The Cleaner Plate Club: Raising Healthy Eaters One Meal at a Time Paperback – January 15, 2011

I am a long-time fan of Ali Benjamin's blog ([...]) - so I was excited to hear she was writing a book. Her blog has always had interesting posts, great writing and plenty of good recipe suggestions - she also doesn't preach about food - she educates. This book is no different. There's tons of information presented in a friendly, not-at-all-pedantic, and really creative way. I have three boys under the age of 8 - all with different taste buds/moods/attitudes toward eating. They all devour the kale chips, the meatloaf is another favorite and we all love the chicken fingers. We've got plenty of great options to choose from here.On another note - I'm a total localvore and simply enjoy learning about food. I was expecting this to be a "recipe book" - but it's much more than that. Even if you never make a single recipe - it's still totally worth the price because you will learn A LOT!Thumbs up ladies - this is one that I'll be using for a long time (and buying to send to a bunch of my mom friends!)

After looking at all the positive reviews I thought I had to add this to my cookbook collection but I was disappointed once it arrived. There are several recipes in this book but not as many as I expected for it's size. Unfortunately, the few recipes that I have tried have not been great and will not be repeated. Most of them are rehashed versions that appear in every other contemporary cookbook but not as well done. On the postive side, this book offers lots of good advice for cleaning up your diet and incorporating healthy lifestyle changes which I fully support...but already follow. My recommendation: If your family's diet consists of large quantities of processed foods and fast foods and you want to eat healthier but don't know where to start, get this book. If you already eat healthy and are looking to widen your culinary experience, there are better cookbooks out there.

I have an 11-month-old who is becoming less interested in food from a jar by the day and wants to eat whatever Mom and Dad are eating. That's great, but often Mom and Dad are eating things like frozen pizza, which we don't really feel great about feeding our kid. We had made forays into making our own baby food, but most of the time that resulted in us cooking a too-large quantity of something the baby didn't like. So we were relying heavily on store-bought baby food because hey, a lot of research has gone into creating food babies actually want to eat. Plus, who has the time?So I bought this book, which is a very entertaining read, and it made me resolve to feed my kid slightly better food. Not to be perfect - the book is definitely not about being perfect - but even if I made one thing a week, that would be better than not cooking at all. So far I've made 4 recipes from the book and they've all been a hit - not only with my 11-month-old, but they've also been things my husband and I want to eat. My husband even declared the meatloaf florentine "dinner-party-worthy."This book isn't aimed specifically at cooking for a baby, and in fact, some of the recipes would need to be modified slightly to be appropriate for my baby, but it's a book about making healthy food that people of all ages can enjoy. I've never liked cooking, but it's so gratifying to make food my whole family likes that it makes me just want to keep cooking.Oh, and apparently when my husband went to pick my son up at daycare yesterday, all the daycare teachers wanted to know what his lunch was (kale potato soup) because he loved it and it smelled so good.

In the short time we've had this book (about 1 week), we've already used 4 or 5 recipes and they were all a delicious way to eat some healthy food. The information contained in the well-written (and quite funny) prose in the first few chapters is extremely useful. While designed for moms and dads trying to raise healthy eaters, it is also a great cookbook and information source for couples without children - really for anyone concerned about the state of American food production "machine" and nutrition in general. The section about "meeting your veggies" is great for anyone using a CSA and finding him- or herself occasionally dumbfounded by a particular weekly vegetable selection. If you are trying to cook delicious and kid-friendly meals for your family, you need to buy this book. But even if you are single or a childless couple, there is a great deal of excellent information in this book, and it also happens to be an extremely engaging and worthwhile read.

Wow I bought this as an ebook today for the bargain price of $3.08!!! It is packed full of great info and recipes that I can't wait to try. I found myself sitting down to read it rather than flicking through. After purchasing a book entitled 70 healthy breakfasts your kids will love only to find it was 98% rubbish sugary fatty foods that I wouldn't give my child for a treat let alone breakfast this book was refreshingly intelligent and a lot more what I was looking for.A bargain for the price. A great book!!

There are a lot of great recipes in this book, but none that my picky eater would even touch. Being advertised as a cook book for kids, I was disappointed.

It might have worked as a 100 page book with one recipe per page, but it's just not accessible to my kids who cook quite a bit of their own food.

This book is very informative. I learned a lot about food. I am trying to use some of this information. With adults making changes is harder than children.My book was also in great condition. I gave one to my granddaughter. She told me about the book. She was also happy. Neither of us have finished it. It is a book that will continue to be used as a reference.

What can I say? I like my cookbooks with pictures. I also like my cookbooks with recipes. This is more of a book about concepts/ideas/nutrition and less of a practical cookbook for kids with recipes that you can actually reference and use. Don't get me wrong, there are recipes in here, it's just not stuffed full of them. There are, however, a lot of pages of tips and tricks on how to get your kids into food.About the pictures - there aren't any. I don't know, I guess I like my cookbooks glossy and full of food porn that's going to get me excited about what I'm going it make especially if what I'm going to make is the same salmon pinwheel wrap recipe that's in every kids' food cookbook ever.