Nutrition: Dictionary of Food Additives, Pesticides, Animal Drugs and Other Ways Our Food has been Changed

Discover what's really behind our culture's pre-made craze on the first floor of the library in the Reference Section.

A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives (BOOK): by Ruth Winter

With our culture’s growing interest in organic foods and healthy eating, it is important to understand what food labels mean and to learn how to read between the lines. This completely revised and updated edition of A Consumer’s Dictionary of Food Additives gives you the facts about the safety and side effects of more than 12,000 ingredients–such as preservatives, food-tainting pesticides, and animal drugs–that end up in food as a result of processing and curing. It tells you what’s safe
and what you should leave on the grocery-store shelves.

In addition to updated entries that cover the latest medical and scientific research on substances such as food enhancers and preservatives, this must-have guide includes more than 650 new chemicals now commonly used in food. You’ll also find information on modern food-production technologies such as bovine growth hormone and genetically engineered vegetables.

Alphabetically organized, cross-referenced, and written in everyday language, this is a precise tool for understanding food labels and knowing which products are best to bring home to your family.

Nutrition: Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism: Fat and Finland?

Full issues of electronic journals available in EBSCO. The August 2009 Supplement 1. Vol. 54 is focused on the importance of fat. These recent surveys, studies and discoveries in this journal are shaping how we will think and act towards the consumption of fat.


Fat and Heart Disease: Yes We Can Make a Change – The Case of North Karelia (Finland).

The exceptionally high mortality from cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the Finnish population in the 1970s ensued the initiation of preventive health interventions, which were first started in the Province of North Karelia and later on extended to all other regions of Finland. Their aim was to change population diets, especially with respect to the quality of fat: to reduce saturated and increase unsaturated fat intake. In addition, emphasis was placed on increased vegetable intake and salt reduction. The aim of this paper was to illustrate the effect of combined efforts of several stakeholders on CVD.

Consumer Perception and Insights on Fats and Fatty Acids: Knowledge on the Quality of Diet Fat.

Research indicates that consumers do not understand dietary fat, either the importance of the quality or the quantity of fats needed for health. Previous consumer surveys suggest the priority placed on fat in various nutrition communications (i.e., low fat or reduction in fats) has contributed to this confusion. Methods: This consumer study was carried out in 16 countries in two waves, investigating in total 6,426 subjects. The survey was conducted by phone, internet and face-to-face interviews, depending on the acceptable method for the population. Participants, aged 18–70 years, were the main family shopper.

Foods with a High Fat Quality Are Essential for Healthy Diets.

Fat is generally a highly valued element of the diet to provide energy, palatability to dry foods or to serve as a cooking medium. However, some foods rich in fat have a low fat quality with respect to nutrition, i.e., a relative high content of saturated (SFA) as compared to unsaturated fatty acids, whereas others have a more desirable fat quality, i.e., a relative high content of unsaturated fatty acids as compared to SFA. High-fat dairy products and fatty meats are examples of foods with low fat quality, whereas vegetable oils (tropical oils such as palm and coconut oil excluded) are products with a generally high fat quality. The aim of this paper is to explore the nutritional impact of products made of vegetable oils, e.g. margarines and dressings, and how they can be designed to contribute to good health. Since their first industrial production, the food industry has endeavored to improve products like margarines, including their nutritional characteristics. With evolving nutrition science, margarines and cooking products, and to a lesser extent dressings, have been adapted to contain less trans fatty acids (TFA), less SFA and more essential (polyunsaturated, PUFA) fatty acids. This has been possible by using careful fat and oil selection and modification processes. By blending vegetable oils rich in the essential PUFAs α-linolenic acid (vegetable omega–3) or linoleic acid (omega–6), margarines and dressings with both essential fatty acids present in significant quantities can be realized. In addition, full hydrogenation and fat rearrangement have enabled the production of cost-effective margarines virtually devoid of TFA and low in SFA. Dietary surveys indicate that vegetable oils, soft margarines and dressings are indeed often important sources of essential fatty acids in people’s diets, whilst providing negligible amounts of TFA and contributing modestly to SFA intakes. Based on empirical and epidemiological data, the public health benefit of switching from products with a low fat quality to products with a high fat quality can be predicted. For example, switching from butter or palm oil to a soft margarine shows a substantial improvement in the nutritional quality of the diet. These simple, practical dietary adaptations can be expected to contribute to the healthy growth and development of children and to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease.

Dietary Fat Intake – A Global Perspective. The objective of this review was to collect data on the dietary intake of total fat and saturated (SFA), monounsaturated (MUFA) and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), especially linoleic (LA), α-linolenic (ALA), eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic fatty acids, in adults from various countries and to compare them with current recommendations for fat intake. Methods: Weighted mean intake data were collected from national dietary surveys, large cross-sectional studies and/or studies with focus on health and nutrition. Thereof, only studies with diet recalls, weighing records or food frequency questionnaires were considered.

The List of Nutrition Journals Available through EBSCO

Nutrition: Sports Health, Drug Usage, and Anorexia

Sports Science, Nutrition, Physical Education and all other Health-Related Majors, here are great resources for your next project!

Drugs in Sport (BOOK): edited by David R. Mottram

With the recent major updates in worldwide anti-doping laws and changes to the prohibited and therapeutic exemption lists, this fourth edition of the bestselling Drugs in Sport presents authoritative, hard science information about the actions of drugs, hormones, medication and nutritional supplements in sport.

Written by a well respected pharmacologist from one of the UK’s leading sports science universities, this much-needed new edition of a market leader continues to focus on one of the most high profile themes in sport science, providing high quality detailed information. Some of the key issues covered include:

* the latest doping control regulations of the WADA
* the use of therapeutic drugs banned in sport
* an assessment of the prevalence of drug taking in sport.

Going Hungry: Writers on Desire, Self-Denial, and Overcoming Anorexia (BOOK): edited by Kate Taylor

Edited by New York Sun reporter Taylor, this topical anthology showcases nearly 20 authors’ struggles with anorexia nervosa. The contributors include novelist Jennifer Egan, poet Louise Glück, and former New York Times reporter Joyce Maynard. Each author delineates his or her own personal battle with the disease, but by the fifteenth story, they begin to meld into a chorus. Young and old, men and women, all are included, and together they provide telling glimpses into the struggles of anorexics. The writing seems to be therapeutic for many, including Francine du Plessix Gray, who penned a bitter open letter to her deceased parents. Maura Kelly tells of her blue-collar widower father’s difficulty coping with her disorder as he tried to support and raise his family alone. Amanda Fortini discusses our obsession with thinness and the reactions of men and women to her weight loss after she acquired a parasite on a trip to Brazil. Each author provides a unique, often disquieting perspective on an increasingly common disease. --Katherine Boyle

Hyping Health Risks: Environmental Hazards in Daily Life and the Science of Epidemiology (BOOK): by Geoffrey C. Kabat

Hyping Health Risks provides a valuable counterpoint to the confusion and paranoia that seems to grow proportionate to the constant barrage of health risk studies. Examining four of the most persistent and controversial issues in public health, Kabat's lucid and well-written book gives the lay reader all the basic concepts and epidemiological tools she needs to understand the available evidence. His presentation allows us to better discriminate between what matters to our health and what matters to the 'hypers'-a wide array of stakeholders, some well-intentioned, some much less so. -- Ernest Drucker, Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Geoffrey C. Kabat, a respected epidemiologist, provides an insider's account of how a number of ostensible health hazards have been blown out of proportion. While we face a daily barrage of health scares, Kabat cuts through the confusion and provides a lucid and rigorous rationale for rejecting much of the fear culture that permeates our society. -- Shelly Ungar, University of Toronto

With clarity and dispassion, Geoffrey C. Kabat challenges widespread beliefs that secondhand smoke, low levels of radon, and other ostensible environmental nemeses are certain killers. In making his case, Kabat draws extensively on scientific evidence while shunning rhetoric and political posturing. The result is an admirable search for scientific truth amid a sea of conflicting and often uninformed opinions. -- Leonard Cole, Rutgers University

Making Americans Healthier: Social and Economic Policy as Health Policy (BOOK): edited by Robert F. Schoeni

The United States spends billions of dollars annually on social and economic policies aimed at improving the lives of its citizens, but the health consequences associated with these policies are rarely considered. In Making Americans Healthier, a group of multidisciplinary experts shows how social and economic policies seemingly unrelated to medical well-being have dramatic consequences for the health of the American people.