DROPPING ACID: The Reflux Diet Cookbook & Cure
Product Description
Dr. Jamie Koufman offers recipes and cures for Acid Reflux, proving that living with the disease does not mean living without good food.
About the Authors
Dr. Jamie Koufman has lectured widely both nationally and internationally and is one of the world’s leading authorities on reflux. For almost three decades, her pioneering research has focused upon acid reflux as it affects the voice and airway. She is Professor of Clinical Otolaryngology at New York Medical College, and Founder and Director of the Voice Institute of New York, one of the premier comprehensive voice treatment centers in the world.
Dr. Jordan Stern is a well-known otolaryngologist and the founder and director of BlueSleep, a comprehensive sleep apnea center in New York City. Since 2007, he has been featured in the The New York Times “Top Docs” every year.
Chef Marc Michel Bauer is a Master Chef and Roundsman at the French Culinary Institute, where he has spent 18 years honing his culinary, technical, and artistic skills. He was formerly executive chef at DÃclices de France in Manhattan.
From the Inside Flap
An estimated 100 million Americans suffer from “acid reflux.” Incredibly, nearly half of them don’t know they have it.
Over the past few decades, reflux has become one of the most widespread and misunderstood, yet potentially preventable, diseases of Western civilization. It can cause untold damage to your health and pave the way for serious diseases such as esophageal cancer, currently the fastest growing cancer in the United States. Reflux was once thought of as a disease that struck only the middle-aged and older, but its victims today are as likely to be in their 20s and 30s. Its symptoms go beyond the heartburn and indigestion of yesterday to include hoarseness, chronic cough, asthma, trouble swallowing, even sinus conditions.
Why the sudden shift? As you will learn in DROPPING ACID: The Reflux Diet Cookbook & Cure, the answer can be found in our diet. In the 1970s, the Food and Drug Administration raised the levels of acid in prepackaged food as a way of discouraging bacterial growth and prolonging shelf life. Their motives might have been admirable, but they failed to anticipate the adverse health consequences. Today, many of the prepared foods and beverages we consume are just as acidic as stomach acid itself. Fortunately, there is a cure. With the new understanding of how diet affects reflux, Drs. Koufman and Stern enlisted French Master Chef Marc Bauer to create 75 delicious, healthful recipes using only “good for reflux” foods. The result is one of the world’s healthiest and most sustainable diets, one that integrates science, medicine, and culinary art in a bold new way.
Consider this book your wake-up call. DROPPING ACID offers a groundbreaking approach to low-acid, low-fat eating. It will have you feeling better and living healthier-and it just might save your life.
Linda Brodsky, MD – Book Review And Testimonial
Don’t let the glossy photographs of the recipes in this book fool you. Cleverly disguised as cookbook, this book is both sophisticated and scientific in presenting a groundbreaking view of and approach to a highly misunderstood and under-diagnosed condition–acid reflux. (Of course, it is also a terrific cookbook.) By teaming up with Master Chef, Mark Bauer, Drs. Koufman and Stern, present not only a persuasive treatise as to how, when and why the modern American diet is literally “eating us alive.” This book is also a specific, dietary road map that can help those afflicted.
Brilliant in structure, the book starts with what every patient wants to know, “How can you fix me, doc?” The “Cure” is then presented through the journey of discovery that these physician-scientists completed over many decades. This book is written with the patient, the layperson, in mind. The authors ably explain the complexities of how acid reflux from the stomach results in tissue damage and symptoms not only in the stomach and esophagus, but all up and down the airways, causing a variety of conditions one would not ordinarily associate with a “GI” disease. Asthma, sinusitis, vocal symptoms and chronic cough, to name but a few, all can be caused by acid reflux.
Several important new discoveries are highlighted and tied together early on, making the case for following the dietary recommendations made less onerous with delicious appearing, albeit slightly sophisticated, recipes.
The critical role of pepsin was discovered by Dr. Koufman; and it is unfortunately poorly understood by many physicians treating these patients. Knowing that it may be re-activated by acidic foods being put in the patients mouth, days after any reflux comes up from the stomach, is critical in understanding why reflux symptoms are increasing, reflux is affecting different areas of the body, is becoming more virulent (seen in the rising rate of esophageal cancer) and is fast becoming a national health hazard of the greatest proportion.
Most interesting is the research that went into developing the historical perspective of how America’s food and our society’s eating habits have been transformed. Market forces appealed to our increasing preference for food and beverage variety. Legislation was created to protect our food supply as transcontinental shipping became more commonplace. Both have had unintended negative consequences which are hard to reverse. Simply telling the patients, no matter how much they might suffer, that they cannot eat this or that, just doesn’t work.
And that is where these physicians go beyond the science. They fill a much needed gap by laying out some basic food rules. Then they engage a master chef to create recipes that look, sound, and taste delicious. No more excuses for the foodie who doesn’t want to give up taste for health. This is integrative medical care at its best!
While some of these recipes seem daunting (and perhaps more time consuming that I might like), most can be tweaked and easily adapted for the less culinarily talented amongst us. The photographs alone, all taken by the authors, are enticing enough to want to make one try.
Dropping Acid: The Reflux Diet Cookbook & Cure
