Family meals need not be rich in fats and sugar to taste good. You can enjoy food without spoiling your figure. Pleasure and health are not mutually exclusive. It's all a question of equilibrium — to which variety contributes.

This book, a homage to home cooking, offers about one hundred traditional family recipes. It includes Oriental Jewish cooking, Moroccan recipes, Central European dishes, farm cooking, and traditional dishes served at Christmas, Shabbat or Ramadan. All these notoriously rich recipes have been subtly modified to comply with current health strictures — but without sacrificing flavour.

A list of the recipes is provided, in which each ingredient is evaluated in terms of its impact on weight, cholesterol and diabetes, thus making the choice of a risk-free recipe simpler. These recipes show that it is possible to prepare healthy as well as tasty traditional meals that everyone can share and enjoy. Enhanced pleasure but fewer kilos!

• 125 easy-to-prepare recipes with practical health and dietary tips.

• 20 suggested menus: family meals, fast meals, enjoyable slimming meals, child menus, Oriental food and post-holiday menus.

• A practical chapter summarises all the essential nutritional information, showing how to use fats and sugar, and how to adapt your own recipes.

• A table listing all the recipes, with a calorie count, indicates which are adapted for people suffering from cholesterol or diabetes.

Corinne Teman is a nutritionist physician. She is a member of REFOP (Network for the Prevention and Treatment of Childhood Obesity).