Essentials of Food Science

by Vickie A. Vaclavik, Elizabeth W. Christian

Designed primarily for the non-Food Science major, this textbook presents principles of food science for the nutrition, dietetics, hospitality, and culinary arts student enrolled in an introductory food science course. As in the first edition the book is easily readable. Chapters follow the order of the USDA's Food Guide Pyramid, beginning with foods appearing at the base of the Pyramid - the bread, cereal, rice, and pasta foods, and continuing with foods through the top of the Pyramid - the fatty, oils, and sweets. A chapter on baked products covers batters and doughs, and builds upon information in earlier chapters. The last chapters cover aspects of food production and government regulation.
For this second edition the authors have expanded the concepts relating to material in all chapters, including quality, gums, organic food, irradiation, biotechnology, sugar substitutes, fat replacers, packaging, health claims, and dietary guidelines. There is also a new chapter dedicated to a discussion on emulsification and foams. In addition, the index has been revamped.
As nutrition and food safety continue to be important issues, where applicable, individual chapters contain sections on nutritive value and safety concerns regarding the foods discussed. Additionally, each chapter contains a glossary and helpful references useful for further study.
Using a multidisciplinary approach, Essentials of Food Science, Second Edition combines food chemistry, food technology, and food preparation into one single source of information.

Genres: Nonfiction, Food Science

500 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1995

Reviews

[Katelin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is really good for a textbook. I actually enjoyed reading it most of the time! :) It explains things really simply and in a way that I could understand.

[Jocelyn]

More of a rant than a review: The editing on this was so very bad. There were evident errors of fact not caught in editing, as well as usage errors. There were several instances of repeated text. There were many passages of text that had clearly been harvested from other sources and just dumped in at the end of a section in order to "update" it, with nothing connecting them to the information that'd come beforehand. I did get some value out of the reading, but it felt like a constant uphill battle. More than once I was tempted to start marking needed changes, but I never did, because as soon as I'd pass one where I'd think, "I'd fix that this way," I'd shortly encounter one that was such a disaster that editing on the page would have been hopeless.

[Bernie4444 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ancient textbook.

This critter is fun to read and discover how they used to do that. It even contains black-and-white pictures of extinct machines.

This is not another cookbook as it contains the old food pyramid, and such interesting figures as figure 3-6 Sucrose chemical makeup, and figure 6-1 Structure of a wheat kernel.

Be sure not to read this just before you eat.

[Young Min · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really appreciated how the author simplified it so the general public can pick it up too.

It's a good book to read if you are looking for general knowledge, you should look for another book if you want to get into the details :)