Nutritional Health: Strategies for Disease Prevention (Electronic book text)

Nutrition is pivotal in the prevention of chronic diseases. This understanding has produced a parallel growth in the need to provide both health-care providers and the public with more and better information about how nutrition helps maintain optimal health. In Nutritional Health: Strategies for Disease Prevention, Ted Wilson and Norman J. Temple have assembled an authoritative and comprehensive collection of cutting-edge reviews detailing the scientific evidence for the health effects of vitamins, minerals, functional foods, and other classes of foods. The authors provide readers with updated recommendations on a wide range of significant nutritional questions, including the cardiovascular effects of dietary fats and homocysteine, the importance of antioxidants and soy isoflavones with respect to heart disease and cancer, and the use of dietary modifications in the prevention and/or treatment of blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and osteoporosis. Also addressed are issues related to nutritional aids for physical performance, nutraceuticals, and genetic engineering of our foods. The book also discusses epidemiological studies and using the Internet to obtain nutritional information, as well as the question of how changes in our nutritional habits can be implemented through health promotion and government policy. Richly insightful and up-to-date, Nutritional Health: Strategies for Disease Prevention offers health providers everywhere sound advice on optimizing nutritional habits, as well as a valuable guide to the growing body of literature that shows how nutritional interventions have become essential to reducing the risk of chronic disease.