A market for a HCG diet and recipe book?

A trawl on Amazon reveals that there are relatively few books on HCG, and even fewer HCG recipe books and those few have but a handful of reviews – which is a little surprising, given the media attention that this diet has attracted over the past few years.

Notable exceptions are:

• Tammy Skye’s paperback, The HCG Diet Gourmet Cookbook: Over 200 “Low Calorie” Recipes for the “HCG Phase”, which has 64 ratings at an average of 4.5 stars, at a price of $23.82.
• R King and M Smith’s Kindle ebook, HCG Diet Recipes and Cookbook – 50 HCG Diet Recipes + Our Free HCG Diet Summary – Get the Secret HCG Recipes that Everyone is Looking for… with 21 ratings, averaging 4.5 stars and priced at $11.67.
• Linda Prinster’s paperback, 101 Worry – Free Hcg Diet Recipes Plus Hints & Tips From Experts, with 70 reviews, an average rating of 3.5 stars and a price tag of $19.87

Perhaps would-be HCG dieters are provided with more than enough information online, for free. Perhaps their HCG diet kit providers give them sufficient recipes. Or perhaps, having stuffed their freezers with the meagre score of Dr Simeons’* permitted foodstuffs, the mixing and matching of a handful of Phase 2 ingredients is such a simple task, that few people need assistance doing it. A far greater challenge is sourcing products which are sugar-, starch- and fat-free.

As such, I doubt I’d dip into my wallet to purchase any of the few books on offer, unless hugely discounted. For instance, Easy HCG Diet : Recipes & Diet Plan – Lose a pound a day Kindle Edition at £0.70 might be tempting – if I had or wanted a Kindle.

Of the free online recipe sites, a few deserve a special mention.

MyHCGRecipes.com provides a handy search box where you can search for your ingredient of choice. It then provides you with a raft of recipes which appear to adhere closely to Dr Simeons’ rules. Although, given the different writing and formatting styles of the listed recipes, I would guess that these recipes were submitted by users of the site, or perhaps pulled from other websites.

Coach Alisa offers a free PDF with a few dozen Phase 2-specific recipes, including sauces, while PharmacyEscrow provides Phase 3 recipes which sound scrumptious, except I wouldn’t “nuke” them in the microwave because it damages the molecular structure of food in the way that traditional cooking does not.

A rummage through HCG forums – many of which are attached to sites of HCG vendors – elicits thousands of recipes and is well worth taking an hour or so to do, if you’re about to embark on your first HCG programme.

Given the plethora of HCG websites offering free recipe information and advice, and that the diet only lasts for a maximum of 3 months these freebie recipes should be enough for anyone’s palate. So it’s hardly any wonder that there are few such books on the market, none of which are best-sellers.

 

* Dr A T W Simeons MD is the author of the original 1950s HCG diet manuscript, entitled Pounds and Inches: A New Approach to Obesity”