Product Description

Facts are healthier than fads. New myths and theories about nutrition splash across the headlines every day. Americans spend over $12 billion a year on worthless-even dangerous-nutrtion products. Total Nutrition replaces fads and ignorance with scientific fact.

"A feast of information," says USA Today. What's the best way to give a baby a healthy start? What is the right diet for someone with diabetes or heart disease or arthritis? Do sugar and food additives make children hyperactive? Can foods and vitamins protect against disease? How do foods and medicines interact? What weight-loss diet is both safe and effective? What should an athlete eat for top performance?

The thinking person's guide to nutrition: With forty-one chapters packed with expert medical advice and over two hundred tables, illustrations, and sample menus, this book gives the clear, authoritative answers to all of these questions and more. As fitness broadcaster and columnist Gabe Mirkin, M.D., says, "It is so full of solid scientific information about food that everyone should own a copy."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #524796 in Books
• Published on: 1995-02-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 811 pages

Review
"A feast of information." --USA Today

"Every family needs one. Every family physician should read and recommend it...This is a very significant book." --John H. Renner, M.D., President, Consumer Health Information Research Institute

"In a nutshell, this is the book that contains everything. It is not a gimmick-just straight facts...The book's practical information is outstanding." --American Dietetic Association

"An easy-to-read, thorough, scientifically sound, all-in-one reference book to guide the average person to an educated approach to healthy eating." --Nutrition Today

"[A] clearly written guide [and] excellent reference source." --Library Journal (starred)

"A big, thorough book that is helpful and easy to follow." --Atlantic Monthly

"The nutrition and health counterpart to The Joy of Cooking [that] should be in the home of anyone who wants the recipe for good health through good nutrition." --Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, President, American Council for Science & Health

"Recommended not only for the general public but also for professionals." --Nutrition and the M.D.
-- Review

Customer Reviews

Concise, scientific and medically relevant text of nutrition
I completely disagree with the review of October 25, 1998. Total Nutrition is a serious medical text about nutrition that supports its claims with scientific studies. I have a serious medical condition (a kidney transplant), and have had to learn a considerable amount about nutrition in order to keep my transplant healthy. I have over 60 books on nutrition, and this is the ONLY text that I reccommend to fellow transplant patients to understand nutrition.

The book is in three parts: Part I: Nutrition is explained in detail so that the reader understands what a macronutrient (fat, protein and carbohydrates) and micronutrient (vitamins and minerals) is. Part II: Nutrition and its importance to aging and gender is explained, everything from infants to geriatrics. Part III: Nutrition as it relates to chronic and acute illnesses is explained. Every manner of illness is covered (I learned the most from the section on kidney ailments).

I highly reccommend this book. If you have very little or no understanding of nutrition, Understanding Nutrition (by Ziff Davis press) is a very good introduction to nutrition and explains it in very easy terms. I read that book first and nutrition became very easy to comprehend. Stay healty!!

Some Facts, Too Much Biased Opinion
On the upside, the book is a comprehensive collection of many doctors works on nutrition (as according to FDA and "old school" knowledge). It does explain very well many concepts with great details as expected in any college type text book.

On the downside, the editor Victor Herbert sounds like a very angry skeptic that looks down upon anyone that contributes to the field of nutrition that does not have a "M.D., F.A.C.P" after their name. According to him, even PH.D's are "quacks" (a term by the way which he grossly overuses throughout the book).

I was looking for a unbiased, non-fad, non-hype book on nutrition and what I found was a complete one-sided story that could have been written by Olvier Stone - trying to expose all nutrition's misinformation like...

- Don't beleive any advice about nutrition unless it comes from an M.D. - Organic foods and Health stores are a scam - Vitamin supplements are completely worthless and do nothing - Processed foods are just as good as natural foods

.. the list goes on. Herbert makes claims that he does not back up, with the exception of a few references to his own books that he wrote. This is like a hacker using several computers to hide where they are really coming from.

If you are one that has enough common sense to block out the biased opinion and learn from the facts, then this book is useful. However I am sure there are better choices out there for some good facts.

No Nonsense Approach to Nutrition
Dreamers need not read this book. If you believe that there is a magic herb, vitamin combination, etc that will relieve your need to understand how what you eat impacts your long term looks and health... seek guidance elsewhere (AM radio is full of such information). If you can wade through a fair amount of information to be used as a starting point in building your nutrition IQ, this is a great book. Includes nutrition specifics those with special dietary requirements.