Rating: 4 stars
Russian-born microbiologist Nikolai Shevchuk takes his years of self-tested theories about food and delivers this knowledge in an easy to read format entitled, How To Become Smarter. Although I found the title misleading when considering the direction of the content, Shevchuk’s book is crammed full of all kinds of information you won’t find in other food resource books.
How To Become Smarter is Shevchuk’s comprehensive and in-depth study of foods, food additives, elimination diets and their affect on mental clarity and mood. While well documented and interesting, Shevchuk (responsibly) notes several times in the book that these experiments are self-tests and not clinically proven.
Shevchuk tackles subjects such as natural versus unnatural foods (ie. additives, flavor enhancers, coloring, etc), raw versus cooked foods and the chemical changes which occur as heat is added and the effects of these foods on mood, concentration and disorders such as Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD), testing, reading and writing abilities; and a wide range of emotions and social tendencies. Shevchuk offers elimination diet ideas for all types of intellectual, emotional and social goals while pointing out that these diets are a temporary fix and not permanent solutions. The book ends rather abruptly after his chapter on social intelligence; offering no wrap up or conclusion for the reader.
I did find the title,How To Become Smarter to be quite misleading; I was definitely not expecting a ‘food book’. Something like, Mood Food, Feed Your Mind or Anything and Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Food would better suit the text while appealing to a wider audience (such as those interested in alternative, natural and holistic health and wellness).
Nikolai Shevchuk writes an intelligent, organized book on the mental and physical effects of food on the human body. Meant to serve as informational versus clinically proven fact, How To Become Smarter is a great resource
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Pub. Date: February 2010
Publisher: CreateSpace
Format: Paperback, 414pp
ISBN-13: 9781449919597