By Mary Walton, Blogfinger literary editor

When was the last time your doctor gave you information about a healthy diet?

If you answered “never,” this book is for you: Prevention Does Work: A Guide to a Healthy Heart

If Paul and Eileen Goldfinger have their way, you’ll rarely eat another burger (unless it’s turkey). Or mac n’ cheese. Or BLT. Or one of any number of cholesterol-loaded foods that can clog your arteries and threaten life. Instead, you’ll become a regular at the fish counter and stock your pantry with staples that can make even the most prosaic piece of chicken a gourmet’s delight.

Just published, the Goldfingers’  book is subtitled “A Cardiologist and a Cook Present the Facts and the Foods” It’s stuffed with facts and larded with recipes designed to make typical Americans revamp their diet.

But that isn’t all. Says Paul, “We do stress nutrition, but we also cover a variety of important topics including drug therapy, blood pressure, smoking, exercise, mental health, women’s issues and obesity. I want patients to understand that ‘prevention does work,’ meaning that scientific research has proven the life-saving benefits of measures described in our book.”

In the area of nutrition, Paul says, “I tried to cover every issue known in the field of prevention including chocolate, olive oil, red wine, the Atkins diet, and the Mediterranean diet, among other subjects.”

Paul, the founder of Blogfinger, was a practicing cardiologist for 32 years. In medical school, he estimates that no more than an hour was devoted to nutrition. Even today, doctors are focused on immediate results. They don’t push the long-term effects of diet. Nor can they. Fifteen-minute appointments barely give them time to do more than hear a complaint and check a patient’s medications.

Paul at Starbucks

During his years of practice, as one study after another suggested that diet could deter heart disease, Paul began to question the American diet. The Japanese, heavy consumers of fish and vegetables, which are low in fat, had a low incidence of heart disease, as did fish-eating Eskimos. Scandinavians, whose diet is heavy in fat-rich red meat and cheese, did not.

In time, rigorous scientific evidence proving that lowering cholesterol prevented heart attacks convinced him that a low-fat diet was essential for his patients. “As more and more results came out,” he said, “it solidified my opinion that doctors aren’t doing their job.”

Paul began to give his patients three-page informational handouts, the forerunner of Prevention Does Work. The book’s chapters are devoted to helpful definitions — from “acute myocardial infarction” [a/k/a heart attack] to “vascular,” referring to blood vessels — the basics of cardiac treatment and the fundamentals of nutrition. The language is clear and simple.

Eileen prepares a heart-healthy feast in her OG kitchen,

Meanwhile, Eileen, Blogfinger‘s food editor, developed “heart healthy”recipes for her husband’s patients. “We found out that patients and their families did not know how to prepare heart-healthy meals, especially with sea-food,” Paul says. “Eileen collaborated with me in developing recipes that met the prevention criteria: low fat. low salt, fiber, fresh ingredients, low calories and portion control. These recipes emphasize the use of seafood, vegetables and poultry. Our book is a reference source — a guide — to be kept in the kitchen”

Eileen says she aimed for recipes that were simple and didn’t require arcane ingredients. While many of the book’s 30 recipes do feature seafood  and chicken, for people who can’t do without pizza there’s a low-fat version, likewise for chili.

Paul emphasizes that healthy eating “is not a diet you’re on but a lifestyle change.” At the same time, he doesn’t expect every reader to follow his advice to the letter. “If people could just find something — switch from butter to margarine, eat fish twice a week, do a little aerobic exercise,” he says, “they’d be better off.”

Prevention Does Work is currently on sale in Ocean Grove at the Comfort Zone, or it may be ordered on amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com or iuniverse.com.

“Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees:

Mary Walton’s book review of “Prevention Does Work.”

2023 update by Dr Goldfinger:   Although this third edition is from 2011, most of it is still true because it covers many explanations, definitions and certainly recipes which do not go out of date.

There are a number of more updated BF posts that add some knowledge such as huge clinical trials that have proven the preventive value of the Mediterranean diet. Use the search engine above right.

The purpose of this book  is to fill a void where doctors do not provide sufficient information about prevention  and often know nothing about it.   That leaves the public to rely on Internet nonsense by snake oil salesmen.

Thanks to Mary Walton for her review and fine work in helping us in the Grove.   She now lives in Philadelphia.  You can Google her–she is a remarkable professional investigative reporter who has written books, reported for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Blogfinger. net, lectured at universities and more.