It’s been a while since this book came out, but after reading a lot of rave reviews about How to Eat Like a Hot Chick, I felt it was my duty to keep people from wasting their money buying it and time reading it.
The book’s got a catchy title, but is proof that you really shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Within seconds of opening it to a random page it quickly became clear to me that I don’t want to be a hot chick if I’m required to accept the food advice dished out by authors Jodi Lipper and Cerina Vincent. Although these two—who I will admit are hot chicks— do dispense some useful information in a casual, light-hearted girlfriend kind of way, it’s far too inconsistent and is often a case of too little, too late to make this a book for people who like real food.
First, the good points: The authors offer a bit of sane advice on how to eat on a date and major diet pitfalls like high calorie drinks and salad bar items that will sabotage your best intentions.
They also bag the fruit-denying Atkins diet, give good cautionary advice on seemingly healthy cereals that are riddled with sugar, and wisely tell us to skip nutrition bars and have a huge pile of fruit instead for the same amount of calories that’s in one measly bar.
That said, much of the rest of this vulgarity-laced book has me wondering what these women REALLY know about food, and the short answer to that is seemingly little.
For instance, they call eggs “dead baby chicken fetuses”, which is not only a bit offensive but shows their ignorance of egg production.
They also tout spinach as a super-food encouraging us to eat pounds and pounds of it—but only the bagged kind and not “…the giant clump of leafy raw spinach that’s full of dirt and mud. We like to know our food comes from the earth but we don’t want the earth along with it.” Obviously these chicks are too hot to spend a couple of minutes soaking spinach in a sink full of water, and they enjoy paying lots of money to relieve themselves of that major inconvenience.
My other problem with their bagged spinach obsession is that they trivialize the E. Coli contamination of bagged spinach in the U.S. a couple of years ago that sickened hundreds, killed 3 people and left 31 others with kidney failure. They call the very real E. coli outbreak “nonsense” and claim that “a little contamination never hurt anyone.”
The hot chicks are inconsistent with some of their advice, especially when it comes to olive oil. In one chapter they claim to “detest” it, but in another, they’re using it on fish. They command all chicks to skip dressing their salads with olive oil and just use balsamic vinegar, or if they must, a good light salad dressing. If you’re going to use a light dressing, which usually has an ingredient list longer than my arm and about 30 calories per serve, why not use a 40 calorie teaspoon of olive oil with the balsamic?
The authors are also addicted to non-stick cooking spray and say to use “lots and lots” when sautéing their beloved spinach. It may come as news to them, but cooking spray is actually oil, and if you’re using “lots and lots” it’s going to have the same amount of calories as an equal amount of olive oil.
Interestingly, although they “detest” olive oil, they “love” salt— which, if you pile on the sodium to compensate for using flavorless butter and oil substitutes, won’t that make you retain water and bloat, making you a not-hot chick?
The first page I turned to when I opened How to Eat Like a Hot Chick was my initial indication that this book would have some serious flaws. When the authors declared their love for Parmesan cheese, even the kind that came in a giant green canister, I squirmed a little and actually hoped they would redeem themselves. And they tried. In the final pages of the book, they have a shopping list which contains Parmesan cheese and they recommend buying it fresh instead of the big green tub, but it was just too little, too late. Lipper and Vincent had offended my real food-loving sensibilities too many times. If this is truly the way to eat like a hot chick, then I’d rather be an average chick any day.
