The Pizza Trap: Every Mom’s Guide to Breaking Children’s Dangerous Food Addictions, Ending Mealtime Battles, and Building Healthy Habits for Life

I'm ridiculed by people, and often accused with being "vegetarian" by people that don't believe that food can be deceitful.

This book was pretty terrible and the graphics looked like cheap copy&paste clip art. Waste of my time and money.

Great information to help moms make healthy food choices.

Gabrielle Welch's "Pizza Trap" is a book I felt strongly about from the moment I read the first page. It's a shame that such a book is even needed but Americans desperately need help! Obesity, allergies and asthma, juvenile diabetes, and even clogged arteries are increasingly common in children these days, although most of these diseases are perfectly preventable and sometimes even reversible with proper nutrition. It's time to face up to the fact that we're a fast food nation that's lost track of what "real" food really is. According to the sources cited in the book, this generation of children is the first one that isn't expected to outlive their parents. One out of three children is overweight, and one third of children born in this century are expected to be diabetic by adulthood.This book is broken down into three basic sections, to help identify problems, expose sneaky and dangerous ingredients in prepared foods and to offer sensible solutions. In the first section, the author addresses the state of our eating habits as a country. She addresses food additives like MSG, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), artificial colorings and flavorings, preservatives, copious amounts of salt and sugar in almost every prepared food, and also the dangers of eating genetically modified (GMO) foods. She explains the complete lack of any nutritional value in most fast food, and how we've become accustomed to huge portion sizes. She also touches on the nutritional deficit in soft drinks, and how artificial sweeteners are poison for your body.In the second section she outlines the (whole, real) foods we should be eating, and how to read food labels for hidden bad ingredients. The author lists the "Dirty Dozen" of fruits and veggies, which are impregnated with pesticides, and also lists the safer, cleaner options.The third section is full of useful tips to get your family on board with healthy eating, including ways to take the misery out of grocery shopping with kids, how to eat a more healthy diet when away from home, and suggestions for growing a garden at home or at your children's school. She also addresses the supposed "expense" of eating organic foods and cooking from scratch, versus grabbing a TV dinner or a can of prepared food. I know from experience that it's not more expensive if you buy in bulk and plan your meals ahead. Cooking from scratch also doesn't mean spending hours in the kitchen, as shown by the simple, healthy and quick recipes the author included in the back of the book.Although I'm very well read on diet and nutrition, and we grow much of our own organic produce and meat, I learned several important things from this book. For example, I'd never made the connection between seasonal foods and the nutritional needs of our body. We need more vitamin C to fight colds and flu in the wintertime - which is exactly when Vitamin-C-laden citrus fruits are available and less expensive. I found her research on seasonal eating to be very insightful and I plan to implement some of her suggestions.I also really liked her suggestion that every family should have rules for the way they plan to eat, and to find what works for their family. In our family, we use an 80/20 rule: We eat whole, organic, healthy foods 80% (and even 90% some weeks) of the time, leaving the other 20% to the times we have to eat out after baseball or football. This allows some wiggle room without feeling like you've failed your family. And it helps teach kids to "budget" for sugary snacks and junk food.I highly recommend this excellent book for anyone who needs some help getting their family's diet on track. Whether you are already struggling to improve your family's diet, or you're just starting to realize how important real food is, you'll find useful and simple-to-implement information in The Pizza Trap.I received a copy of this book directly from the author, in exchange for writing an honest review. She didn't ask me to give the book a good review, but I am pleased to endorse it. I agreed with almost everything in the book, and gladly give it 5 stars.

Gabrielle Welch is a Certified Holistic Health Coach from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and has a Nutritional Consultant degree from The Global College of Natural Medicine as well as an MBA from Baylor University and founder of Welch Wellness, educating, supporting and inspiring women and children to help prevent disease and embrace a life of wellness through nutrition, green living and life balance. Gabrielle's passion is to empower moms with the knowledge to make better choices when it comes to cooking, buying groceries and especially eating on the go.THE PIZZA TRAP: EVERY MOM'S GUIDE TO BREAKING DANGEROUS FOOD ADDICTIONS, ENDING MEALTIME BATTLES, AND BUILDING HEALTHY HABITS FOR LIFE is a title that says it all. Gabrielle has compiled more information about every aspect of dietary nutrition and offers all of us facts and figures, secrets and hidden material that we all should know. Yes, this is meant to be a guide for Mom's to help instill in their children the road to healthy eating, but the facts apply to us all.She wisely combines graphics, illustrations, photographs, and different fonts to make her book very readable and very credible. She talks about junk food in a way that will make you look away when driving past fast food outlets, knowing the evils in the food being levied on the public. But there is more to the book than simply that. Gabrielle discusses specific food syndromes and how certain foods adversely affect our bodies and our metabolism. Yet throughout it all she keeps an upbeat attitude and a very reader friendly manner of writing that makes the reader want to keep this book of the 'must read this again' shelf. Highly recommended for ALL readers. Grady Harp, October 14

I should never have agreed to do this review. The blurb makes this book seem like it offers "easy, practical and fun" ideas for healthier eating. And, at some points it does offer that. The thing is, so much of this book is telling you how awful so many things are to eat, using scare tactics and guilt methods. "Do you want your kids to be one of those people?" (speaking of people who suffer from depression, because they eat the wrong things, of course) That really gets my shakles up. I did not like this book at all. It was all in the presentation and approach.I actually wrote a whole page of reaction to this book but there is no point in arguing the points I did and did not agree with. I've read plenty of books and magazines about eating healthier and changing mealtime habits and the bottom line is that this book is not one I would recommend to anyone. I just did not like it.*I was offered this book in exchange for my honest opinion.