Whitney’s Understanding Nutrition is a comprehensive and balanced undergraduate text for introductory nutrition courses.

Along with clear scientific principles, the reader-friendly text teaches students about how science affects healthy diet choices. The market-leading ANZ edition of Understanding Nutrition has a solid reputation for making it easier for students to understand nutrition science and application via metric units and regional issues, images and foods.

Whitney’s Understanding Nutrition presents the core information of an introductory nutrition course. The early chapters introduce the nutrients and their work in the body, and the later chapters apply that information to people’s lives – describing the role of foods and nutrients in energy balance and weight control, in physical activity, in the life cycle and in disease prevention, and food safety. At the beginning of each chapter are clearly stated learning objectives to outline the key concept areas to be covered. Each chapter also clearly flags for the reader practical applications of nutritional research and presents the most recent research in the topic area.

What’s New

• NEW end-of-chapter highlights include updates to Vitamin D supplementation, Covid-19
• NEW content on ultra-processed food, nutrient profiling, diet and mental health, metabolic disorders caused by nutrient excess, the gut microbiome in obesity
• NEW content on nutrition inequality

Features

• Each chapter opens with a set of questions called ‘Putting common sense to the test’ to assess the students’ intuitive beliefs about the content of the chapter. Answers appear in the margins when the topic is discussed in the chapter, and are explained fully at the end of the chapter so that learning is consolidated
• Chapter feature boxes include ‘Current research in nutrition’, which provides details of up-to-date nutritional research; and ‘Applications of nutrition research’ which demonstrate the practical applications of nutritional science so that students understand the application of theory
• ‘How to …’ step-by-step guides take students through common tasks related to understanding nutrition, such as calculating energy intake, to equip them for their future careers
• ‘Review it’ allows students to check their understanding as they progress through the chapter; and ‘Extend your learning’ in the margins provides additional information on key topics
• Australian Dietary Guidelines connect students with the science of health and nutrition they are learning in each chapter, and up-to-date New Zealand guidelines have been included, covering eating and activity as well as nutritional fortifications
• At the end of the chapter, the Nutrition Portfolio prompts students to consider whether their personal choices are meeting the dietary goals introduced by the chapter

Contents

۱. An overview of nutrition
۲. Planning a healthy diet
۳. Digestion, absorption and transport
۴. The carbohydrates: sugar, starches and dietary fibre
۵. The lipids: triglycerides, phospholipids, and sterols
۶. Protein: amino acids
۷. Metabolism: transformations and interactions
۸. Energy balance and body composition
۹. Weight management: overweight, obesity and underweight
۱۰. The water-soluble vitamins: B group vitamins and vitamin C
۱۱. The fat-soluble vitamins: A, D, E, and K
۱۲. Water and the major minerals
۱۳. The trace minerals
۱۴. Fitness: physical activity, nutrients, and body adaptations
۱۵. Life cycle nutrition: pregnancy and lactation
۱۶. Life cycle nutrition: infancy, childhood and adolescence
۱۷. Life cycle nutrition: adulthood and the later years
۱۸. Diet-related disease
۱۹. Consumer concerns about foods and water