WomanCode

June 1, 2013

This book encourages body awareness and is intended for women who are dissatisfied with their current state of health or are desperate for other answers; what it provides is a mix of dietary rules and philosophy. Vitti, a holistic health counselor who suffers from polycystic ovarian syndrome, advises women to stop taking hormone-based birth control, empty their refrigerators, toss their makeup and cleaning products, and listen to their bodies. It has a number of faults, including a lack of cautionary information regarding dietary suggestions, misleading information (e.g., one "recent study" is, in fact, a seven-year-old trade journal article by a nonscientist), and few supporting references for the author's claims. The author's credentials are a premed undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins and a certificate from a licensed, but unaccredited, one-year nutrition program. VERDICT The constant use of the terms Womancode(TM) and Flo and (at least ten) inclusions of Vitti's business URL makes this book feel like an advertisement, especially since readers are encouraged to join Vitti's "online community" for between $297 and $1,397 for three months of access. A far better resource is 2011's revised Our Bodies Ourselves. Skip this one.--Susanne Caro, Univ. of Montana Lib., Missoula

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