An increasing number of cookbooks for people on special diets are being published, some more useful than others.
Diabetes Diet and Lifestyle Plan (Penguin), from the Australian CSIRO, has pretty comprehensive advice for healthy living and healthy recipes.
• Food Intolerance Management Plan, by Drs Sue Shepherd and Peter Gibson (Penguin), is about a low Fodmap (fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols) diet.
Basically, it's a diet low in various types of sugar, including lactose and fructose, that may contribute to irritable bowel syndrome and other gut problems. It's a complicated diet, because the potentially problematic sugars can be found in many foods that are normally considered healthy, such as certain vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes and dairy products, so you have to choose very carefully. The book explains this and gives some recipes, which are mostly gluten-free and dairy-free, as well.
• British chef Anthony Worrall Thompson, in association with Heart UK, has published The Essential Low Fat Cookbook (Kyle Books). It has lots of advice and suggestions for swapping foods higher in fat for lower-fat versions, and numerous recipes with nutrition panels.
• If you're looking for Mexican food, real Mexican home cooking that is, not nachos and hard tacos, then you'll enjoy Daniella Germain's My Abuela's Table (Hardie Grant Books). Germain, who grew up in Australia, has translated her Mexican grandmother's recipes and illustrated them with her own evocative drawings.
There is information on basic sauces, different types of chillies, beans, tortillas of many kinds, and dishes like beef with peanut sauce, pork in pumpkin seed sauce and Day of the Dead bread. A charming book, but it lacks a good index.
