Understanding Nutrition (with CD-ROM and InfoTrac) (Understanding Nutrition) Description:

Understanding Nutrition (with CD-ROM and InfoTrac) (Understanding Nutrition) review:
5 stars (It's, well, easy to digest.) - All jokes aside, while students may gripe about having to shell out the bucks for this textbook, it is well worth the money.



I've got an earlier edition and have used it a lot in the past. I found the later editions to be very up to date and quite useful as a reference for some of the clinical questions I encounter while working with patient education issues. In the days of picky insurance reimbursement, it's vital that all the stuff we do be based on sound clinical information showing that what we do is indeed effective.



Easy to understand and a well laid-out text with many good illustrations, there's a good reason its a standard in the field. Can also recommend "The No-Beach, No-Zone, No-Nonsense Weight-Loss Plan" as a sound patient education tool on the basics of losing weight that's also evidence-based.
2 stars (A Book Meant to Be Spit Out) - Francis Bacon said that some books are meant to be chewed, some swallowed, and some digested. This book is meant to be spit out.



I recently returned to the college classroom as a student of Human Anatomy and of Nutrition (preparing for entrance into a nursing program). For those classes I read, respectively, Marieb's "Human Anatomy and Physiology" and Whitney's "Understanding Nutrition." The contrast between these two widely-used textbooks could not be greater. The one is clearly written, lucidly organized, and filled with revealing graphics; the other is horribly opaque, repetitive and senseless in organization, and replete with distracting charts and photos.



Comparisons are odious, so I will just amplify my main points and have done. This book reads as though written by someone who is more anxious to prove the scientific merit of her field or her own expertise in the latest research than by someone interested in helping the reader understand major concepts for further study. Virtually every paragraph has the main point--if there is one--obscured somewhere in the fourth sentence, with irrelevant detail draped around it, so that the reader is forced to do the work the writer should have done. You can learn about nutrition by reading this book in spite of the style, not because of it.



The last three or four chapters on nutrition in the life cycle and diet and health repeat what was presented in various places in earlier chapters on digestion and on nutrients. After reading a popular book on nutrition by a professor at Cambridge(Brown's "Energy of Life") that was clear, concise, and not condescending, I inferred that Whitney has succumbed to the disease afflicting many textbook writers: the structure and content are dictated by the editors' anxiety to keep up with the competition rather than by the author's own insight.



On virtually every page, there is a photo, chart, or graphic that distracts or insults the reader's efforts to learn about nutrition. A stray "factoid" about calories crams the margin or a photo of a vegetable pulls the eye away from the discussion. Evidently the editors feel the subject itself is not interesting enough to keep my attention. They're right, when it's presented in such a haphazard and condescending way.



If this book were not used regularly around the nation as a textbook in many courses, it would long ago have disappeared from the market, since no ordinary intelligent person would voluntarily wade through its turgid, repetitive, and insulting bulk. I'm outraged that this book is so expensive and so lousy. I sold my copy on Amazon the instant the course was over (whereas I cherish my copy of Marieb's book and can't wait to read it again). It's a shame, because now I must look for another book on nutrition, one that I can read and gain insight from with pleasure on an important subject.
5 stars (NO CD ROM IN 9TH EDITION) - I just received this book today. I got the ninth edition which is what I ordered. Unfortunately, Amazon has a review for the 10th edition on the 9th edition page. I didn't read carefully enough and therefore received no CD ROM. The book seems to be very nice, but I do feel ripped off because I expected the CD ROM. Just wanted to warn others!