The Longevity Kitchen

If you are interested in a healthy diet to help optimize your wellness and promote longevity, you are going to want to run out and pick up a copy of The Longevity Kitchen: Satisfying Big-Flavor Recipes Featuring the Top 16 Age-Busting Power Foods by Rebecca Katz.

The book features everything you would expect to find in a cookbook: delicious, well-written, and easy to follow recipes grouped in intuitive sections (“Life-Enhancing Soups and Broths,” “Vital Vegetables,” “Protein-Building Foods,” etc.), beautiful, full-page color photographs of scrumptious dishes, nutritional information for each recipe, notes and tips to help ensure your success, and an extensive resource directory to help those of us in less urban areas acquire some ingredients and supplies that may not be available in our area.

What is unique to Kates Longevity Kitchen is the first three chapters of the book. There Katz walks readers through a fascinating tour of the body’s various systems such as bones & muscles; the immune system; the gut, liver, and kidneys; the respiratory system; etc. She explains how each system is designed to work and the fuel needed to help it do so. In chapter two, Katz discusses how the foods we eat can play either a harmful or healing role in our bodies. She provides readers with an extensive list of nutritious, healing foods, detailing the benefits of each. I found this both fascinating and enlightening! Finally, Katz offers readers some words of wisdom in making the most of the book. I found her list of questions regarding discovering your culinary GPS thought-provoking and a bit unnerving in places which highlighted some of my poor habits!

The Longevity Kitchen will be making a permanent home on my counter as it becomes my go-to standard in cooking for my family in the days ahead. I’d like to thank Blogging For Books for the review copy I received in exchange for this review.

From the Publisher . . .

A collection of 125 delicious whole-foods recipes showcasing 16 antioxidant-rich power foods, developed by wellness authority Rebecca Katz to combat and prevent chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, inflammation, arthritis, and other conditions that plague American adults, enabling readers to live longer, healthier lives.


In this collection of more than 100 recipes that combine smart nutrition and superb flavor, culinary nutrition pioneer Rebecca Katz highlights the top sixteen foods proven to fight the most common chronic conditions. Katz draws on the latest scientific research to explain how super foods such as asparagus, basil, coffee, dark chocolate, kale, olive oil, sweet potatoes, and wild salmon can build immunity, lower cholesterol, enhance memory, strengthen the heart, and reduce your chances of developing diabetes and other diseases.

This practical, flavor-packed guide presents the most effective—and delicious—ways to use food to improve the performance of every system in the body. Katz explains the health advantages of each main ingredient, and includes menu plans to address specific symptoms and detailed nutritional information for each recipe.

Easy-to-find ingredients are incorporated into a powerful arsenal of tantalizing recipes, including:
• Roasted Asparagus Salad with Arugula and Hazelnuts
• Costa Rican Black Bean Soup with Sweet Potato
• Black Cod with Miso-Ginger Glaze
• Herby Turkey Sliders
• Thyme Onion Muffins
• Yogurt Berry Brûlée with Almond Brittle

Based on the most up-to-date nutritional research, The Longevity Kitchen helps you feed your family well and live a long and vibrant life.

About the Author . . .

As the senior chef-in-residence and nutritional educator at one of the country’s leading cancer wellness centers, REBECCA KATZ, MS, is the culinary link bringing together physicians and patients with a common goal: eating well to maximize cancer treatments, minimize side effects, and improve outcomes. She is the founder of the Inner Cook, a Bay Area culinary practice that specializes in meeting the specific nutritional and appetite needs of cancer patients, and a senior chef at Commonweal Cancer Help Program in Marin County, California. Katz has been a guest chef and lecturer at top academic medical centers throughout the country, including the annual Food As Medicine conference.

Feed Your Brain!

Unless we have obvious dietary-related health concerns (i.e. diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure), we may not stop to consider that what goes into our mouths affects ALL the systems in our body, including our brains. That’s why I was excited to have the opportunity to review Rebecca Katz and Mat Edelson’s collaborative effort, The Healthy Mind Cookbook: Big Flavor Recipes to Enhance Brain Function, Mood, Memory, and Mental Clarity.

The book includes an introduction, three chapters on the science behind the project and the ingredients’ connection to brain function/health followed by seven chapters devoted to recipes in categories from soup to desserts. In the opening chapter, Katz and Edelson write, “Food and mood, food and memory, food and learning–all are being investigated, and there’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that what we eat either primarily affects our brain or has secondary effects (for example, whatever you eat that’s heart healthy also may lower the risk of stroke, which is definitely a brain condition.)”

Chapter two begins, “The culinary pharmacy, open 24/7, is the place where you can dive in headfirst to the latest science behind nearly every ingredient in the book. The information here has been drawn from hundreds of peer-reviewed studies conducted with humans, animals, and in the lab, looking at the connections between foods and the brain.” I loved this chapter because the authors list out each of the healthful ingredients used in the cookbook along with the way that ingredient affects the brain. I had no idea that even herbs and spices would impact mood and functioning of your brain!

The recipe chapters are divided as follows: soups; vegetables; meat and seafood; anytime foods; dollops; tonics and elixirs; and sweet bites. Accompanying each chapter’s introduction, and scattered throughout the pages just like a well-seasoned dish, are beautifully photographed foods and dishes. The recipes themselves are well laid out. Although I have many years of kitchen experience under my belt (and I watch a lot of food-related programming), I believe that even a novice could follow these recipes for a successful outcome in their own kitchen. While the recipes contain the usual list of ingredients, preparation steps and detailed per serving nutritional information, the addition which I really appreciated is the storage tip at the end of many of the recipes. (I have, on occasion tossed left-overs because I was unsure if they would store or reheat well. No more waste with these recipes!)

I’ve only had the cookbook for a few days, but I can tell you that the Toasty Spiced Pumpkin Seeds and the Coconut Curry Cashews have already been a hit at my house. Both are quick and easy and make healthy snacks which are easy to bag up into serving sized snack bags for taking to work (or school). My daughter and I have a date to make the Meyer Lemon and Caper Hummus in the week ahead. I am finding it difficult to draw up my shopping list because so many of the recipes are calling out to be made!

Even if improving your health or the health of your family is not your top priority, or you are already doing a bang-up job of cooking healthy foods, you will want to get a copy of The Healthy Mind Cookbook. This book promises to be my first go-to cookbook when preparing meals for my family!

Thank you to bloggingforbooks.org for providing me with the review copy in exchange for this review.

From the Publisher . . .

A collection of more than 120 recipes formulated to optimize brain health, boost memory, improve mood, sharpen the central nervous system, and more.

Feed your mind.

Depression, ADHD, memory loss, agitation: These may seem like inevitable byproducts of modern lives spent multitasking, not getting enough sleep, and operating on digital overload. But while much of the brain’s work still remains a mystery, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that the food you eat directly affects how well your brain functions. Brain health also plays a significant role in staving off diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.

In The Healthy Mind Cookbook, Rebecca Katz has harnessed the latest research on the brain to identify the foods that can improve the brain’s ability to control cognition, emotion, and physical function—all of which dictate memory and mood. She then translates the very best of brain science into the kitchen, using delicious nutrient-dense foods as a tool for promoting a healthy mind from childhood through the golden years.

With a culinary pharmacy listing the benefits of key ingredients, complete nutritional details for each dish, and flavor-packed recipes for every meal of the day, including Avocado and Citrus Salad, Sweet Potato Hash, Turkish Lamb Sliders, and Chocolate Cherry Walnut Truffles, The Healthy Mind Cookbook will help lift the fog of everyday life so you can reach your full physical and mental potential.

About the Author . . .

As the senior chef-in-residence and nutritional educator at one of the country's leading cancer wellness centers, REBECCA KATZ, MS, is the culinary link bringing together physicians and patients with a common goal: eating well to maximize cancer treatments, minimize side effects, and improve outcomes. She is the founder of the Inner Cook, a Bay Area culinary practice that specializes in meeting the specific nutritional and appetite needs of cancer patients, and a senior chef at Commonweal Cancer Help Program in Marin County, California. Katz has been a guest chef and lecturer at top academic medical centers throughout the country, including the annual Food As Medicine conference.