I wanted to do something a little different this week. As the writer for this site, everything you read here was written by me. That means when I want to read things, I must go elsewhere. There are numerous internet resources I use, which I’ll cover at another time (and in my upcoming “Other Resources” page), but for now I want to share some books I think add to or expand upon content found on this site.
Most of the books I’m recommending here are not nutrition books. To be honest, I don’t read a lot of nutrition books as they tend to fall into two categories: science-based textbooks and dogma-driven pop books. The former aren’t really recommendable unless you’re studying nutrition and the latter I wouldn’t ever recommend. Perhaps one day I’ll come across a good, science-based nutrition book written for the public—perhaps I’ll write one!—but until then I don’t have a lot of nutrition book recommendations.
Instead, these are books that will add to nutrition knowledge you find on this site, or that will help you in the execution of good nutrition. One is a book on training, though not specifically climbing training as I know many of you probably have other resources for climbing-specific training advice, including books. They are perhaps a bit of an oddball collection to find on a site devoted to climbing nutrition, but they are useful and interesting and I believe they would be to the average reader here, as well.
Without further ado, here are my recommendations:
Advanced Sports Nutrition, by Dan Bernadot, PhD, RD, FACSM
This is the only nutrition book I’m recommending, and it’s specifically about sports nutrition. While it’s classified as a textbook, it’s written in a far more accessible way than most textbooks, and so it makes a much more layperson-friendly introduction to some of the broader concepts and practices of good performance nutrition.
Advanced Sports Nutrition is divided into five parts:
- Nutrition Sources for Athletes, which covers macronutrients, vitamins, minerals, and ergogenic aids.
- Nutrition Aspects of Optimal Performance, which covers dietary concepts like meal timing, fluid delivery, oxygen intake, and inflammation.
- Factors Affecting Nutrition Needs, which covers how different situations like travel, altitude, age, and sex can affect nutritional needs.
- Nutrition Strategies for Specific Energy Systems, which details the aspects of nutrition a specific type of athlete (like a power athlete, or an endurance one) should pay close attention to.
- Nutrition Plans for Specific Sports, which provides example daily dietary plans for athletes from different sports, ages, and sexes so it’s easy to see how to set your own day up.
Each section uses up-to-date science (for when it was written) to discuss the topic at hand, and while no section goes as in-depth into the mechanics of a specific topic as an article on this site does, they all do a good job of summarizing the important bits. If you’re interested in those types of in-depth explanations, you can always look here! The author also does a good job of seamlessly citing the necessary science, something that isn’t always true of science-based books. The references are there should you be interested (and easy to find), but don’t bog down the reading.
The fifth section is interesting in particular because it covers a wide array of example daily dietary plans for athletes of different ages, sexes, and types. It’s unlikely any of these dietary plans will be immediately usable since they are all so specific, but they do a good job of laying out how energy intake should be structured throughout the day keeping in mind the advice on optimizing performance with nutrition found earlier in the book. Each plan also includes a chart of how energy balance would fluctuate so it’s clear how food intake and exercise combine to alter needs.
If you’re a long-time reader of this site, you might not learn a lot of new information, but it will broaden your knowledge and improve your base. Whereas this site often treats subjects surgically, zooming in on a single topic without significant surrounding context, Advanced Sports Nutrition leads you from a basic overview of the nutrition science you’ll need through specific strategies for the broad classes of athletes that exist (e.g., power, endurance, etc.); everything you read builds upon what you’ve already covered.
At the very least, this book is a relatively short, easy read and it’s also more immediately referenceable than this site for when you have a simple question that only needs a simple answer. It’s a handy, science-based book on sports nutrition, and that’s why I recommend it.
Buy Advanced Sports Nutrition-2nd Edition
On Food and Cooking, by Harold McGee
If I had to classify this book, I would call it a book on cooking science. It is about food science, yes, but specifically food science as it applies to home cooking (mostly). It doesn’t contain recipes—aside from amusing sidenotes with early examples of the use of a food (such as from Roman times)—but instead discusses each individual type of food with scientific detail in the context of cooking.
We learn, for example, that the molecules that make mustard and horseradish spicy are small and volatile and hence readily aerosolize, which is why they get in your nose; capsaicin and piperine (from chili peppers and black pepper, respectively), on the other hand, are 40-50 times larger and so require heat to become volatile and aerosolize, which is why they don’t tend to make you sneeze unless you cook with them. We also learn that aroma molecules (which are responsible for most complex tastes) usually belong to one of two families, either the terpenes or phenolics. Phenolics (like the aromas for cinnamon or vanilla) are less volatile and so survive cooking better; terpenes (like citrus or pine notes), on the other hand, are highly reactive and will dissipate with even brief cooking, meaning they should be added close to the end.
At over 800 pages, On Food and Cooking has more in common with a textbook than an easy kitchen reference book, but nonetheless it is a thoroughly interesting read cover-to-cover. While you could certainly read it piecemeal, only covering a section when you need to, the fun thing about the book is that you never know what you’ll learn and how it might influence your cooking—and so I think it’s worth reading through, though it may take some time.
One additional note: While I wouldn’t call On Food and Cooking particularly demanding in terms of the scientific background necessary to understand it, Harold McGee is not afraid to be explicit with what’s happening biochemically, and at times that might make some descriptions hard to comprehend. Thankfully, he thought ahead and put in two chapters covering the necessary science, one on nutritional science (e.g., the chemistry of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, etc.) and one on chemistry. It’s easy to miss these chapters until it’s too late, though, because they’re the last two chapters in the book! It might be a dry way to begin reading about cooking science, but if you need a primer or refresher on these topics, skip to the back first.
Buy On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
Related: Keys to Good Cooking, by Harold McGee
Keys is also much more referenceable for this reason, though, because you don’t need to wade through paragraphs of text to find the actionable bit. Instead, every piece of advice is clearly separate from the surrounding advice so you can glean the headlines one at a time and find what’s relevant to your situation.
I own both books, and I think they’re both worth owning for different reasons. They are somewhat redundant, though; you won’t learn much new in Keys that you wouldn’t learn from On Food and Cooking, as well.
If you’re looking to only purchase one book, you’ll have to decide whether you’d rather have an easy-to-reference book mostly for kitchen reference or a more detailed book that requires you to search a bit for relevant information when you need it. Either way, you can’t go wrong.
Buy Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes
The Food Lab, by J. Kenji López-Alt
While the book is ostensibly a cookbook (and does contain a fair number of recipes), if you flip open to a random page you’re more likely to find a spread on choosing and cooking asparagus, blanching vegetables, or the proper way to chop onions to minimize the release of lachrymators (and therefore improve taste). It’s these sections that I find so valuable, because they largely answer questions most cooks without professional training have (and probably many who do, as well).
Additionally, it’s like a mini-guidebook on technique, teaching prep skills (with pictures included) and other helpful kitchen tips like how to choose a good (and cheap) knife or pot. These sections may not be helpful for everyone, but if you’re a novice in the kitchen they make it easy to feel confident.
Most importantly, the book is approached from a thoroughly scientific angle. Yes, it’s a book about becoming a better home cook, but it’s thoroughly uninterested in anecdotes and places more value in food science and actual experimentation. As such, J. Kenji López-Alt isn’t afraid to debunk myths and call certain culinary practices ridiculous when they have no basis in scientific reality. Perhaps you call tell why this book appealed to me?
In the end, this book occupies a similar space as the McGee books, but the at-home, learn-it-through-doing attitude makes it a more of a lab companion. And because you wind up “doing” so much more with The Food Lab, you’ll find you reference it far less as the knowledge is so much more thoroughly imparted to you (which is why my copy of The Food Lab still looks new while my copy of On Food and Cooking looks beat-up, despite being newer in my home).
Buy The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science
Overcoming Gravity, by Steven Low
A few years back I was struggling with a wonky shoulder-induced bicep issue as a result of poor form (or weird personal biomechanics) while benchpressing. Weight training didn’t make up a large part of my routine, so when it started to affect my climbing it became clear that I needed to change things up. I began using gymnastics rings and the freedom of motion for my joints allowed things to slowly resolve. Despite this, I didn’t really have a plan, and I didn’t know what I was doing or how to do it better.
This is where Overcoming Gravity comes in. A friend of mine saw me doing more bodyweight exercises and suggested the book. Since then, it has become a companion resource anytime I need to create or edit a new workout routine, and has helped me hone my form to a neater place and make more progress. There are other books on bodyweight training out there, but none are as comprehensive as this one, making it an excellent place to start.
Overcoming Gravity has two major sections:
- Setting Up a Training Plan, including all the random extra factors (including a short section on nutrition) that influence your training.
- Exercises and Their Progressions, which covers all the specific bodyweight exercises you might want to do, including their difficulty as well as progressions (e.g., easier and harder variations so you can work up to and past them).
The author comes from a gymnastics background, so form is of critical importance, and he’s never shy about reminding you that you’ll get more from doing an easier variation of an exercise with perfect form than a harder variation sloppily. He’s also a physical therapist, and has numerous tips to help you avoid and rehabilitate from injury.
One thing that would have been nice in this book is an index, but unfortunately there is none. It’s an oversized paperback book with numerous illustrations (in the exercises section) so it’s usually easy to flip through and find the information you’re looking for, but if you’re looking for specific information about training cycles or rehab you’ll be out of luck and skimming paragraphs trying to remember if it came before or after where you’re at. This isn’t a dealbreaker, but it is something to be aware of, and keeping post-it notes handy to create your own quick-reference system isn’t a bad idea.
My bicep, by the way, has fully healed and hasn’t bugged me in at least two years. In fact, I haven’t had any climbing-related problems since beginning bodyweight training—even my minor elbow tendinosis has resolved, no doubt thanks (at least in part) to the progressive strain ring exercises place upon the elbow tendons. While I can’t say the training has specifically helped me climb harder, it has certainly helped me climb much more injury free!
Buy Overcoming Gravity: A Systematic Approach to Gymnastics and Bodyweight Strength (Second Edition).
