Dear Reader:

Among the life sciences, nutrition is arguably one of the most dynamic, debated, and discussed. No doubt you’ve read a headline touting diet as a cure or cause of disease, heard about a new weight loss craze, or have seen a television personality promote a supplement or food plan. So, how do you sort fact from fiction and determine what information or advice is credible and grounded in sound science? And, how do you use the vast amount of information when making personal food choices? We are honored and excited to offer a new and unique textbook that can help students understand the fundamentals of nutrition science, and apply those concepts to everyday life.

Over the past decades, we’ve taught introductory nutrition to undergraduate students not majoring in nutrition who may or may not have had strong science backgrounds. Our students come from a diverse range of majors with many reasons for taking the class—personal interest, prerequisite for nursing, or other allied health programs, or as a science requirement. Introductory nutrition courses often include athletes, exercise science students, and students for whom the course has been recommended by an academic advisor.

Our hope is that all students will find that this book helps develop and augment their appreciation and understanding of nutrition as a science, increase their understanding of nutrition-related terms and concepts, and advance their comprehension and context of body processes and pathways.

BOOK COVERAGE

We have thought through all of the features of this textbook to make it as useful as possible for our students. To this end, the table of contents includes all of the core topics found in introductory nutrition courses with some innovations. The text opens with an overview of nutrition as a science and discipline, followed by the considerations and recommendations for a healthful diet with subsequent chapters on digestion and absorption, the macronutrients, and the micronutrients.

For carbohydrates and lipids, we offer content in two chapters, one focusing on the classifications, functions, and food sources and another focusing on health and disease implications. For example, blood sugar regulation and diabetes are explored in detail in Chapter 5 after carbohydrates are covered in Chapter 4. We believe this organization will give students a clear understanding of these important macronutrients and showcase the impact they have on health.

The vitamins and minerals can be a challenge for students. To make these critical topics clear and memorable, we offer concise, focused chapters (fat-soluble vitamins, water-soluble vitamins, major minerals and trace minerals) that are enhanced by unique storylines. The text offers exciting—yes, exciting—scientifically applicable chapters on energy balance and obesity, followed by nutrition and fitness. Nutrition during life stages is addressed from pregnancy and beyond. We are particularly excited about offering a chapter devoted to nutrition for the college student. This chapter’s emphasis on determinates of eating behavior, and the nutritional needs of young adults, is something we would like to share with not only our students, but also our own children. (We are both parents of young adults during the development and writing of this textbook!)

We have also included unique chapters that, from our experience, students have a lot of questions about and want to know more. These attention-getting chapters build upon core concepts and address relevant topics like plant-based diets, dietary supplements, and functional foods.

BOOK FEATURES AND MEDIA

Knowing that illustrations can often be the best way to grasp a concept, we have put much thought into the artwork. Each chapter contains vibrant, engaging, informative, well-placed, and easy-to-understand Infographics that support and augment concepts. Infographics that address multistep processes—digestion and absorption, and the function of hormones and nutrients—have been designed to facilitate student visualization and learning by accurately breaking these processes down into their component steps. We have also added a question, whenever appropriate, at the end of some Infographics to help the student engage with the material and identify key ideas being presented.

And at the end of each chapter, we’ve included a variety of classroom-tested assessments and personal application activities that help “bring it home” on a personal level, allowing students to assess their understanding of concepts and terms. The media resources complement the innovations in the book. In the LaunchPad online course space, we’ve provided robust animations for every chapter, a variety of quizzing options, including adaptive quizzes, and we are very excited to include unique personal diet analysis activities that are automatically graded and report to your gradebook. These exercises are tailored to work with the USDA’s SuperTracker program, but can be adapted to use with other food databases and tracking software.

For those instructors who prefer to teach the micronutrients from a functional perspective, Appendix 3 illustrates the roles of vitamins and minerals in energy metabolism, as antioxidants, and in bone and blood health.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR TEAM

Planning, researching, writing, reviewing, and producing this textbook provided the opportunity for two nutrition professionals to collaborate and bring together their unique perspectives and backgrounds. A registered dietitian, with over 15 years of classroom teaching experience at a private university preceded by work in health promotion, research, clinical practice, publishing, and media work collaborating with a nutrition scientist and researcher, who in addition to teaching introductory nutrition and public health courses at large public universities for 20 years, teaches advanced macronutrient metabolism and sports nutrition courses. This teaming up is unique for introductory nutrition textbooks. Science writers and editors have also helped merge the voices of these two experts into an engaging, readable, informative, and effective textbook that meets the goals for instructors of non-major nutrition courses. The chapter stories provide context and content for the science, as well as help provide rationale for “why it matters.”

In many ways, this textbook has allowed us to further our own understanding and appreciation of nutrition—evaluating and researching each concept to ensure accuracy, and then translating and presenting that information in a way that students can embrace, understand, apply, and retain has enhanced our own teaching and passion for sharing the ever-evolving and exciting field of nutrition!

Happy and healthy reading!

Jamie Pope and Steve Nizielski