Why Women Need Chocolate: Eat What You Crave to Look and Feel Great - Hardcover

Debra Waterhouse is a nationally known and respected nutrition expert, a registered dietitian, and a sought-after seminar speaker. She is the author of five successful "Outsmarting" books. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Waterhouse, who has previously written on fat and females in Outsmarting the Female Fat Cell (1993), now delves into the issue of women's food cravings. According to Waterhouse, a nutritionist and dietitian, cravings are natural to women and, in fact, are what get those endomorphins (pleasurable brain chemicals) moving in the right direction. So when a premenstrual woman craves chocolate, it's really the brain's way of saying, "Give me something that's gonna make me feel better." (Chocolate, with its high percentage of fat and sugar, is eminently suitable for the job.) But society dictates that women should be thin, not feeding their faces with bonbons, so women have got a major conflict going. Waterhouse's solution, which she manages to draw out through many, many pages, is to eat a little bit of what you crave, satisfy your brain, stabilize your moods, and subvert society. That seems simple enough, but it's not a whole book, so in addition readers get the five-week, five-point Optimal Nutrition Plan. Publicity may drive patron interest for this one; thumbs up to the premise, thumbs down to the belabored plan. Ilene Cooper