Introduction to Nutrition and Metabolism

Introduction to Nutrition and Metabolism equips readers with an understanding of the scientific basis of what we call a healthy diet. Now in its sixth edition, this highly recognized textbook provides clear explanations of how nutrients are metabolized and gives explains the principles of biochemistry needed for comprehending the science of nutrition.

This full-color textbook explores the need for food and the uses to which food is put in the body, as well as the interactions between health and diet. Outlining the scientific basis behind nutritional requirements and recommendations, this new edition has been extensively revised to reflect current knowledge.

Features:

Lists key objectives at the beginning, and key points at the end of each chapter.

Accompanying online resources include interactive tutorial exercises based on interpretation of clinical and research data.

Covers topics including: Chemical reactions and catalysis by enzymes; the role of ATP; digestion and absorption of carbohydrates, fats and proteins; issues associated with being overweight; problems of malnutrition; diet and health; and vitamin and mineral requirements and functions.

Updated sections focus on the interaction of the gut microbiome and epigenetics with our metabolic responses to diet.

Provides a foundation of scientific knowledge for the interpretation and evaluation of future advances in nutrition and health sciences.

Following its predecessors, this sixth edition is relevant to any student or practitioner interested in how diet influences our health, including in the fields of nutrition, dietetics, medicine and public health.

Book Cover

Book Information Complimentary Exam Copy

How to use these exercises

Each exercise is based around a clinical scenario or laboratory problem.

The exercises have been put together in the same way as a tutorial would be organised, with questions for you to think about and data for you to interpret. After you have thought about each question you can click to see the answer. Sometimes you can scroll up through a screen to see earlier parts of the exercise; at other times parts of the exercise may open fresh screens, in which case you will have to use the back button of your browser to see earlier material. Some of the sets of experimental data for you to interpret have come from classical experiments that provided the basis of our current understanding of metabolism. The aim is not for you to learn the history of biochemistry, but to see how our current knowledge and understanding developed from observation of abnormalities in diseases and interpretation of experimental data, development and testing of hypotheses, so that you could tackle new problems as they arise in future.

Some of the data concern common diseases or normal metabolic states. Other cases concern rare genetic diseases, some so rare that almost certainly you will never come across a case. However, these are what are considered to be important, as opposed to common, diseases, in that we have learnt, and can learn, a great deal about normal physiology and metabolism by studying what have been called "experiments of nature".

You may find it especially useful to work through these exercises with a group of friends, discussing the questions among yourselves as you go, before clicking to show the answers.

Sometimes there will be additional information (interesting clinical relevance, cross-references to other exercises, etc) shown in in blue.

In the list of contents for each section there is a set of global objectives for that section, as well as a list of the topics that are covered by each exercise. At the beginning of each exercise is a more detailed list of objectives for that exercise, and at the end there is a list of key points you should have noted as you worked through the exercise.