Book Review: Thrive by Brendan Brazier

One of my goals for the year was to read Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life by Brendan Brazier.

I must say that while this book has several strong points, it was not at all what I was expecting. I anticipated this book being written by an athlete for other athletes. Instead, it appears to be heavily directed toward couch potatoes and it contains many ads for the author's food products... Not really what I was looking for.

The author claims that if everyone follows his diet plan they will experience weight loss, younger biological ages, less stress, happier lives, and oh yeah - the world will be a better place. All without any citations to his references.

To sum it up, it is written like any other fad diet book.

However, it is not a total fail - in fact, it has many fine points. The guy has to know quite a bit in order to be a professional athlete, much less a professional athlete on a plant only diet. His commentary on how plant based diets are easier on the environment ring true as well. And he does have a lengthy list of references if you want to wade through them to discover how he crafted his practices. Overall, I think the author's material is solid and perhaps his editors/marketing goons just ran away with it.

Other folks have much more positive things to say about it.

So, despite my bashing - I would still definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about performance nutrition or nutrition in general. I haven't tried any of the recipes yet, but will post reviews of any I do try.