New books for the week

This week: Oprah shares the recipes that helped her shed 18 kg

FOOD, HEALTH AND HAPPINESS: 115 ON-POINT RECIPES FOR GREAT MEALS AND A BETTER LIFE

‘How exhilarating to suddenly think I might be able to stop being a slave to yo-yo dieting’ – OPRAH WINFREY

Over the decades TV viewers have witnessed Winfrey’s fluctuating body shape and her ongoing battle of the bulge. The chat-show queen is the first to admit she has a “complicated” relationship with food – but in 2015 after years of feasting and fasting she finally had an epiphany and realised why her efforts to diet often backfired.

“For most of my life emotional eating has been my negative behavioural hot button,” she says. “People would ask how I managed the stress and I’d say, ‘I don’t feel stress.’ I never felt it because I ate it.”

But now at age 63, having shed a whopping 18 kg as a Weight Watchers ambassador, the talk-show titan reckons she’s finally broken years of bad habits. She says she’s learnt to make better food choices that allow her to eat with less guilt. The result is this joy of a cookbook that contains the 115 recipes that helped her to get the weight off while also feeling nurtured and nourished. With dishes from healthy soups and salads to hearty breakfasts and marvellous mains, this beautifully illustrated book emphasises using fresh ingredients to create meals that are both delicious and satisfying. The book is chock-a-block with entertaining anecdotes and personal pictures from various stages of Oprah’s life, and each recipe is prefaced by a few comments about why she enjoys the dish. She even includes a recipe for chakalaka, which she learnt to make after being introduced to the dish by the girls at her Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy in South Africa. This book would make a great gift for Oprah fans – or for those who are at their wits’ end after trying every fad diet going and are looking for a happier, healthier approach that can become a way of life.