Nutrition and dietetics for health care. Tenth edition.

Barker H, Harcourt Publishers, Edinburgh, 2002, 333 pages, $79.75, ISBN 0-443-07021-0

Nutrition and dietetics for health care is the tenth edition of a text book that has been regularly updated since 1962. Despite this venerable history, the book manages to feel contemporary, with a sleek and compact layout, and space dedicated to modern concerns such as food habits in a multicultural society. Its aim is to provide health care workers with practical, evidence-based nutritional information, as well as to serve as a textbook for students of nutrition and dietetics. The book accomplishes these worthy goals effectively.

The author, Helen Barker, is Senior Lecturer in Dietetics at the School of Health and Social Sciences, University of Coventry. The British origin of the book means that some aspects, such as RDIs, welfare system and useful contacts, are not applicable in Australia. However, the only real inconvenience is in the table of Body Mass Index values, which is in imperial units only.

The book is divided into three sections, which cover respectively, nutritional science; nutritional recommendations for different population groups; and dietetic management of different medical conditions. This division is intuitively appealing, although there are some apparently illogical inclusions; for example, diet-related disease appears in the second section, rather than the third. Each chapter begins with specific learning objectives and contents list, allowing easy review of the topic. An extensive reference list is provided at the end of each chapter, as well as suggestions for further reading. These appear to be well chosen, avoiding general textbook references and consisting mainly of relevant journal articles and other resources that meaningfully develop aspects of the chapter topic. Weaknesses of the book's format include inadequate cross-referencing and an idiosyncratic index. However, the writing style is pleasant and clear, and the layout is attractive and easy to read, with lots of well-located illustrative boxes and figures, and good headings.

While the book has a balanced treatment of some controversial issues, and covers a good range of general nutrition topics, there are some odd omissions. For example, there are sections on nutrition assessment, nutrition support, and gastrointestinal malabsorption, but nothing on nutritional biochemistry, and no mention of basic biochemical concepts likely to be encountered in dietetic work (such as albumin, glycosylated haemoglobin (Hb[A.sub.1]c), or the refeeding syndrome). It is merely noted that '... routine biochemical monitoring [is important]'. A student is likely to need at least a list of biochemical parameters that may be useful in such monitoring, even if only to note their limitations. The information on nutrition support is limited also and occasionally outdated. For example, lactose intolerance is suggested as a common cause of diarrhoea in tube feeding. No equations for estimation of energy requirements are given, and the table on estimating energy requirements in critical illness is 20 years old. In general, most areas of surgical and acute-care clinical dietetics are covered only in very basic general terms in this book.

The key strength of the book is its format, which is amazingly compact given the detailed contents. It has good quality paper and binding, yet is quite small and lightweight for a text book. At nearly $80 it might not be considered a worthwhile addition to an existing textbook collection, but would be an appropriate purchase for someone wanting a small but perfectly formed book covering the basics of general nutrition. Its portability would make it a useful reference text for a new graduate dietitian working in most areas other than acute care.

Suzie Ferrie

Critical Care Dietitian

Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, NSW