books & documentaries

Would you like to learn more about healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle? Reading books, listening to podcasts and watching documentaries provide clarity and insight. We have made a selection for you. The descriptions may help you find the book, podcast, or documentary that’s right for you.

From bbb health boutique

Hoe gaat het met je leefstijl – Esther and Inge de Brouwer
How do you feel? How do you sleep? Do you exercise and/or exercise regularly? How is your eating pattern? How do you deal with stress? Important questions about your lifestyle. In this book we take you with examples and exercises to give you insight into your own lifestyle. We also tell about our own lifestyle. As founders of bbb health boutique, we have learned a lot and gained experience over the past decades. You can buy the book (in Dutch) in the boutiques or via bol.com.

Podcast bbb health boutique – coaches bbb health boutique – via Spotify (Dutch)
Your indispensable dose of health information and inspiration from body, food & mind experts. With a passion for lifestyle, the coaches inspire you on a variety of subjects. From digi detox to proteins and from plant-based food to good sleep. You can listen here.

Food & mind

In Defense of Food – Michael Pollan
‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” These 7 words are the starting point for the books from this New York Times American journalist. Pollan has written more books with the same scope and purpose. This writer knows the food industry inside out and knows what he is talking about. A well written and good supported story although some pieces are difficult to get through.

Balance your hormones, balance your life – Claudia Welch
This book explains the effect stress, overtiredness and a damaging eating and living pattern can have on your hormone balance. The writer, Claudia Welch, combines the knowledge of Ayurveda, Chinese medicine and western science to show us how we can support our hormones. It contains much practical nutritional advice, techniques for stress management and methods to help improve your sleep which helps to restore the hormone balance.

The Food Hourglass – Kris Verburgh
Dr Kris Verburgh shows us that healthy eating of huge importance is in keeping your body young and preventing ill- ness. The Food Hourglass is also a new model that offers an alternative to the old ‘5 food groups’. Verburgh backs himself up with a huge scale of research and clearly shows us what you should and shouldn’t eat to stay young.

Eat yourself young – Elizabeth Peyton-Jones
This book explains simply and clearly which foods you shouldn’t eat and which help to make you feel younger and help revitalise your body.

Skinny Bitch – Rory Freedman
Skinny Bitch is not a standard diet book but a sharp, humorous attack on eating garbage. “A no-nonsense tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous!”.

The Sophrology Method – Florence Parot
The New Mindfulness – that’s how sophrology is often referred to. Like mindfulness, this stress management and self-development method uses meditation and body scans as well as physical exercises and guided visualizations – inspired by Eastern philosophies and Western relaxation techniques.

The community

Cooked – Michael Pollan
This is one of the other books from Michael Pollan where he takes the reader into their own kitchen. Pollan believes that cooking places one between nature and culture and he explains which methods have been discovered to make raw food edible. He believes that cooking yourself is the way to make your self happier and healthier. Although we are a big fan of his work, it is sometimes very difficult to get through his writing style.

Salt Sugar Fat – Michael Moss
The food industry wants to make money and therefore ensures that the consumer is dependant on sugar, fat and salt. The author and journalist from The New York Times researches how companies such as Nestle, Oreos, Kellogs, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars will do anything to ensure that consumers use and continue to use their products. He tackles subjects such as the increase in popularity of breakfast cereals, soft drink and fast food and pays attention to the research laboratories of these companies. One of the techniques that the food industry uses to promote a product is to focus on one healthy ingredient in the hope that the consumer won’t pay attention to the rest of the ingredients. The rise of the processed food industry is a link to the emerging obesity epidemic and other diseases such as diabetes. The author wants to make the reader aware of the tricks and tactics of the food industry. His conclusion is that we eventually decide what we buy and how much we eat.

Eating Animals – Jonathan Safran Foer
This book is an analysis, accusation and confession. It is about eating animals, the relationships between people and animals, about factory and commercial farming, the way animals are caught and killed and covers many more issues.

Hungry City – Carolyn Steel
Steel sketches for us a clear picture of the impact the modern food production has on our planet and our lives and gives us insight into how it has come to be and how we should continue.

Emotional eating

The Beck diet solution – Judith S. Beck
This book helps you to change the way you think about food if you have followed all the possible diets, without result. It is not based on a diet but on a shift of mind. You learn to change your thoughts, behaviour and eating habits. A very practical book which offers many ideas to help you get a grip on your relationship with food and as a result, to allow you to lose weight with confidence.

Cookbooks

Plenty & Plenty More – Yotam Ottolenghi
Plenty (More) is a feast for the senses. This successful London caterer and restaurateur, Yotam Ottolenghi collected original dishes that each individually prove that vegetables, legumes, grains and mushrooms are all you need to make wonderful dishes. Ottolenghi has written another good cookbook as well: The Cookbook.

Deliciously Ella – Ella Mills – Woodward
From the founder of the food blog Deliciously Ella, plant-based, dairy-free, and gluten-free recipes with gorgeous, full-color photographs that capture the amazing things we can do with natural ingredients.

The Green Kitchen – Favid Frenkiel & Louise Vindahl
A beautiful cookbook with more than 100 healthy, vegetarian recipes for every day. You will also find tips for a healthy pantry and information about healthy nutrition for the whole family.

Veg Every Day! – Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstal
In Veg! vegetables play the main role and taste is one of the most important things. Even meat eaters will be surprised with these recipes, with dishes such as: oven baby beets with walnut and yoghurt dressing or a frittata with summer vegetables and goats cheese. Delicious and beautifully presented.

It’s all good – Gwyneth Paltrouw & Julia Turshen
Very healthy cookbook with 150 recipes. Gywenth’s motto is: beautiful on the outside and on the inside with as start- ing point: eat as much organic and unprocessed goods as you can, no refined sugars and choose for carbohydrates with a low glycemic index.

How To Cook Everything Vegetarian – Mark Bittman
Fine, no nonsense recipes that are so clearly explained that you can have the most delicious vegetarian dishes on the table at no time at all.

Documentaires

The truth about food
A six part documentary from the BBC about the truth behind what we eat.

Food Inc
What do we actually know about the products in our supermarket? In this documentary, Robert Kenner shows us the true face of the food industry. He explains chemical processes that, with permission from the government, have been hidden from consumers for years. The film uncovers the surprising, and sometimes shocking, truth about what we eat and how it is produced. What are the repercussions for our health? And how is the worldwide food industry developing?

Our daily bread
For 2 years Nikolaus Geyrhalter focused his camera on the European food industry. There is no dialogue, only the sound of the machines which makes it all the more disturbing. From the fruit cultivation in the south of Spain to the chicken breeding around the corner, everything gets dealt with. It gives a clear picture of the food industry and how it effects us.

Food matters
The YouTube channel from foodmatters offers a large range of videos about healthy eating.

Forks over knives
This documentary brings to light the belief that degenerative sicknesses can be ruled out by avoiding animal and processed foods.

Rotten
In this 6-part series about the global food industry you will gain insight into what is happening in the food industry. After seeing this series, people will probably change their eating habits (drastically).

Seaspiracy
Seaspiracy is a documentary that takes you into the world of the oceans and commercial fishing. In an insightful way you are confronted with shocking revelations about the fishing world. The documentary shows you what is going on around fishing, overfishing, piracy and plastic pollution.

The game changers
The game changers is a documentary that explores the benefits of a plant-based diet. In this documentary, James Wilks interviews several (former) athletes who have come to embrace the vegan lifestyle, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Scott Jurek.

That Sugar Film
In That Sugar Film, Damon Gameau embarks on a unique experiment by investigating the effects of a sugar-rich diet on a healthy body. This interesting documentary with a hilarious twist highlights the problems of the sugar industry and the consequences of consumer marketing.

Why thin people are not fat
An experiment shows us the difference between people who always battle with their weight and others who always remain the same weight.