If the Buddha Came to Dinner: How to Nourish Your Body to Awaken Your Spirit

Rating:
Summary: NOT counting calories---yeah!
Review: Finally-- a book about food that has absolutely nothing to do with obessing over calories or counting carbs... this is a great book for real people, who think and feel and care deeply about how to take care of themselves on all levels. I think people who have burned out on "diet" books will find this heartfelt approach to food, and to life, extremely refreshing and useful.

Rating:
Summary: Food for thought?
Review: If The Buddha Came to Dinner is a wonderful opportunity to connect with the entire wholeness of food and feel great. This book illustrates that, as people, we often eat in our busy lives without connecting to the food. This is easily evident in everything fast these days. The book shows us how to take an opportunity we all have several times a day to connect with food and the spirituality that it feeds.

The book takes you through a very manageable cleanse with many great healthy happy and delicious recipes. Looking at food in this manner has guided me to more clarity, energy, focus, and curiosity in ways to eat refreshingly.

I am grateful to Hale for pointing out a simple and fun way to understand the importance of to whom we feed and how we feed it. This has shown us a way to access a stronger and vivid connection just by looking into what we eat to make us thrive.

I hope there will be more books by this author to come.

Rating:
Summary: Food for thought?
Review: If The Buddha Came to Dinner is a wonderful opportunity to connect with the entire wholeness of food and feel great. This book illustrates that, as people, we often eat in our busy lives without connecting to the food. This is easily evident in everything fast these days. The book shows us how to take an opportunity we all have several times a day to connect with food and the spirituality that it feeds.

The book takes you through a very manageable cleanse with many great healthy happy and delicious recipes. Looking at food in this manner has guided me to more clarity, energy, focus, and curiosity in ways to eat refreshingly.

I am grateful to Hale for pointing out a simple and fun way to understand the importance of to whom we feed and how we feed it. This has shown us a way to access a stronger and vivid connection just by looking into what we eat to make us thrive.

I hope there will be more books by this author to come.

Rating:
Summary: what a gift!
Review: This book is a perfect combination of inspiration and information to help anyone use food to create greater physical and emotional health. I love that the book is extremely readable and funny but also is full of detailed, practical, step by step directions on how to make healthful choices and changes. I have already showed this book to my father, my sister in law, the woman who cuts my hair, and our teenage babysitter... every one of them found something in the book that made them say.. "this is exactly what I need!" what a gift!!

Rating:
Summary: Spiritual Soul Food
Review: This book is nurturing from the first page. It gently leads you to a pleasantly full stomach and a calm mind amidst the junk food and increasing daily stress of most of our lives. It explains the basic science of good nutrition without getting overly technical and gives you step by step practices to incorporate healthier habits and feel more vitality very quickly. It is ever mindful of the difficulty of always eating the most nutritious food and has many good suggestions for making the best of it. Body and mind live together and this book makes the relationship stronger and healthier than any other nutrition/diet book that I have read.

Rating:
Summary: If The Buddha Came To Dinner is a realization
Review: This is an eminently practical and yet authentically spiritual guide to the vital subject of how we nourish ourselves on every level. The author touches us with stories of transformation from her practice and from her personal life.

She gives specific suggestions without pushing the line into dogma. She knows the subtlety of her subject, and she approaches it with a gentle, graceful, but sure hand.

I am greatly inspired by her chapter on Transformational Nourishment. Even the title says it all. We stand with our arms outstretched, reaching for the horizon yet it comes down to the simple day-to-day act of feeding our bodies, hearts, minds and souls.

I have had years of experience trying different diets and I am pleased to say that this book takes all that I know to be true and puts it in clear, useful and inspirational form. It is subtle: you feed yourself in everything you do and think and say and feel. Each breath you take provides further nourishment. Now, which aspect of yourself do you choose to feed, to support, to give life to?

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is a realization.

Rating:
Summary: Spiritual Soul Food
Review: This is an interesting self help book that encourages, perhaps even lectures, readers to change their eating habits as if Buddha came to share a meal with us. The underlying theme of the book is to ponder whether the reader would provide Buddha with processed foods or organic fruits and vegetables? If not why not treat oneself in the same manner? There are four Parts. "Who Are You Feeding" promotes the audience to feed your spirit. This section is difficult to attain though anecdotes provide some uplift and many boomers will think of White Rabbit ("Feed Your Head"). The book really takes off with Part two, "Nourishment as Daily Practice" and Part three, "Awakening Your Spirit". These two sections provide specific steps on how to make eating an enjoyable harmonious rite as a major part of discovering one's inner spirit. The final segment contains suggested recipes.

Though this book is well done with a powerful message on health and eating right, IF THE BUDDHA CAME TO DINNER: HOW TO NOURISH YOUR BODY TO AWAKEN YOUR SPIRIT contains too much fat hiding the meat of the guidebook. When the message is front and center readers receive a terrific tome, but will need patience to cut through the extra calories. It is still worth peeling to get to the heart and spirit of this intriguing look at what you eat impacts your health.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: powerful message on health and eating right
Review: This is an interesting self help book that encourages, perhaps even lectures, readers to change their eating habits as if Buddha came to share a meal with us. The underlying theme of the book is to ponder whether the reader would provide Buddha with processed foods or organic fruits and vegetables? If not why not treat oneself in the same manner? There are four Parts. "Who Are You Feeding" promotes the audience to feed your spirit. This section is difficult to attain though anecdotes provide some uplift and many boomers will think of White Rabbit ("Feed Your Head"). The book really takes off with Part two, "Nourishment as Daily Practice" and Part three, "Awakening Your Spirit". These two sections provide specific steps on how to make eating an enjoyable harmonious rite as a major part of discovering one's inner spirit. The final segment contains suggested recipes.

Though this book is well done with a powerful message on health and eating right, IF THE BUDDHA CAME TO DINNER: HOW TO NOURISH YOUR BODY TO AWAKEN YOUR SPIRIT contains too much fat hiding the meat of the guidebook. When the message is front and center readers receive a terrific tome, but will need patience to cut through the extra calories. It is still worth peeling to get to the heart and spirit of this intriguing look at what you eat impacts your health.

Harriet Klausner