Pocket Guide to Nutrition and Dietetics.

Byrom SE, Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh, 2002, 189 pages, $61.60, ISBN 0-443-07136-5

Pocketbooks can be really convenient when you quickly need that detailed information or fact pertaining to a practice area out of your normal expertise. Unfortunately this book contains much specific UK information so that it lacks some useful detail necessary in the Australian context.

Yet the concept is excellent as areas of practice do not fit into neat categories. Although one may be expert in the critical factors and medications in one's daily field of clinical work, patients often present with multiple issues which require knowledge of detailed clinical or practice information. When I received the book I expected to find up-to-date information on major treatment areas such as diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, hypertension, alongside standard health and evaluation techniques. Byrom does include some of this information but in my view the information falls short for use in Australia as the specificity of some of her information reduces the possible usage of the book. For example, although there are some internationally available products, the specific product information in the nutrition supplements section is necessarily incomplete for Australian practitioners. In contrast the Nutrition and Drugs chapter is written generically and is so much more useful.

Unfortunately precious space was spent on details such as skinfold anthropometric positions without evaluation tables. As skinfold anthropometry is a skill which takes a lot of practice, it is not something I would recommend to be learnt from a pocket book guide. The plasticised soft covered book is the ideal size to slip into a large pocket or working folder, has easy to find sections and is a good workable format. As such it should act as inspiration for an Australian dietitian to compile the local equivalent and I would consider that worth purchasing.

Jane Barnes

Foodsense, Sydney