Nutrition and Dietetic Resources: Books

Dietary assessment in older adults presents many unique problems due to the diversity of health states and capabilities that span the population group. Little is known about dietary intakes, body composition, and nutritional status among individuals 75 and older. The National Academies Food and Nutrition Board hosted a virtual workshop series in spring 2022 intended to provide guidance to researchers and clinicians. The workshops aimed to outline considerations relating to different methods of assessing intakes of food and dietary supplements in older adults.

This second volume in the Food Policy series focuses on critical nutrition and dietetics studies, offering an innovative and interdisciplinary exploration of the complexities of the food supply and the actors in it through a new critical lens.   The volume provides an overview of the growth of critical nutrition and dietetics since its inception in 2009, as well as commentary on its continuing relevance and its applicability in the fields of dietetic education, research, and practice. Chapters address key topics such as how to bring critical dietetics into conventional practice, applying critical diets in clinical practice, policy applications, and new perspectives on training and educating a critical nutrition and dietetic workforce. Contributing authors from around the globe also discuss the role of critical nutrition dietetics in industry, private practice, and consultancy, as well the role of critical dietetics in addressing the food, hunger, and health issues associated with the world economic crisis. 

The Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) are a set of reference values that encompass a safe range of intake and provide recommended nutrient intakes for the United States and Canada. The DRIs for energy are used widely to provide guidance for maintaining energy balance on both an individual and group level. U.S. and Canadian governments asked the National Academies to convene an expert committee to examine available evidence and provide updated Estimated Energy Requirements (EERs) for their populations. The resulting report presents EER equations that provide a baseline for dietary planners and assessors who are estimating energy needs and monitoring energy balance to enhance the general health of individuals and populations.

As essential nutrients, sodium and potassium contribute to the fundamentals of physiology and pathology of human health and disease. In clinical settings, these are two important blood electrolytes, are frequently measured and influence care decisions. Yet, blood electrolyte concentrations are usually not influenced by dietary intake, as kidney and hormone systems carefully regulate blood values. Over the years, increasing evidence suggests that sodium and potassium intake patterns of children and adults influence long-term population health mostly through complex relationships among dietary intake, blood pressure and cardiovascular health. The public health importance of understanding these relationships, based upon the best available evidence and establishing recommendations to support the development of population clinical practice guidelines and medical care of patients is clear. This report reviews evidence on the relationship between sodium and potassium intakes and indicators of adequacy, toxicity, and chronic disease.

Dietary supplements made from foods, herbs and their constituents are a rapidly growing market sector. Consumers often view food supplements as 'natural' and therefore safe; however, supplements are regulated as foods rather than as pharmaceuticals and so are not as closely monitored as may be necessary. With the commercial market in these products growing, this book provides essential research into their safety, efficacy and potential risk of interaction with pharmaceuticals.

This multivolume reference work addresses the fact that the well being of humankind is predicated not only on individuals receiving adequate nutrition but also on their genetic makeup

This is an easy-to-use handbook written for the clinician and other healthcare professionals who treat and counsel pregnant women and women of child-bearing age. The authors provide historical perspective and background to support recommendations which are provided in each chapter. Importantly for the practitioners, recommendations and guidelines have been summarized and provided in tables that are easy to locate and interpret. This book discusses relevant topics in the scientific community such as determining to what extent prenatal and perinatal environmental factors are linked to childhood and adult obesity and chronic diseases.

This book focuses on the nutrients and nutraceuticals that promote active and healthy ageing - recently defined by the WHO as the process of development and maintenance of functional capacity that allows well-being at an advanced stage of life. There has been a rapid rise in the use of nutritional interventions as well as specific nutraceuticals in the management of multifactorial aspects of clinical health outcomes. Written by leading experts this book comprehensively discusses the various ageing phenotypes and age-related diseases. It also assesses the nutritional status of the elderly and the various epidemiological factors that influence it. It reviews the role of dietary fiber in disease-free and fully functional ageing. Further, the book explores the benefits of polyphenols, which are secondary plant metabolites, in protecting against cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and various neurodegenerative diseases.

On December 5, 2017, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted a public workshop titled Nutrigenomics and the Future of Nutrition in Washington, DC, to review current knowledge in the field of nutrigenomics as it relates to nutrition. Workshop participants explored the influence of genetic and epigenetic expression on nutritional status and the potential impact of personalized nutrition on health maintenance and chronic disease prevention. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

While medical professionals continue to practice traditional allopathic medicine, the public has turned toward nutritional and integrative medical therapies, especially for addressing the proliferation of chronic diseases. Written by leaders in the academic and scientific world, Nutrition and Integrative Medicine: A Primer for Clinicians presents various modalities to help restore health. This book provides users with a guide to evaluating and recommending nutritional and integrative therapies. The book offers insights on the microbiome of the human body, examines the relationship of human health to the microbiome of the food we ingest, and introduces the concept of "food as information." It provides enlightenment on anti-aging and healing modalities, mind-body medicine, and an investigation of psychological trauma as related to disease causation. Integrative therapies, including water, light, and sound therapy, are explored, and information on healing chronic disease through nutrition, the tooth-body connection, the role of toxins in disease causation, and electromagnetic field hypersensitivity, as well as its management, is presented.

The importance of nutrition in the prevention and treatment of disease and the maintenance of good health is being increasingly recognised. Nutrition is an area that all health professionals need to be aware of and yet one in which few are specifically trained. However it is now becoming a valued topic in many curricula. The Oxford Handbook of Nutrition and Dietetics makes this information more accessible to dieticians, doctors, nurses, nutritionists, and other healthcare professionals by providing a practical, easily accessible, concise and up-to-date evidence-based guide in a user-friendly portable handbook. It covers the entire life cycle from preconception to old age. As the general public is increasingly aware of the food they eat and the role nutrition plays in health and disease, health professionalsmust have the kind of knowledge in this book at their fingertips.

This book provides the latest research on the role of nutrients in the prevention and treatment of neurological disorders. It discusses dietary supplements and dietary restrictions for combating neurological disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, stroke, and epilepsy. The book also explains the impact of different nutrients such as herbal products, algae, micronutrients in stimulating the brain and central nervous system during abnormal functions. It covers the effect of the nutrients on the function of neurotransmitters, their stimulatory effect in autism, dementia, Alzheimer's, and other neuropathological states. The book also defines the mechanistic effects of neuroprotective and psycho protective effects of natural food in repairing brain damage.

  Many statistical innovations are linked to applications in food science. For example, the student t-test (a statistical method) was developed to monitor the quality of stout at the Guinness Brewery and multivariate statistical methods are applied widely in the spectroscopic analysis of foods. Nevertheless, statistical methods are most often associated with engineering, mathematics, and the medical sciences, and are rarely thought to be driven by food science. Consequently, there is a dearth of statistical methods aimed specifically at food science, forcing researchers to utilize methods intended for other disciplines.   The objective of this Brief will be to highlight the most needed and relevant statistical methods in food science and thus eliminate the need to learn about these methods from other fields.  All methods and their applications will be illustrated with examples from research literature.  ​