Pure Food

A very interesting read. Good details and descriptions of different products, that opened my eyes to some of the junk I still have in my pantry. Besides some wonderful and tasty recipes, there are good details on how to eat cleaner and more healthy. One thing that stood out was that as a consumer I should read labels more, and not take anything that has more than five ingredients. Excellent visuals and recipes are doable, with many items easy to find. Highly recommend this one for your kitchen library. If you want tips and ideas on how to eat cleaner then this would be an excellent resource.

Great photos and a beautifully designed book; what I especially liked where the “handwritten” notes found in the book from the author. Having a brief history of processed foods, it’s not so much a cookbook but it’s more of a way of living that should be incorporated by everyone; a “Call to Action”. The author even breaks down “Worst of the Worst”, “Biggest Liars” (on which I found a brand name that I really enjoyed - so disappointing!); it is kind of a “Rehab” book. I can definitely see this as a subtle (or not so sublet) gift to my friends and family who scoff at the idea of pure eating – it’s informative (slightly scary) but has great recipes and thoughts/suggestions how to combat trash eating.

I feasted on the photography of this cookbook. It drew me in, encouraged me to believe I could improve my relationship to cooking.

The author seems focused on creating the "whole picture" of creating meals from foods without additives. Extensive writing informs the reader of additives and their impact and the orientation to coordinating cooking tasks. For example, a chuck roast incarnates into chili or participates in lasagna. Old Bay Turkey Breast becomes a new soup.

The author wants the home cook to be at ease cooking quality meals. He includes "Pro Tips" and sources of specific ingredients. I felt as if he were standing by my side, saying "You can." If only he'd helped me stir the soup and grind the spices...

This cookbook will feed me for a long time to come.

The food photography was mind blowing starting from the cover. The author says the importance of avoiding additive foods and indulging on pure food. Each recipe shared can be prepared easily with the local organic produce available........

A special thank you to BenBella and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Well known, chef, restaurateur, food entrepreneur, retailer, and educator, Kurt Beecher Dammeier’s exciting new cookbook PURE FOOD, A Chef's Handbook for Eating Clean, with Healthy, Delicious Recipes — reflects his tremendous passion for healthy food, including insightful education into the food industry; additives, preservatives, processed foods and its critical health connections; from inspiring recipes, as well as his personal journey, with helpful tools and cooking tidbits, for an all-in-one guide to addictive-free foods.

“Commit yourself to the simple goal of avoiding additives. The rest falls into place.”

The food photography is excellent by Barnard & Meyer in Dallas, a critical element for a superior cookbook, with high resolution color images.

His work with Beecher’s Pure Food Kids Foundation is amazing, along with all his business models; with an ultimate goal to help change the way we eat in American. To arm families with the tools they need to cut additives from their lives.

For me, the most exciting part of the book: The ongoing education and initiatives regarding additives and preservative, processed foods, and The Pure Food Nation efforts--Call to Action. It is always a pleasure hearing from a chef’s point of view, the difficulties for many of us who have chosen to lead a pure food life, without these nasty additives and preservatives.

You have two choices: you can wait for science to catch up to what you already instinctively know, or you can take the artificial stuff out of your life now. I agree with the author: There is one thing you can do above all else-- to take your health into your own hands.

Pure Food is geared toward helping adults remove additives from their diets by changing the way they shop, cook, and eat. Even though I have been doing this for the last five or more years, I still enjoy keeping abreast of updated information, while supporting ongoing efforts. We all have to work together to change the way America eats- a collaborative effort.

In addition, to the education, insights, and personal experience, the author gives us tools and equipment tidbits, and delicious recipes. Since I am a vegan, not able to indulge in some of the recipes, but enjoyed the ones I tried, and of course the interesting subject material, and the stunning food photography.

Many of you who have read my previous reviews or blog are aware I chose more than five years ago to make the choice of pure foods, and never regretted it. As a vegan (no dairy, breads, meats, or processed foods, sugars, alcohol, chemicals, additives or preservatives), I maintain a healthy lifestyle and would never go back. It took years of food journaling, targeting the food problems, and slowly eliminating all the bad things. It is a lifestyle choice and one I would recommend to others. As we age our bodies cannot fight, the way it does when we are younger (plus over time gets worse).

Much like the author, foods I had never had any issues with previously, began bothering me. Things I thought were healthy too. Then one day all the food allergies started with serious consequences, leading to ongoing severe allergic reactions, analyphaxis, and heart problems, plus more.

As the author reiterates, the current debate over food additives—and their presumed safety, unless otherwise proven unsafe— is a reminder of another major public health crisis. "Cigarettes." For some, it was far too late for those who had succumbed to their poison. He believes and I agree, that food additives will chart a similar course.

I found the chef’s journey fascinating. The wake-up call, the ingredients and additives used in restaurants, using industrial powders which are not good for us. The chemical flavorings, and the eye-opening behind the scenes-things diners cannot imagine.

From Pasta & Co, Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, Beecher’s Pure Food Kids Foundation, which use 1% of sales from the company to educate school children about how to be savvier consumers of processed foods.

From 2006 his cookbook, Pure Flavor, Bennett’s a casual bistro, then Maximus/Minimus—a food truck. Since then he has expanded Beecher’s to New York City and opened another bistro in Seattle called Liams. His company name is Sugar Mountain, homage to the Neil Young song. Sugar Mountain is committed to offering pure, full flavored, additive-free food.

You have to want to make a change. Like diets, addictions or anything you set your mind to do. However, by educating our kids to be a “detective “and teaching them how to read ingredients in foods, nutrition labels, investigating packaged foods for nutritional content, understanding chemical additives, consumption, health risks, and serving size—creates awareness. To arm kids with the knowledge and skills they need to make healthy food choices.

Empower them to make a healthier world with fruits and vegetables (not chemicals). Hopefully they will educate their parents and influence them in their buying decisions. If the parents do not educate themselves, we have to work through our children. In the end, it may be years down the road, they will find the harmful effects of years of abusive eating.

Our industry makes the bad things appear sexy and appealing. Like cigarettes, by the time the food industry finally admits the health consequences, will be too late for many. Start educating now and making changes!

There are many harmful chemical interactions and most people eat over a hundred different chemicals in a single day. Alarming! The food industry is free to dump additives into our food virtually unregulated. Many implications of the food people sell are slowly rising to the surface with lawsuits, food poisoning, and outbreaks. Accountability.

As we all are aware, food companies use industrial additives to lower their costs and increase consumption by engineering textures, flavors, and shapes designed to impossible to resist and consumer buy it.

We have to demand better products and force more transparent disclosure of what’s in them. We then vote with our wallets. Our greatest power over food companies and our general health is where we spend our next dollar.

We are seeing some hope! With books, like this, online bloggers, education, and awareness, people are waking up to the potential dangers of food additives--demanding change from companies that use them. The more people do so, the easier it will be to force changes.

PURE FOOD outlines some immediate steps to help reshape how food companies advertise to kids and how kids learn about and consume food and beverages:

• Vote for legislators who prioritize a pure food agenda and keep them accountable. FoodPolicyAction.org.
• Improve transparency by requiring both food manufacturers and restaurants to list ALL ingredients in the food and beverages they sell, including liquor, beer, and wine.
• Implement a ban on the advertising, and all marketing of food, and beverages to youth.
• Vote with your dollars. Buy the purest products that you can afford, produced by companies that prioritize ingredient transparency.
• Empower schools to model healthy food choices. Join the conversation at PureFoodRevolution.org.

From chronic illnesses such as heart disease or diabetes, asthma or allergies--- all these plus more will benefit from a diet free from food additives. They are known to cause these health problems. I am living proof of this. I support and applaud every book and initiative to help further this cause.

Taking control of your diet doesn’t have to be a challenge. PURE FOOD will show you how easy—and how much healthier—it is to cook clean, delicious foods. Highly Recommend!

The author opens the book by discussing his own experiences with MSG laden foods and how they gave him headaches and lethargy. Then he discusses what kinds of artificial ingredients and how they are in most of the foods we eat.
The author opened his own restaurant and he started serving non-processed food with pure ingredients and no additives.
The author wanted to help children understand how to recognize what was in their food and how to eat healthy food instead. He set up a curriculum in schools to teach children how to read labels, what kind of marketing techniques advertisers use to lure them in, and how many servings are in food packages.
The last thing they do is the kids' favorite, which means bringing in kitchen tools and teaching them how to cook.
Parents can do the same for their own children by teaching them to read labels, and how to buy and cook food that does not contain additives.
The author discusses gluten, "health food" and many other health-related products that sound good, but really contain sugar, salt and preservatives, it is a real "eye opener!"
The author states that the fruits and vegetables that are labeled "Certified Organic" are the foods that do not contain additives, GMO, or known pesticides.
The author states :"Most cookbooks are organized as a collection of stand-alone recipes, but Pure Food is organized into “threads”: recipes that can be used multiple times as building blocks for several different dishes."
The author started his own cheese business,and meat business and the book contains a website address where you can order his cheese and meat products if you do not want to shop at a local grocery store.
The pictures are almost edible, the recipes look easy to create, and very healthy!
There are so many choices in this cookbook, from lamb, beef, pork, fish, vegetables, breads, soup, and even dessert! Yum!

Pure Food by Kurt Beecher Dammeier is all about clean eating from the chef's point of view. The recipes are good especially for a beginning cook who is looking to get away from preservatives and processed foods. It offers recipes with leftovers that can be turned into all new dishes. I was a bit turned off by the addition of onions in the collard greens, but that might be the southerner coming out in me. Overall a good cookbook for anyone starting out on a clean eating journey.

It’s not always easy to eat good, wholesome food, since big food companies fill their foods with additives, chemicals, GMOs, and dozens of unhealthy things that undermine our nutritional needs. Grocery stores are full prepared foods that are easy to heat up, but that have enough preservatives to defeat the purpose of eating for health. Nowadays you can find almost everything already prepared for you, such as meats with marinades and spice rubs already on them, frozen dinners and appetizers, and fruits and vegetables already cut up to save time. Unfortunately, most of these items include additives to prolong shelf life. Pure Food is a cookbook by Kurt Beecher Dammeier that has dozens of excellent recipes for foods made at home without harmful additives.

The Staples and Condiment section includes recipes for 4-Year Flagship Aoili, Red Fresno Sriracha, Pickled Onions, and Chimichurri, to name a few. In the Meat section, there is an excellent recipe for Beef Hash which is yummy. There is also a good recipe for an Eye of Round Roast, which is simple to make and turns out perfectly every time. Dammeier’s Chicken Salad Vindaloo has become a favorite, and the Red Quinoa Pilaf is the perfect side dish for grilled or broiled meats and poultry. Bibimbap has been the rage in food circles for a few years, and his recipe for Pork Bibambap is excellent. Many of the recipes are pictured, and the photography is exceptional. The recipes are well-written, and easy to understand.

Pure Food is not just a cookbook; it has fascinating articles about how America’s food has changed over the years, and how we came to have so many unhealthy processed foods. The articles are not only informative, but ones that should be read by everyone, whether or not they plan to eat healthy.

All told, this is a cookbook that should be in every kitchen. Dammeier makes it sound easy to change to a more healthy diet without making sacrifices as to food likes and dislikes. It is highly recommended.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this cookbook.

The Digital Review Copy I received had recipes, sentences and paragraphs chopped up and missing parts, which made it difficult to read. The base of this book is to avoid additives, preservatives, trans fats, chemicals, and excessive white sugar. Consumers need to read food labels for ingredients and nutritional contents of the foods they purchase. Be mindful of how many ingredients went into making the food item: 3 or 30? The closest to nature a food is, the healthier it is. The healthiest meals are made from scratch from whole foods like fresh vegetables, fruits, grains, and proteins. The photos are great and I wish there were more. This is a very informative book.

Easy to understand, great photos and delicious recipes....this is the one you need to buy and keep in the kitchen at all times

I love the recipes in this book - they are so simple yet so fresh and tasty. I am a big advocate in eating food that has not been adulterated, that is why we are pretty self sufficient with what we eat, the rest is obtain from farmers' market from people who hold the same principles that we do.
It is wonderful to find a book that is educating and living the dream of pure food. I live in Australia so will not be able to visit the shop, but our views are the same. Thank you for the great recipes, it was interested in reading about the additions of chemicals that are in certain manufactured food.