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Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center, 1120 Marshall Street, Little Rock, AR 72202, E-mail: gilchristjanetm{at}uams.edu
Published by the United Kingdom’s Nutrition Society, this new textbook series exemplifies that organization’s mission: "to advance the scientific study of nutrition and its application to the maintenance of human and animal health." Introduction to Human Nutrition is the first of 4 new textbooks to be released. The rest of the series will include more advanced topics; the titles of these other volumes will be Nutrition and Metabolism, Public Health Nutrition, and Clinical Nutrition. The series has been written by an impressive panel of nearly 130 expert authors from 20 countries, who provide a well-balanced, global approach to the topic of nutrition.
This introductory textbook was designed for students beginning a field of study in nutrition or for students who might take nutrition as part of another curriculum (eg, nursing or pharmacy). The editors state that the purpose of the book is to allow the "student to develop a holistic and integrated understanding of this complex, multifaceted scientific domain." The text does an excellent job of guiding students through information on how humans obtain and utilize foods and nutrients, and it covers these processes from the molecular to the societal level. The text’s 15 chapters cover the typical introductory nutrition topics—body composition; energy metabolism; digestion and metabolism of proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids; dietary reference standards; and vitamins, minerals, and trace elements—and slightly more advanced topics such as food composition, measurement of food intake, nutrition research methods, food policy and regulatory issues, food safety, and global food challenges.
The text is designed to be user-friendly for students, and it offers many learning aids. Each chapter begins with a list of "key messages" that focus the reader’s attention. Boxes highlighting related examples and results of current research are prominent throughout each chapter. Many tables and well-drawn figures clarify the text. Formulas are introduced, and their use is explained with clear, step-by-step examples. Each chapter concludes with a short list to guide further reading; most chapters include classic references. The editors are to be commended for the strong consistency in both the level of detail and the presentation of information in this multiauthor text. The series also has an accompanying website (www.nutritiontexts.com) with forthcoming links that will include teaching aids, suggestions for student projects, book updates, and sample examination questions.
This textbook highlights nutrition as a science and promotes the integration of the discipline with the related fields of molecular biology, genetics, biochemistry, physiology, pathology, immunology, psychology, sociology, political science, anthropology, and economics. It offers an informative overview of nutrition science. Students using this textbook should gain an appreciation of the first era of nutrition—the scientific discovery process and the elucidation of nutrient function, isolation, and synthesis. They are also introduced to nutrition’s renaissance—a focus on the global concerns of malnutrition, both undernutrition and overnutrition (obesity). The authors are quite correct in emphasizing that this full continuum of nutrition concerns may be seen within the same communities, in single households, and even in single individuals.