Fat: It's for dinner.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine named the worst cookbooks of the year with regards to health. Included on the list are Gordon Ramsay's World Kitchen: Recipes from the F-Word, Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa: How Easy is That, Trisha Yearwood's Home Cooking, Top Chef's How to Cook Like a Top Chef (bacon doughnuts!), and Mark Sisson's The Primal Blueprint Cookbook. The Physicians Committee says that these cookbooks are the worst for containing artery-clogging recipes that include high-fat ingredients, such as bacon, cream, butter, etc.

Now, none of these chefs or cooks claim to be promoting healthy lifestyles. I know when I pick up a Barefoot Contessa cookbook that I'm not going to be getting low-cal recipes. And Gordon Ramsay is a professionally trained chef. What do you expect? They don't use skim milk and margarine in their recipes. But, is it just me or does it seem like quite a few cookbooks and cooking magazines are including ingredients that for the last 10+ years were viewed as no-no's? It seems like Cooking Light magazine has been putting more sugar and butter/cream cheese/cream, etc. back into their recipes (albeit still in moderation). Even Jamie Oliver, who is big on healthy, uses ingredients like blue cheese and bacon and has a recipe for fried pork skin in his new cookbook Jamie's America. (He does encourages readers to pair his recipes with a salad and to use rich ingredients only occasionally and in moderation.)

The Physician's Committee doesn't mention what cookbooks they did like, but I think Mark Bittman's Food Matters Cookbook has wonderful, simple, healthy recipes that emphasize a variety of fresh fruits and veggies and minimal meat. I wonder how the Physicians Committee felt about Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient by Jennifer McLagen....