Five years ago, I recommended Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminet’s The Perfect Health Diet.

This week, as part of piecing together the nutrition component of Composite’s coaching, I finished it for the second time.

And, indeed, it holds up, remaining the very best diet book I’ve ever read.

While most diet authors ostensibly appeal to science in supporting their recommendations, their books tend to be long on discourse and short on citation, extrapolating broad claims from a small base of underlying research. Perfect Health Diet, by contrast, is literally 25% footnotes. The number of supporting studies the Jaminets bring to bear is impressively overwhelming.

I finished the book, as I did the first time, not only intellectually convinced that their recommendations were right, but emotionally compelled to tighten up my own eating (as I’d since drifted to sort of an 80/20 implementation of their approach).

Whether you’d like to lose some weight, maximize athletic performance or stave off disease and improve longevity, it’s worth checking out.