CHECK IT OUT

If your resolve has slipped a bit since vowing to eat right and get

healthy, there’s still plenty of time to get a grip in 2002 with help

from new library resources.

For sugar-sensitive souls, Kathleen DesMaisons outlines a strategy for

controlling cravings in her just-published “Your Last Diet: The Sugar

Addict’s Weight-Loss Plan.” Maintaining that some folks have a body

chemistry that does not respond to the eat less, exercise more

prescriptive, the author of “Potatoes Not Prozac” offers tips for losing

weight and elevating mood through a “no white food” diet.

Miriam Nelson takes a more moderate approach in “Strong Women Eat

Well,” a common-sense guide for choosing among the 40,000 food items sold

in the average supermarket. In addition to informing readers about what

edibles improve health and prevent disease, the Tufts University

nutritionist throws in 50 recipes for such delicacies as soyful succotash

and edamame salad in her program for a healthy mind and body.

From other Tufts researchers comes “The Color Code: A Revolutionary

Plan for Optimum Health.” Basing their advice on the premise that the

natural pigments in fruits and vegetables can prevent illness, James

Joseph, Daniel Nadeau and Anne Underwood reveal exactly which ones to eat

to preserve eyesight, protect the brain and fight arthritis.

Numerous new volumes are available to help put their advice into

action. In Jeanne Lemlin’s “Vegetarian Classics,” find 300 recipes for

such meatless wonders as crunchy Thai noodle salad and curried butternut

squash soup. Round out your repertoire with simple dishes like chickpea

salad with roasted peppers, featured in Nava Atlas’ “The Vegetarian

5-Ingredient Gourmet.”

Other recent additions to the collection focus on cooking for those

with special medical needs. Whether or not you have diabetes, Bonnie

Sanders Polin and Frances Towner Gied reveal how you can benefit from a

high-carbohydrate meal plan that’s low in animal proteins and saturated

fat in “The Joslin Diabetes Healthy Carbohydrate Cookbook.”

Also sure to improve your health, even if you’re not one of the 50

million Americans who suffer from high blood pressure, are meal plans in

“The DASH diet for Hypertension.” Developed by the medical school staffs

of Harvard, Duke, Johns Hopkins and Louisiana State University, this

program for reducing blood pressure and cholesterol through diet alone

promises to decrease your chances for coronary heart disease and strokes

in just two weeks.

If a sometimes undisciplined duchess can lose weight and feel great,

so can you, maintains Sarah Ferguson in “Energy Breakthrough.” In this

sensible approach based on the Weight Watchers Winning Points plan, the

spokeswoman for the popular program offers hundreds of lists, quizzes and

profiles of folks who have successfully trimmed down. There’s nothing

really new here, but it’s all delivered with the cheery optimism for

which Fergie is known.

* CHECK IT OUT is written by the staff of the Newport Beach Public

Library. This week’s column is by Melissa Adams, in collaboration with

June Pilsitz. All titles may be reserved from home or office computers by

accessing the catalog at www.newportbeachlibrary.org.