects to the readers. Reading a worthy book is like making an investment where a better return is guaranteed.

Here are our views about some such books we’ve got a chance to read recently. Of course, they all are written with different perspectives.

• Fight With Fat: Battling India’s Obesity Crisis by Dr. Kamal Mahawar | Book Review
• Secret of Healthy Hair by La Fonceur | Book Review
• Second Go By Radhika Sachdev | Book Review

Recently we got a chance to explore one more book in this segment – Eat Up, Clean Up: Your Personal Journey To A Healthy Life By Manjari Chandra. Manjari is a certified nutritionist and works as a wellness coach too. We are thankful to FingerPrint! Publishing house for providing us the review copy. The views expressed here are personal, unbiased and uninfluenced by all means.

Book Cover:

Being a gateway to the virtual world explored within, the cover page plays a very important role in making the first impression of a book. It thus often found one of the most important (if not the sole) reason behind many purchase/reading decisions.

As you can see, the cover page of – Eat Up, Clean Up – reflects freshness. Few chosen fruits and vegetables in a white background makes it very attractive. What I like about the cover page is, the designer hadn’t overdone the things. Leaving a lot of blank space (and that too in white) not only reflects “Clean Up” segment of the title, but also intensifies the impact of the natural food ingredients embedded.

Red and Green colors are used to a large extent and that adds to the positives of the cover page.

I found it attractive and attention-grabbing.

The Book And My Thoughts For The Same:

A book with a fantastic cover page may feel hollow if it doesn’t weave the substance in the pages.

We usually talk about any book in two distinguished segments dedicated to the bird’s eye view of the storyline and our views and reviews for the same. The nature of this book is quite different, so here we are merging both these segments.

I will try to avoid as many spoilers as possible, but, please read with consent, as some of them are inevitable.

Eat Up, Clean Up – starts with a few testimonials about the author and her work. It follows by the index, foreword and main content that is spread over in the below mentioned 7 chapters.

• Nutrition: From a Need to a Trade
• Your Friends’ Perspective: Lose Those Extra Pounds, My Friend!
• Mothers, Daughters, and PCOS
• Salt-y Consequences: Hypertension and Hyper-cholesterol
• Eat, Beat, and Survive
• Spice Up Your Life The Ayurveda Way
• Rady to diet: Unpleasant Surprises of Packaged Food

As you can see from the chapter titles, this book is intended to provide knowledge about vairous important health related elements, starting with Nutrition. Usually, experts try to weave the business elements directly/indirectly when talking about Nutrition. In fact, some products are sold at way high price by just adding some jargons and marketing them as healthy ones.

From the content, it is visible that the author’s goal here is giving honest and correct information about such stuff. In fact, she says:

Nutrition doesn’t have to mean fancy, fitness-freaky food; all it means is a diet that consists of fresh and natural ingredients that fulfil your body’s dietary needs.

She advocates sticking to the natural stuff available to us and even talks about the healthy way of living practiced in the traditional Indian household for centuries. She refers to the way the “growing up” is changed. Earlier we used to have very active childhood and we were involved in household chores. This has been reduced significantly. These days some essentials tasks such as cleaning up, cooking etc are being considered a little “low-level” work. And, kids started being couch-potatoes hooked more in indoor activities(!).

Obesity and thus diabetes, heart problems, cancer and other terminal illnesses get a “welcome” due to these life-style changes.

The author says:

While fitness may have gained more screen footage in recent times, we’ve lost the path that brings us good health.

And she refers to the ages old idiom, that should be the “mantra” of a healthy life-style.

Thy food be thy medicine.

she doesn’t shy away in writing segments focused on some important stuff that many authors may consider untouchables. For example:

Profit Over Health: The Pharma Industry

The Nutrition Gap: Medication Is Not The Solution

She talks about the harsh reality of modern-day society.

Doctors have been trained and incentivized to work for sick-care rather than health-care, and although a proper diet is known to bring heart-wellness, doctors focus more on the drugs rather than discussing the nutrition change that the patient can make.

As you can see, she remains true to her message and yet chooses her words wisely. It is not easy to keep such a balance. She also mentions that drug is not always the right answer. We need to focus on the basics of lifestyle also. She says:

One of the first drugs to come into common usage, aspirin, is still one of the most researched medicines in the world, with an estimated 700 to 1,000 clinical trials conducted each year.

In all the chapters you will find a combination of

• Charts
• Tables
• You need to know this
• Goals

I will recommend to not to miss these segments. They often convey the details in a better manner and summarazies important parts of the discussion. The author also talks about PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) in addition to other lifestyle decease. (I refer to it as a lifestyle disease because hormonal imbalance has often genetic root, but can be controlled with proper lifestyle. I may not be right technically, but my intention is to convey a simple message)

The book explains some terms in simple words. For example:

Sattvic means pure substance.

The book talks about Ayurveda and its substances.

The book also talks about the common reasons people come with, when advised by an expert about taking care of his/her health. For example, the following line is found uttered by most of the ladies whose domestic life is full of actions and responsibilities.

The household chores do not let me plan for a workout. What else can I do?

Some guidelines are simple and we have heard them an umpteenth number of times. The choice of words makes a difference here.

Drink lots of water: Do not confuse thirst with hunger.

It is simple but “confusing thirst with hunger” is a fact and is important to understand.

Here is one more example:

Don’t eat from a box, tin, canned Tetra Pack or a bottle.

The book has some life-lessons to remember and more importantly act on them.

The quotes above must have given you a fair idea about the book and its content, in terms of quality, linguistics and other aspects. And, I think it is sufficient to make a judgement on whether to read it or not.

If I am asked to choose a single quote from the book, I will settle down for the following:

Thinking is a waste of time. Make a plan and do your best to follow it. Remember, nobody is perfect.

It is better to read this book by keeping a pen and a notepad/notebook with you. Keep noting down the points and analyse them with cases/incidents you have seen in your surroundings/relatives/friends/family. The use cases, the author mentioned in the book are also one such attempt. So, it is a kind of book where you need to do your homework and implement it, to get the best of it. If you are looking for a book just for passing time, this is not the one.

Summary:

All in all, a book worth reading. Go for it is you like to read about the stuff that may not be entertaining but important.

ThinkerViews Rating:

Around 7.5 out of 10.

Quick Purchase Links:

• Buy – Eat Up, Clean Up: Your Personal Journey To A Healthy Life By Manjari Chandra – Hardcover – Amazon India
• Buy – Eat Up, Clean Up: Your Personal Journey To A Healthy Life By Manjari Chandra – Paperback – Amazon US

Over To You:

If you already have read the book do share your remarks and thoughts via comments below. Does this review help you in making your decision to buy or read the book? Do not forget to share this article with your friends over various social networks via Twitter, Facebook and others. And yes, you may like to subscribe to our RSS feeds and follow us on various Social networks to get latest updates for the site to land right in your mail box.