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Eli Lilly & Company
Lilly Corporate Center, DC 2138
Indianapolis, IN 46285 E-mail: coulstonam{at}lilly.com
This introductory nutrition textbook represents the cumulative knowledge and experience of the author and his colleagues as a result of >20 y of teaching basic nutrition to university students. Divided into 30 chapters, the book follows the style of a traditional academic lecture course—3 chapters each week of a 10-wk quarter. Each chapter ends with key words and concepts and questions to stimulate student discussions or projects. The chapters fall into 4 traditional sections: social and behavioral aspects of nutrition, nutrients in the body, nutrition through the life cycle, and nutrition-disease relations. The 46-page glossary at the end of the book, supplementing the key words for each chapter, is a nice touch for an introductory text.
Although the front matter states that the text contains new findings from research, the pace of biological and physiologic sciences is such that any findings quickly become outdated by the time printed material is in the bookstore. Consequently, depending on one's area of expertise, one can disagree with explanations and key findings, which may have been the state of the art at the time of writing but are not so today. The astute instructor can update material while teaching from this text. An interesting twist in a book such as this would have been a suggestion in each chapter for students (and instructors) to check whether a topic—ie, the Food Guide Pyramid, dietary reference intakes, or nutrition guidelines for cancer, heart disease, and diabetes from professional associations—has been updated since publication.
In my opinion, textbooks for use in today's university setting must offer the student the information needed to continuously update knowledge and skills, by recommending specific web sites by area or title that can be searched for the latest URL and information, key journals to browse for the latest findings, and Internet update sites. For example, genomic, metabolomic, and proteomic information is missing from this text. In order to keep moving forward in nutritional science, students need to have basic genetic information and a sense of the way this information is used in nutrition.
Textbooks in nutrition include ample (sometimes excessive) historical information but miss the boat in offering conceptual topics for forecasting and future investigation. Historical information is important for perspective, but it can perpetuate out-of-date concepts unless the most recent information is given sufficient coverage and presented as the current state of the art. Readers of this book and similar books should remain alert for information on recent scientific breakthroughs.