Nutritional Health—Strategies for Disease Prevention

2nd ed, edited by Norman J Temple, Ted Wilson, and David R Jacobs Jr, 2006, 488 pages, hardcover, $99.50. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ.

Center for Nutrition and Weight Management
Boston University Medical Center
88 East Newton Street
Boston, MA 02118
E-mail: caroline.apovian{at}bmc.org

Nutritional Health is a delightful read for any health care professional interested in preventive issues regarding our nutriture. This book is chock-full of the newest data on such topics as phytochemicals, neutraceuticals, and the food industry's role in the politically charged obesity epidemic. We hear from the media daily regarding all of these topics, and it is refreshing to get an insider's evidence-based view of the topics that are cutting-edge nutrition for 2006 and will continue to be in 2007 and beyond.

This book also includes contributions touching on the more mainstream topics in nutrition, such as medical nutrition for diabetes, prevention of type 2 diabetes, obesity, cancer prevention, diet, and control of blood lipids and blood pressure.

I have not personally seen a nutrition textbook with such a varied selection of topics. This book truly spans the eclectic and vast expanse of topics that the field of nutrition encompasses and for which nutrition specialists are faced with answering questions about daily. For example, 2 chapters address the use of supplements and herbs in the management of disease and how they are marketed to the public. These issues have ramifications for all practitioners, from the registered dietitian, to the nurse, to the physician. Many patients use herbs and supplements in addition to the care that they receive from their medical professionals, and sometimes this information is not shared with the practitioner. It is critical that health professionals elicit this information from their patients to prevent possible interactions with other medications.

We are living in a medical era in which we are on the cusp of diagnosing the risk of nutritional disease via genetic testing. Animal studies suggest that the risk of developing type 2 diabetes because of poor eating habits, specifically a high-fat diet, can be attenuated by a certain genotype and increased by another. Of course, in humans, it is much more complex than this because we know that the progression to type 2 diabetes is influenced more by a high-energy, high-glycemic-index diet than by a high-fat diet. Nonetheless, once we find a cost-effective way of screening humans for these particular genotypes, we may well be on our way toward prescribing diets based on genotype and not on blood type. This textbook represents a bridge between the traditional healthy diet programs that preach the same eating plan for everyone and the individualized plans of the future—a nutrition transition. We are merely a step away, and this book brings us up to date—to the edge of nutritional genotyping. In the meantime, this is a fascinating book that runs the gamut from functional foods to nutritional anthropology.