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Dean, College of Agriculture
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA
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INTRODUCTION |
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 TOP INTRODUCTION |
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Nutrition has evolved as a requisite part of the nation’s health over the last 25 years. Health professionals have acknowledged its contributions to both treatment and prevention of disease, resulting in the incorporation of nutrition principles into clinical practice. Nutrition has now been added into curriculi for traditional and osteopathic medical schools, physician assistant and nurse practioner programs, public health and other related health-science programs. Unfortunately there has been no well written text book to meet the needs of these programs. The Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease series is excellent but too expensive for most student text needs, while the ILSI volume Present Knowledge in Nutrition is at the appropriate level, reasonably priced, but not broad enough in its clinical application. The current text is another effort to meet this need.
The text was divided into four topic sections. The design of the chapter sequence and section content was quite good. Although the introduction to the book provided a reasonably thorough overview of nutrition basics, it could have been enlarged to allow the depth of the presentations to establish a stronger knowledge base.
The first section, Fundamentals of Nutrition, contained 11 chapters, ten of which were fairly compressed. These chapters summarized all of the key topics on carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, minerals, vitamins, and vitamin like substances. The author provided the essence of needed information for each topic, which may be sufficient at this level, where application may be most important it might be assumed that the details of nutrition basics should be obtained in a separate text. Yet, the author valued materials on eicosinoids enough to expand that topic into a separate chapter of its own following the essential fatty acid chapter.
The second section, Special Nutrition Needs, emphasized pregnancy and lactation, development, and aging. The section again provided the essence of topics for the reader, but would require supplemental materials if used as a teaching text.
The third section characterized nutrition assessment and each of five specific nutrition disorders—obesity and eating disorders, cholesterol and hyperlipidemia, osteoporosis, diabetes, and genetic disease. The author briefly summarized these major topics without developing the controversies that surround the role of nutrition in these areas. Food allergy and food intolerance should have been included as an important chapter in this section.
The fourth section provided a brief overview (10 pages each) of several special topic areas, including fiber, antioxidants, natural toxicants and additives, vegetarianism, nutrition and biotransformation, and nutraceuticals.
The subjects were fairly well presented but superficially discussed in several areas, but as an overview text with supplemental materials provided it could easily serve most introductory courses in nursing, physician assistant, public health and non-nutrition major courses. One criticism was the printing of the text as a small 5x8 in book, while a larger volume would have allowed modest addition of more material. As a recommendation to the author and publisher, a paperback workbook to complement the text would enhance its usefulness in teaching.
Received July 1, 1998.
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