Product Description

You've been hearing it since you were a little kid: "You are what you eat." But unlike most of the adages you’ve long since debunked, this wise saying is true! Good nutrition is the key to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight and lifelong good health—no matter how you slice it.

This edition of Nutrition for Dummies has been updated with the latest revisions of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, new recommended daily allowances for all the nutrients a healthy body needs, plus the real low-down on all the conflicting opinions about vitamins and minerals, protein, fats, and carbs. You’ll discover how to:

• Interpret nutrition labels
• Prepare delicious, healthy meals
• Keep nutrients in food, even after cooking
• Eat smart when eating out
• Evaluate dietary supplements

Nutrition for Dummies, Fourth Edition, is a one-size-fits-all guide to nutrition for anyone who may have fallen asleep in health class, wants to brush up on what they already know, or is looking to keep up-to-speed on all the latest guidelines and research. It shows you how to manage your diet so you can get the most bang (nutrients) for your buck (calories) and gives you the skinny on how to put together a healthy shopping list, how to prepare foods that are good for the body and the soul, and ten easy ways you can cut calories.

An apple a day may not necessarily keep the doctor away, but with the simple guidance of Nutrition for Dummies, you can live happily—and healthily—ever after.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112386 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 408 pages

From Amazon.com
Butter or margarine? Regular or decaf? Wanna supersize those fries? Each of us makes dozens of dietary decisions a day and consumes 1,500 pounds of food a year, but nutrition is one of those topics in which many people--including the majority of physicians--are not well versed. Fortunately, reading Nutrition for Dummies is like watching That's Incredible!: there's no shortage of fascinating tidbits. Read it if you've ever popped a multivitamin and figured it would compensate for not getting your five fruits and veggies.

Longtime health journalist Carol Ann Rinzler clearly walks you through the anatomy of the digestive system (including the difference between a duodenal and a peptic ulcer), the roles of the six basic groups of nutrients, the highs and unfortunate lows of metabolism, and the links between diet, aging, and disease. While these topics could be dry and dull, she spices them up with clear charts and illustrations, lively writing, and fascinating facts: "Megadoses of vitamin A {as retinol} may cause symptoms that make you think you have a brain tumor"; "Fluoride levels higher than 6 milligrams a day are considered hazardous"; the mineral copper "prevents your hair from turning gray prematurely"; oysters are correctly reputed to be aphrodisiacs, as they're high in zinc, which helps produce testosterone.

Rinzler then covers food processing, how cooking affects nutrition (yes, cooking in an iron pan will add iron to your food), how to read food labels and choose supplements, and how to cope with food allergies and intolerances. She also lists common food-drug interactions (taking aspirin increases your folate and iron requirements). There's plenty in here that will benefit dieters--a food listed as "fat-free!" for example, can still contain up to half a gram of fat. Rinzler also lists her top 10s: Web sites, superstar foods, and easy ways to cut calories. An appendix listing nutritional information for hundreds of common foods is also included. --Erica Jorgensen

Ingram
This handy guide puts an end to the confusing messages about nutrition and makes healthy eating easier for everyone. Nutrition For Dummies shows readers how to improve their current eating habits with calorie and nutrition charts for over 200 foods.

Book Info
Consumer text presents how to interpret nutrition labels, distinguish good fat from bad fat, prepare healthy meals, select a weight-loss plan that works, preserve nutrients when cooking food, and eat smart when dining out. Softcover.

Customer Reviews

Lots of food for thoughts here
Like any book of the Dummies series, this book provides a lot of information, and establishes a strong foundation in an incredibly complex and confusing field. I am a big fan of the Dummies series. Thanks to them, I learned a varied set of skills including EXCEL software, Chess, and cooking. But, nutrition is far more confusing than a user friendly software program.

This book gives you all the basics you need to know about nutrition. This includes a good description of the macro nutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fats). The author even describes their respective chemical molecular compositions. Coverage of micro nutrients (vitamins, minerals) is just as good. This book gives you the information so you will eat healthily, understand what you eat, and what are your eating requirements. It is just like an excellent textbook for a college level course on nutrition. Except, as all Dummies book, it is a lot funnier and user friendly to read and extract the information than a college textbook.

A great book for those who wish to create their own diets
This book title may be misleading, as it is not for dummies, it is for those who know little about nutrition but wish to know more It is highly informative, covering all aspects of nutrition, including vitamins, minerals, etc. that are stored in the body as well as those are not. Examples are given for foods that promote good health with plenty of references and studies that back up these claims. The digestive system is explained to give a very good and necessary knowledge of how foods are metabolized in the body. Scientific names are given, always with the layman's term or at least a thorough explanation. Plenty of websites are given for further reference. I highly recommend this book for those who wish to further their knowledge of nutrition. An excellent companion book, which is almost completely a very thorough list of food values and little else is 'Bowes And Church's Food Values of Portionz Commonly Used'.

Nutrition for Dummies
This is an excellent source of information organized in an easy-to-read format. It covers an entire range of topics from basic facts to healthy eating and food preparation. Much of the data is arranged in chart and table formats, which make it a great reference guide.