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Hardcover: 512 pages
The single most authoritative guide to shopping and eating for better health and a longer life.
Margen, nutrition researcher and chair of the editorial board of the University of California, Berkeley Wellness Letter , has compiled a unique reference source. Unlike such references as A.H. and M.E. Emsinger's Foods and Nutrition Encyclopedia (Pegus Pr. , 1983), which is geared to nutritionists, The Columbia Encyclopedia of Nutrition ( LJ 6/1/88) , which offers short articles on all aspects of nutrition but nothing on individual foods, or Nikki and David Goldbeck's The Supermarket Handbook ( LJ 10/15/73 ), which emphasizes the purchasing of foods, The Wellness Encyclopedia of Food and Nutrition combines the selection and storage of foods with nutritional information. This resource is well organized, easy to read, and nicely illustrated. Starting with a discussion of nutrition (fiber, fats, vitamins, etc. ), the text then concentrates on types of food (vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, meats and poultry, fish and shellfish, dairy and eggs) , covering over 500 fresh and whole foods that the average American cook would use, although not all regional varieties are included. Accompanied by photographs, each food and its varieties are described with availability information, shopping tips, storage information, preparation ideas, and serving suggestions (although there are no actual recipes). Scattered throughout the text are inset boxes and tables of information, the most important being the nutritional profiles and those giving interesting factual tidbits, e.g., that diabetics who eat a substantial amount of beans need less insulin to control their blood sugar. The appendixes include a cooking terms glossary, fats and oils discussion, and herbs and spices dictionary. The index is useful, but it would have been nice to have had cross references. (When readers are looking for prickly pear pads , for instance, nothing refers them to cactus pear , which is the term used.) This encyclopedia definitely fills a niche between the highly technical nutrition books and the basic how-to-shop books. Highly recommended.
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