Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Whether we're reducing our intake or inceasing our exercise, staving off cravings or indulging with abandon, our relationship with food is nothing if not eternal. For the insatiable and the incurable alike, Eat These Words serves up a banquet of small delights guaranteed to satisfy the soul, if not the you-know-what. Here are nutritious words of wisdom and wit, consolation and consternation, carefully culled from both the great of mind and the great of body, from Plato to Roseanne Barr.

Scientifically categorized according to the four basic Food-for-Thought groups, Eat These Words contains easy-to-digest thoughts for every part of the tortured processes we call diet, exercise, and food. It begins by commiserating with your Frustration:

I want nothing to do with natural foods. At my age I need to eat as many preservatives as I can get.

George Burns

It's okay to be fat. So you're fat. Just be fat and shut up about it.

Rosanne Barr
Like any good book on diet and exercise, it provides timeless advice on Energy Conservation:

I stay in marvelous shape. I worry it off.

Nancy Reagan

The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.

Erma Bombeck
For those nagging moments of remorse after polishing off the entire chocolate cake by yourself, there are quotes to induce the appropriate Shame:

The body never lies.

Martha Graham
But most of all, for the inevitable submission to the pure joys of food, there are expression of Love:

My idea of heaven is a great big baked potato and someone to share it with.

Oprah Winfrey
The next time you think you're the only person who obsesses over the struggle with food, take comfort in the words of Virginia Woolf, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Bertolt Brecht, Oscar Wilde, Queen Victoria, Thomas Jefferson, and many others. To satisfy all your cravings, simply Eat These Words.

My Review: When the sads hit, when it makes no difference to you if you clean the house or just lie on the sofa channel surfing, it's a good time to grab a little book, one of those like this one that has amusing, silly, or just light and dietetic entertainment.

This one's a good example of the genre, and a fine way to wile away an hour or so. Nothing heavy here. Lots of places it's good to rest and check the insides of your eyelids for light leaks. And some days that's all you want. ( )