Very cool book - she's an economist and instead of giving advice on what to do, she evaluates the science behind typical pieces of advice, explains how the studies were performed, and then argues that you should decide how you feel about the research to make your own decision. She says that this is classic "decision theory" in economic research. Cool perspective!

For example: "You shouldn't drink" -- okay but why not? What happens if you do? What are the statistics? Apparently drinking advice and research studies overemphasize how bad it is to drink because they focus on people who binge drink and assume it's a linear relationship from 0 to 10 drinks a night. We both still don't drink much at all and Jasmine pretty much only drank sips of things Andrew had occasionally, but it's still good to know that it's not something to be so scared of!

We also learned that mercury is bad for babies (which we knew), but that mercury is typically found in fish that have omega-3s, which is excellent for babies. She provided a graph of fish that are high/low in mercury and high/low in omega-3s to help people figure out which ones to eat. Because of that we changed our fish habit from tuna to sardines, which are high in omega-3s, low in mercury, and taste great! Other good fish: salmon. Yum.

Pemi's Bookshelf

Parent's Bookshelf