'The MAHA Cookbook' Offers Compassionate Road Back to Health, One Meal at a Time

By Catherine Ebeling, RN, MSN, Contributor, The MAHA Report

Early in The MAHA Cookbook (due out from Skyhorse on Nov. 25), the author, Australian Pete Evans, writes with down-to-earth honesty about feeling bloated, inflamed, twenty to thirty pounds overweight, and generally “flat.”

For a chef who built his life around food, that discomfort became a turning point. It pushed Evans toward a profound truth: that food is medicine, capable of transforming how we feel, function, and live.

That awakening sits at the heart of the MAHA movement, which holds that whole, ancestral foods are not just nourishment, but also a road back to health for individuals, families, and America itself. Evans’ realization laid the foundation for a cookbook that expresses, with warmth and clarity, exactly what MAHA stands for.

Evans also acknowledges that humans are the only species confused about what to eat. Every other creature eats according to instinct and laws of nature. But we have been buried under decades of conflicting guidelines, corporate interests, media influence, food chock-full with chemicals, and contradictory nutrition science. The MAHA Report, published by the White House’s MAHA Commission, calls out the dietary disinformation system where entire industries profit when people fall chronically ill. Chronic disease is a revenue stream. Dietary confusion is engineered to make us sick and fat.

Evans’ MAHA Cookbook is the antidote to that confusion by empowering each of us with the means and method to a healthier diet. The author returns to us our most ancestral truth: that healthy, whole foods like meat, seafood, vegetables, herbs, and healthy fats have always been the foundation of human health. The brilliance of this book is that it makes eating healthier achievable, joyful, and delicious in the process.

The narrative is warm and personal, but it’s the food that really pulls in the reader. When Evans writes about starting the day with protein-rich, blood sugar-steadying meals, you can immediately imagine dishes like his Skillet-Baked Bacon, Spinach, and Cherry Tomato Omelet as the kind of breakfast that makes you feel grounded and satisfied. After such a good start to the day, who can binge eat junk food?

When Evans talks about reconnecting with the joy of cooking from scratch, you can almost taste the flavor bursting out of the Thai Pork Skewers with Lettuce Cups & Nam Jim, a dish that’s as fun to eat as it is nourishing.

This cookbook excels at taking ancestral, nutrient-dense foods, and recreating them in modern, tasty, family-friendly ways. When Evans talks about the power of wild-caught seafood and the benefits of omega-3s, it comes alive with recipes like Wild Salmon with Minted Pea Purée and Lemon Broth – elegant, fresh, and deeply restorative.

When Evans talks about the health attributes of organic, seasonal produce, it’s easy to get hungry looking at baked, blistered cabbage, caramelized squash, rosemary, garlic, and nutritional yeast—the kind of “simple food cooked well” that makes you rethink vegetables entirely.

Even sweet treats under Evans’ visionary presentation, and MAHA principles, are crafted with thought and restraint. For example, Evans’ Jaffa Truffles are rich, mouth-watering, chocolatey treats that don’t have the blood sugar roller-coaster of conventional sweets. These dishes embody the MAHA mission that diet and health should feel good, and not restrictive.

What makes this cookbook so usable, aside from the delicious dishes, is its practicality. Evans doesn’t assume readers have endless time or money, or even that they are already good cooks. He builds from the ground up, teaching readers how to shop smart for high-quality food—tracking down economical cuts of grass-fed beef, ground meat, eggs, sardines, wild fish, seasonal produce, and the deals hidden in co-ops and farmers’ markets. These foods are tailored for real budgets and real households.

Evans points out to readers that nutrient-dense foods are often the most affordable. Best of all, he gives permission to swap ingredients freely, to improvise, use what’s local and fresh, and to avoid perfectionism. This is how we learn to eat and prepare healthy food.

Readers of The MAHA Cookbook will find that its author mentions children and picky eaters with the perfect blend of research and compassion. Kids and picky adults may need ten to fifteen exposures before accepting a new food, but when they become intimately involved in the process, it changes everything. Helping to whisk, sprinkle, shape, or taste from the pan, brings curiosity and ‘skin in the game’ – and these recipes are so perfect for getting others involved and awakening palates.

Beyond food, The MAHA Cookbook doubles as a lifestyle guide, showing how healthy diets and healthy lifestyles can and should work together. Evans shows us how interconnected our daily choices are, such as drinking quality water, following circadian rhythms, getting better sleep, adding daily movement, avoiding blue light and EMF, being mindful of language, emotional resilience, and fasting.

None of this feels overwhelming coming from Evans. Instead, it reads like a compassionate nudge to remember that health should be instinctual and holistic; it’s more than just what we eat.

The acknowledgments offer a window into the emotional core of the book. Evans thanks Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for being “a beacon of love” and expresses deep gratitude to publisher (and MAHA Action president, Tony Lyons, writing, “without you, this book would not be.”) He also honors the MAHA families showing up for their children, and ethical farmers, fishermen, photographers, and collaborators who keep real food culture alive.

The MAHA Cookbook is not simply a chef teaching us how to cook good food. It is a labor of love, a passionate voice speaking directly to the MAHA community seeking truth, sovereignty, and better health. The book embodies the MAHA mission to Make America Healthy Again, starting at home, one hungry soul at a time.

The beauty of Evans’ recipes is how genuinely doable they are: simple techniques, easy-to-find ingredients, and dishes so delicious your family and friends will fall in love with them.

Evans ends the book with a simple invitation: “Cook with love and laughter.” This is perhaps the most powerful step any of us can take toward reclaiming our health—one meal, one family, one kitchen at a time.