Catherine Price (1) (1978–)

"The Power of Fun" was a great way to kickstart my own pursuit let go of my dependence on my phone and enjoy life. I had only listened to a couple of chapters (on my phone) when I was inspired to use the weekend to go on a phone diet. My rules for myself: when sitting down, keep the phone on the bookshelf over there. I could use my phone only when standing up. It rewired my habits so I wasn't mindlessly scrolling. This idea wasn't from the book, but the book inspired the idea.

The book is a good reminder that there are ways to enjoy life. Let me tell you, I've been needing that reminder. It broke the elements of fun down to connection, playfulness, and flow. I followed the prompts to write things down and it was difficult, but once you break through the despair of thinking you've never had any fun in your entire life, it can inspire some things to introduce into your everyday existence.… (more)

I didn't expect to learn much from this book -- vitamins are pretty much my day job. I (think) I know every biochemical reaction relevant to human metabolism that requires a vitamin or mineral cofactor. If someone has been prescribed vitamins to actually help them, rather than act as a placebo, it's a pretty high chance that it was prescribed by me or one of my colleagues. So, vitamins, I know them. And like most people who actually understand vitamin biochemistry, I also have a deep skeptical place in my heart for the use of vitamins as pseudoscience. So much so that during my pregnancy, I took pure folic acid rather than a prenatal multi-vitamin.

But Vitaminia was fun anyway. Price spends a lot of time focusing on the history of nutritionalism: how we understood that food was made of of molecules, identified what they were and realized that they were necessary. The experiments along the way to prove that. Price also explores food and vitamin safety regulations over the years, and the absence of supplement safety regulation in the modern era. I found this a fun and fast read.… (more)