Review: Eat Right America

After reading the Eat Right America Nutritarian Handbook I decided to give the website a go. Here's my disclosure- I bought the handbook for the regular price at Whole Foods and I paid the regular price to sign up for the website as well. No one has asked me to review either the book or the website and I will not receive any compensation for doing so.

Especially since I'm not that impressed with the on-line information. I signed up for the website at a cost of $19.95 and that gets me the initial assessment and a few months of access. To continue past the trial period you have to cancel or it will cost $9 something per month. So I signed up. The first thing you do is take their assessment, which I did. I found it to be very similar to the Real Age website, which is free. Once you answer all the health questions (and it's helpful to know your weight, your waist and hip measurements, and have the results of your last cholesterol screening on hand) then they give you your "prescription". I was kind of disappointed that they didn't ask things like "are you vegetarian" and "do you have any food allergies". I guess it didn't really matter though since they don't give you a particular set of menus like other diets, they only offer guidelines that are listed in the handbook. They also give information about your current health level and disease risk, which is on Real Age for free.

The only thing that's special about the website is there is more information and they tell you which of the three levels of the nutritarian way of eating that they recommend for you to try. But the handbook makes good suggestions for that, too, so the info doesn't seem to be anything new. There are recipes but I wasn't blown away by the few I looked at. There was a pie chart showing how I eat now and another pie chart showing how I should eat. (Up the veggies, although not much since I'm already doing well on that front, and less processed food, especially when we eat out. Which also bothered me- I feel like I make good choices when I eat out but that's not taken into consideration.)

Over all, I would say meh. Get the handbook, which I love; you won't miss much if you skip the website. My opinion may change as I play around with the website more; I'll let you know one way or the other!