Nutrition for Health and Health Care (MindTap Course List) 8th Edition

Book Preface

We are pleased to present this eighth edition

of Nutrition for Health and Health Care, which provides a solid foundation in nutrition science and the role of nutrition in clinical care. Health professionals and patients alike rank nutrition among their most serious concerns, as good nutrition status plays critical roles in both disease prevention and the appropriate treatment of illness. Moreover, medical personnel are frequently called upon to answer questions about foods and diets or provide nutrition care. Although much of the material has been written for nursing students and is relevant to nursing care, this textbook can be useful for students of other health-related professions, including nursing assis-tants, physician assistants, dietitians, dietary technicians, and health educators.

Organization of This Text

Each chapter of this textbook includes essential nutrition concepts along with practical information for addressing nutrition concerns and solving nutrition problems. The introductory chapters (Chapters 1 and 2) provide an over-view of the nutrients and nutrition recommendations and describe the process of digestion and absorption. Chapters 3 through 5 introduce the attributes and functions of carbohydrates, lipids, and protein and explain how appro-priate intakes of these nutrients support health. Chapters 6 and 7 introduce the concepts of energy balance and weight management and describe the health effects of overweight, underweight, and eating disorders. Chapters 8 and 9 intro-duce the vitamins and minerals, describing their roles in the body, appropriate intakes, and food sources. Chapters 10 through 12 explain how nutrient needs change through-out the life cycle. Chapters 13 and 14 explore how health professionals can use information from nutrition assess-ments to identify and address a patient’s dietary needs. The remaining chapters (Chapters 15–23) examine nutri-tion therapy and its role in the prevention and treatment of common medical conditions.

Features of This Text

Students of nutrition often begin a nutrition course with some practical knowledge of nutrition; after all, they may purchase food, read food labels, and be familiar with common nutri-tion problems such as obesity or lactose intolerance. After just a few weeks of class, however, the student realizes that nutri-tion is a biological and chemical science with a fair amount of new terminology and new concepts to learn. This book con-tains abundant pedagogy to help students master the subject matter. Within each chapter, definitions of important terms appear in the margins. How To skill boxes help readers work through calculations or give practical suggestions for apply-ing nutrition advice. The Nursing Diagnosis feature enables nursing students to correlate nutrition care with nursing care. Review Notes summarize the information following each major heading; these summaries can be used to pre-view or review key chapter concepts. The Self Check at the end of each chapter provides questions to help review chapter information.

In the life cycle and clinical chapters, Case Studies guide readers in applying nutrition therapy to patient care. Diet-Drug Interaction boxes in the clinical chapters identify important nutrient-drug and food-drug interactions. Clinical Applications throughout the text encourage readers to prac-tice mathematical calculations, synthesize information from previous chapters, or understand how dietary adjustments affect patients. Nutrition Assessment Checklists remind read-ers of assessment parameters relevant to specific stages of the life cycle or medical problems.

The Nutrition in Practice sections that follow the chapters explore issues of current interest, advanced topics, or specialty areas such as dental health or dialysis. Examples of topics covered include foodborne illness, the glycemic index, vegetarian diets, alcohol in health and disease, nutri-tional genomics, the metabolic syndrome, and childhood obesity and chronic disease. The appendixes support the book with a wealth of information on the World Health Organization (WHO) nutrient intake recommendations, food lists for diabetes and weight management, dysphagia diets, physical activity and energy requirements, nutrition assessments, enteral formulas, and aids to calculations.