10 Notable Diet Books of 2008

Around every New Year, publishing houses flood bookstore shelves with a plethora of new diet titles, hip to the hordes of repentant holiday bingers who are desperately trying to make their weight-loss resolutions stick. And there are more and more of us in that category every year. The new crop of diet books runs the gamut — from low-carb to vegan to anti-caffeine to tea-around-the-clock. Some books appear based on sound nutritional advice; others decidedly less so. TIME's Andrea Sachs explores the 10 most notable diet books of the New Year.

New Year, New Diets

The GenoType Diet

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By Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo with Catherine Whitney
Broadway; $24.95; 317 pages

Naturopathic physician and researcher D'Amamo has identified six "GenoTypes": the Hunter, the Gatherer, the Teacher, the Explorer, the Warrior, and the Nomad. "Yes, your GenoType is the product of the genes you inherited from your family, but it's also the result of your prenatal experience." In analyses that sound a bit like horoscopes ("Explorers who maintain a detoxifying diet that also nourishes the blood and bone marrow will have few health problems and usually will have very little trouble attaining a healthy weight"), the author gives food do's and don'ts for each GenoType. If there's anything scientifically sound about any of this, we haven't seen the signs.

— Andrea Sachs

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