First and foremost I’m not a food nutritionist, or a medical professional the views expressed here are the views of a runner learning through experience.

This set of recipes aims to encourage athletes to have quality and nutritional foods by dispelling a couple of myths.

Firstly that healthy eating has to be bland.

Secondly by removing unhealthy complexes with foods such as the myth to have a low fat diet. As good fats are vital for a healthy diet. Good fats for example come from avocados, nuts etc.

In the case of runners, fats are a source of energy for endurance events. But for women low fat diets can lead to potential fertility issues and weaker bones.

Often athletes have unhealthy eating habits, and this books success is it takes away the unhealthy boundaries people may have with food by dividing our plates into percentages of protein, carbs, fats etc. don’t get me wrong it isn’t a food free for all, as there is some serious research behind the recipes presented, to have a balanced diet that meets your nutritional needs.

The clue is in the title. Eat slow. So if your looking for quick and simple recipes, this book isn’t for you. It’s really focusing on taking the time to make quality meals from scratch, and to sit down and enjoy it with family and friends. This is very noble however, the intentional way to exclude the preparation time and cooking times consistently throughout the book is quite shortsighted. In an ideal world I’d love to take the time to prep and cook my food, but I am limited by my various commitments in my weekly schedule, so for me when time is short it’s beneficial to know timescales, and for this reason I can’t give the book a perfect score.

The majority of recipes are a success, however I feel there are a couple of recipes which are more page filers. For example the Swiss Muesli Bowl, there are 8 ingredients and 9 optional ingredients, by the time you’ve bought all the ingredients, it would of been more cost efficient to buy a box of muesli. Or in the snacks sections there is a page dedicated to roasted garlic bulbs, to be honest I’m not going to slow cook garlic in the oven for 50mims when I could eat seeds, or nuts for example. They do say you could place it in the oven whilst cooking other foods, but thinking about eating garlic solo is giving me palpitations about potential garlic breath.

However overall there are a wide wide of recipes from gluten free, snacks, dinner, deserts, sauces and dressings etc.

It’s an excellent cook book for athletes and for mere mortals looking for healthy, guilty free non calorie counting tasty meals, and I would recommend it.