A Neuroscientific Approach to a Sharper Mind and Healthier Life

Dr Caroline Leaf's research is fascinating and life changing. Her connection to the mind, thoughts, food, and health are mind blowing. This book is helping change the way I think, and is informative on the problems of our current food systems. Our health is our choice.

This book is utterly brilliant and a must read for everyone who is seeking solutions to the confusion today on how we should be eating to best benefit our health. This book will expose the travesty behind our food system today and provide thoughtful and relevant solutions. Highly recommend!

I love this book. Caroline Leaf provides practical information about an issue that has become extremely complicated - eating.This book does not read like "diet" books because it is not one. It is about making choices that align with God even when deciding simple things like "What's for dinner?".

I LOVE Dr. Leave, however this book makes me feel like I'm being screamed at by a liberal for the first half of the book. It's more about how the environment is bad, the food is bad, etc. etc. While all of that information is important, that is not what I was looking forward to in this book since Sept. of last year. To me, this book was a big let down. Sorry Dr. Leaf.

I guess I am different than the other readers. I found the book very dry and gave up on after the first couple of chapters. Found nothing new here.
We all know that the food industry is tainted with bad food and we need to make wise choices.

Caroline Leaf has written a wonderful book full of information everyone should know. Unfortunately the recording of this book was done by a woman who sounds more like a computer than a human being who mispronounces many words especially the Bible chapter reference names. Her voice efffect is very mechanical and flat through most of the book but does seem to improve some toward the end of the book. I have to give this book a 1 for the mp3 recording quality. The quality of the voice on this recorded book makes it hard to listen to. I listen to all the books that I read and I will not buy a book recorded by this company again. The information Caroline Leaf had compiled here is amazing but the recording is a big disappointment.

I really appreciate the Shining Buddy, it is a great product for a very fair price. The only thing that could improve it would be for a switch that you can reach the different functions with. When you need the strobe, you have to go thru the other functions just to find it.
Also a note of instructions would be helpful, as there were none in the box and you just have to find out by trial and error.

Thanks for your follow up,

It's my thoughts about food, genetics and body image that have created something only a dose of the same can change. Clearing out the cobwebs of toxic thought and replacing it with God-thoughts, of good health, prosperity and blessing are the key to changing my world -- and each of our worlds, one person at a time.

My one request might be practical tips on how to tear down the strongholds and consistently build the good, good life God has already planned for each of us.

I recommend this book to start the process of change.

"Think and Eat Yourself Smart" describes how to eat and think in healthy ways and reveals how to make life-long changes in how you view and choose food. Since we're all unique individuals, the author explained basic principles rather than promoted specific foods.

In part 1, she concisely summarized a number of critical problems with America's food system. In part 3, she provided practical tips and advice on how to make healthy changes to your thoughts and diet, how to buy healthy food, and how to cook from scratch. She also talked about the benefits of sleep and increased physical activity. She provided 21 recipes (with suggested variations). Part 1 and part 3 aren't technical and can be understood by anyone.

In part 2, she described how toxic thoughts and food choices affect our body. She explained how your mind is impacted by ads, how refined sugar can impair good thinking, the impact of cholesterol, trans fats, and saturated fats on your health (and it may not be what you think), and more. I enjoy technical details and this part had them. She'd also "put it simply" after each important idea, and you can get the overall idea even when the technical details are meaningless to you. This section helps clear up common diet misinformation due to"overblown correlations and inaccurate interpretations" of scientific studies.

Her basic recommendation is to avoid refined and processed foods in favor of whole, local, and organic "real foods," but she also showed how our food choices are rooted in our thoughts about food. I'd recommend this book to those who regularly eat the Modern American Diet but who want to pursue a healthier relationship with food.

I received an ebook review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.

This book is way too religious-based for my liking. I'm not atheist, nor am I offended by religious talk, but I was looking to educate myself ony eating cleaner, yet I felt that I was getting a bible verse or biblical reference with every page I turned.

I returned the book.

Some better recommendations are "Revive" by Dr. Lipman or "Clean" by Alejandro Junger.

Listen, I'm Christian. But I also have dyslexia and if I wanted to read my Bible I'd read my Bible, not this. Dyslexia makes it difficult to read fast and I bought this book because I thought it would be full of useful science on food in relation to brain health--and only that. Now I have to scan the book looking for useful information...

Dr. Caroline Leaf’s book is designed to challenge your way of thinking. If you want to get different results especially with health and diet, this book is for you. In part 2 of the book she addresses how your thinking affects your eating and how your eating affects your thinking. In other words when you think right you eat right and when you eat right you think right. The two go hand-in-hand. For example your brain consumes 20% of the food that you eat. This 20% provides you energy which directly impacts your brain's ability to function effectively. Dr. Leaf states, “if we do not have a healthy mind, then nothing else in our life will be healthy, including our eating habits.” To transform your results we must decide as individuals to change our thinking about eating. Dr. leaf provides the “why” and “how” to change our thinking about eating. Since we live in a culture of convenience which has negatively impacted the way we think and eat food, we must break the habit of eating for convenience, emotionally eating, and avoid trans fats and processed foods continually and consistently.
Although this seems like common sense isn't common practice today. We are in a global crisis in the way in which we think and eat. I recommend this book to help challenge your thinking, change your behaviors and thus transform your life. This book is a must-read.

This book will challenge you; keep reading! It is packed with information that will help you make decisions to improve your health. Dr. Leaf would prefer our food be as natural, real, whole as possible, as well as local and seasonal. The information about GMO's was interesting. I did not know very much about this area. In this and in other topics mentioned, the research that exists is one-sided or incomplete. The teaching about the mind and brain was very interesting. She talks about how emotions affect us in every area, including eating and digestion. She says we can start implanting healthy lifestyle patterns of thinking and choose to act on them.She ends with tips to change and then recipes. I have notices a slight change in the thoughts of my husband and I about food after reading this book. I want to read more of her teaching on the mind. I did receive a copy for review purposes.

Think and Eat Yourself Smart is a powerful read loaded with research, data, and spiritual truth. We are designed to be integrated...spirit, soul, body. How we use our mind will impact us. Currently, our changing farming system is destroying our planet. Dr. Leaf states, "When we try to recreate foods in such a way as to go against the design of nature rather than mimic nature, we interfere with God's plan." We have made eating complicated. This is a MUST read for everyone in order to uncover lies we are being fed. Feed on this new book by Dr. Caroline Leaf. You will be enlightened!

This book takes an informative approach to the brain/food relationship. I appreciate how the author lays out the brain chemistry, thought patterns and the bodily response that occurs before, during and after eating. There is much more information in this book including marketing ploys from various media outlets, the agenda big businesses have with the public and our food supply, and more details about how we think about food. One benefit that I liked that is stated throughout the book, is what we can do to change our view on food. I really liked how the author really laid out steps and plans to actively change our thinking about the food we eat. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to change their thought life around food, and who isn't interested in another "eat this not that" book. This is not a diet book.

I received this book as a promotion.Overall I think the book has good merit. There are tons of references, and I learned a lot from the book. Dr Leaf explains the differences in our foods today compared to just a few generations back. Understanding the economic structure in which our food supply is built is also very important. One thing I wish she would have touched on was histamine intolerance and the difference between that and food allergies. Histamine intolerance is due to a lack of enzymes, particularly DAO, allergies are an immune response to proteins in foods. There is some speculation that gluten sensitivity could be from a lack of this enzyme. I really feel that autoimmune disease deserve special attention and cause so many emotional symptoms due to the very nature that autoimmune disorders are caused by leaky gut. I feel this issue was glossed over. Otherwise an excellent starter resource with many Biblical references. I would highly recommend this book as a starting point for anyone serious about following a Biblically sound diet that points to wholeness in holistic way.

I have had opportunity to hear Dr. Leaf speak, so when I saw an email requesting book reviewers for her newest book, of course I said yes. How many books on diet and agriculture contain detailed illustrations of the mind-body-brain connection?

This book does not try to impose a singular diet on anyone, nor does it believe a one-size-fits-all approach is either healthy or plausible. Rather, Dr. Leaf seeks to take a step further back from the individual diet to how our food is being produced and delivered. (This is actually underscored further if you're reading something like Guns, Germs, and Steel and realizing how differently food is being produced now than it has been in the past.) She moves rather cleanly from overall principles of approach (the things we put in our bodies, and the way in which we grow food and process it are part of stewardship and love, for example) to the application of stated principles. Moreover, she draws connections between states of mind, emotions, biology, and environment as being among several things that can affect our physical, mental, and emotional health. The purpose of all of this is to live whole lives as creatures made in the image of God, not to cater to some whimsical fad.

Personally, I appreciated her lack of condescension (there were no guilt-trips), her marriage of faith and science (too-often pit against each other erroneously), and her extremely positive "yes, you are capable of doing this" mindset (including her inclusion of personal family recipes).

All in all, I've found this a very enjoyable book and look forward to her others.

As always, Dr. Leaf presents significant information in a very readable and understandable fashion. I had no idea how damaging the normal "Modern American Diet" is and how imposing it on other cultures is actually having a detrimental effect on both the physical health and the economies of many countries. This book has awakened an awareness in me of the responsibility that each individual has to make the right choices regarding diet both for himself and society at large. Thank you Dr. Leaf for this eye opening book. God bless you!

Think and Eat Yourself Smart is a new direction for Dr Leaf, better known for books about the mind, such as Switch on Your Brain. In Think and Eat Yourself Smart, she looks at the relationship between what we eat and our general health, including brain health—as nutrition affects the way we think.

She goes on to a detailed discussion of the problems associated with the Modern American Diet (which gives us a convenient and descriptive acronym, MAD), characterised by fast food, processed food, and cheap genetically modified food.

I live in New Zealand, and a book like this makes me doubly thankful, because many of her complaints either don’t apply here, or apply to a lesser degree. For example, New Zealand doesn’t currently produce any genetically modified food crops, so her concerns about introducing GM crops into the food chain needn’t affect the way I shop or eat as long as I’m buying local products. (Then I looked at the canola oil my husband bought which is made in NZ "from local and imported ingredients". Hmm. That could mean anything.)

I’d never thought too much about the “evils” of GM food before this, but now I’m convinced I don’t want to eat GM foods, I don’t want the meat I eat to have eaten GM foods, and I want New Zealand to remain committed to GM free horticulture and agriculture (although I’m less fussed about GM pine trees. I don’t eat pine trees).

As another example, our cows and sheep live in paddocks and eat grass. Dr Leaf has numerous reasons as to why grass-feed milk and beef are healthier alternatives than the “conventional” US grain-fed diet—much of which is genetically modified grain. Yes, our food is more expensive than food in the US, but reading this makes me happier about paying for that quality.

Dr Leaf talks about food deserts (areas where there is no fresh fruit and vegetables available to buy), battery farms, and food that has been manufactured to be cheap and addictive, not nutricious. I can see this is a huge social problem: how can parents think and eat themselves and their children smart if they can’t actually access healthy food?

This is where the “thinking” ourselves smart comes in: we have to retrain our minds to believe the truth about food, so that we can actually change our eating habits to feed our bodies and our brains the way we were meant to.

In a nutshell, Dr Leaf is a firm believer in the value of “real” food—basically, cooking using seasonal local ingredients, as so many of the processed options available today consist of “empty” calories which send the wrong messages to our brain and can result in a multitude of health problems, not least weight problems.

Dr Leaf writes from a Christian point of view and backs up many of her opinions with quotes from the Bible. But even an atheist would benefit from reading this book: ignore the Bible quotes and focus on the science and the common sense.

We are what we eat, and a lot of the “food” available to eat isn’t what our ancestors would recognise as food. And the science backs this up: too much American food has been processed to the point where many of the nutrients aren’t there any more, and this affects the way our bodies and brains process the food.

Thanks to Baker Books and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

I never really understood the details of how our food is produced and what goes into it. I was both shocked, terrified, and highly enlightened and know there is an urgency for me to change how I select food for myself and my family (this will be no easy feat). To know that more people die now from obesity related illnesses than cigarettes was eye-opening and I don't want to be apart of that statistic. I'm grateful to Dr. Leaf for shedding light on this, connecting it to God's word, and sharing it with the world.

Finally a book that helps us understand our broken food system (MAD) but gives us understanding and tools to eat smart and think smart about our food choices. There is no 'one size fits all diet.' But there are principles of good stewardship of not only our bodies, but your minds and this earth and the people on it. As a person of faith I love the reference to God's system of love, stewardship and choice. But this book is filled with research that will challenge your mindsets and also show you how to change them to make healthy choices for life.

I liked how well everything was documented in this book. Dr. Leaf inspires me to think more about what I am eating and to do the best I can with what I have to make the best choices that I am able make. I like that she isn't promoting one specific diet but encouraging readers to use the information provided to make the best choice that they can. It should be noted that this is a Christian published book so she does often reference the Bible in this book. As a Christian, I appreciated that aspect as well.

Dr Caroline Leaf not only educates and challenges her reader, but guides and encourages as well. Do you really know what we are eating and where it comes from? What do you think about before, during and after you eat? Why does it matter? What is the difference between organic and healthy? What can you do about the choices available? What have some done already? Think and Eat Yourself Smart is not only packed with facts on research, but includes 73 pages of notes allowing a person to continue researching on their own. You will find 12 guidelines to help find what is the best way to eat for you as an individual and 21 recipes to get you started. I am thankful for the message this book presents. It will be a go to reference as I make changes in my eating habits.