Genius Foods

Genius Foods is not your typical food or diet book as the precedent is protecting your brain when ageing, with the motivation being the author's mother suffering from Alzheimer's, and asking the question: Can we prevent this through our diet?

The premise is interesting to me as we do have Alzheimer's in our family, and it is an interesting subject in general. I found it overall to be very informative and I've already made some small changes in how I approach food.

But, as with any of these, don't ever take any advice concerning nutrition at face value. The book holds a few controversial opinions, and research that he did might not apply to what you have locally available, or might not just work out for you personally. At one point very late into the book, he suggests getting a trash bag and throwing a very large amount of supposedly bad food in there (including pasta, bread) which I wasn't personally a fan of. I mean, suggest that you think twice about buying them, but don't advocate for throwing them away?

It's not all about food though - there is a lot of focus on brain health in general, so he also explains the benefits of good sleep and exercise, and how to get the most out of them.

It is overall very informative, and it encourages you to be more aware of where your food comes from and what's in it. I liked the book when it was just informative, and less so when it was very specific in what you should be doing diet wise. The first 75% of the book works very nice as a reference, and that was great, but in the last half it becomes very “this diet is best” and “you should be doing this” while I would have liked to draw my own conclusions from the information I was given earlier on.
The book also includes meal plans, but I didn't really like that aspect of it. It's great to get ideas from it, but following those to a T will become boring very quickly. I get that they're meant to give you ideas though.

Even though the author says it's not, I do see it more as a reference book, with your own research from good sources as a backup. Even if there are conclusions that I don't agree with, at the very least it's made me more aware of what I choose to consume and, yes, be sure to eat those veggies!