An Introduction To Nutrition

by Beth Snow, Maureen Zimmerman

813 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Al Da · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was assigned for me to study in my nutrition class in the college. It explained all the aspects of human nutrition, the ups and downs of many foods, and a complete explanation of the food categories and the daily recommendations based on the USDA, FDA, and US dietary recommendations.

The book also showed the history of some foods and crops along with explanations of the relationship between certain diseases and nutrition.

It was a good and interesting book, and I gained a lot of knowledge and benefited from it in improving some aspects of my diet.

However, many pieces of information were outdated, many were biased against certain kinds of foods although the research has showed the opposite, and some information was even wrong if we were to put it under the microscope of the recent scientific findings.

Also, I believe most of the cultural stories that were mentioned in this book were wrong, especially when they are related to the Arab world. Starting with the story (or call it the myth) of Kefir and Prophet Muhammad, which was a completely false and made up story.

Moreover, the cultural information regarding the Islamic traditions in eating and even the names of plates and their countries of origin were a complete disaster. For example, it says that in Ethiopia, the country was influenced by the Islamic traditions which forbids pork, wine and spices!. Also, there is nothing called Pita bread in the Arab world, the Kibbeh plate is Syrian and not Lebanese, and the Mediterranean diet involves (and even originate from) many Arab countries and not just Italy and Greece!

All this, and more, have ruined the reading joy and made me question the reliability of the other information and decide not to take any information of the book for granted.

Any way, it was a good book overall, but has many pitfalls and mistakes, which means it MUST be reviewed, renewed and corrected.

[Reigan Dunkle]

Read for class

[To Da · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a good source of nutritional information but sometimes it becomes confusing due to presenting contradictory information about the benefits and harms of certain food or substances. Definitely, you will see a lot of talking and repetition throughout the book which made you retain and remember the information well but, at the same time, feel bored. Anyway, the information in this book needs reviewing because some are out-of-date because many new dietary discoveries and researches have taken place. Additionally, all the broken links should be corrected. However, it is a neat, well-organized textbook.