Nutrition has long been considered more the domain of medicine and agriculture than of the biological sciences, yet it touches and shapes all aspects of the natural world. The need for nutrients determines whether wild animals thrive, how populations evolve and decline, and how ecological communities are structured. 'The Nature of Nutrition' addresses nutrition's enormously complex role in biology, both at the level of individual organisms and in their broader ecological interactions.

Our evolutionary ancestors once possessed the ability to intuit what food their bodies needed, in what proportions, and ate the right things in the proper amounts--effortlessly balanced. When and why did we lose this ability, and how can we get it back? David Raubenheimer and Stephen Simpson answer these questions in a compelling narrative, based upon five "eureka" moments they experienced in the course of their groundbreaking research. The book shares their colorful scientific journey--from the foothills of Cape Town, to the deserts of Australia--culminating in a unifying theory of nutrition that has profound implications for our current epidemic of metabolic diseases and obesity. The authors ultimately offer useful prescriptions to understand the unwanted side effects of fad diets, gain control over one's food environment, and see that delicious and healthy are integral parts of proper eating.

Written in an accessible style, this book probes the chemistry of fat in our bodies, providing a unique insight into understanding obesity.

The first book to address nutrition's complex role in biology Nutrition has long been considered more the domain of medicine and agriculture than of the biological sciences, yet it touches and shapes all aspects of the natural world. The need for nutrients determines whether wild animals thrive, how populations evolve and decline, and how ecological communities are structured. The Nature of Nutrition is the first book to address nutrition's enormously complex role in biology, both at the level of individual organisms and in their broader ecological interactions. Stephen Simpson and David Raubenheimer provide a comprehensive theoretical approach to the analysis of nutrition—the Geometric Framework. They show how it can help us to understand the links between nutrition and the biology of individual animals, including the physiological mechanisms that determine the nutritional interactions of the animal with its environment, and the consequences of these interactions in terms of health, immune responses, and lifespan. Simpson and Raubenheimer explain how these effects translate into the collective behavior of groups and societies, and in turn influence food webs and the structure of ecosystems. Then they demonstrate how the Geometric Framework can be used to tackle issues in applied nutrition, such as the problem of optimizing diets for livestock and endangered species, and how it can also help to address the epidemic of human obesity and metabolic disease. Drawing on a wealth of examples from slime molds to humans, The Nature of Nutrition has important applications in ecology, evolution, and physiology, and offers promising solutions for human health, conservation, and agriculture.

Contents: The Nature of Disease; The Physiology and Philosophy of Fasting; Vitality, Sleep, Death, Bodily Heat; Hygienic Auxiliaries Available During a Fast; Studies of Patients During their Fasts. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Revised 04/2011 DIABETES EPIDEMIC and YOU is not a cliché! It is a mandate for the awakening of the "silent" millions worldwide with "normal" fasting blood sugars and undiagnosed diabetes. If you have a "normal" fasting blood sugar, YOU may be one of the undiagnosed millions. YES, I do mean YOU. Since Hippocrates' time, earliest diagnosis provided the greatest opportunity for treatment and cure. This book highlights the earliest identification of type 2 diabetes by utilizing the insulin assay with the oral glucose tolerance. My cumulative experience of 14,384 oral glucose tolerances with insulin assays established the earliest diagnosis of prediabetes and diabetes when the blood sugars were normal. Prediabetes is type 2 diabetes. The tolerances were separated according to age groups, from 3Ð13 years to 81Ð90+ years. Each group was further divided into normal glucose tolerances, impaired glucose tolerances, and diabetes mellitus glucose tolerances. YOU, upon testing by oral glucose tolerance, will be in one of these categories. This resource of oral glucose tolerance with insulin assay is unequaled in world medical literature. The importance of early diagnosis is that the clinical pathology of diabetes – mainly heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, cataracts, erectile dysfunction, and other metabolic disorders – occurs not only in those with advanced diabetes, but also in those with "normal" blood sugars. YES, this could happen to YOU! When early diagnosis is coupled with specific therapy, the DIABETES EPIDEMIC will be arrested and then reversed. Early diagnosis is the goal of this book – beginning with YOU.

Nutrition spans a wide range of mechanisms from acquisition of food to digestion, absorption and retention of energy substrates, water and other nutrients. Nutritional principles have been applied to improving individual health, athletic performance and longevity of humans and of their companion animals, and to maximizing agricultural efficiency by manipulating reproduction or growth of tissues such as muscle, hair or milk in livestock. Comparative nutrition borrows from these tra- tional approaches by applying similar techniques to studies of ecology and physiology of wildlife. Comparative approaches to nutrition integrate several levels of organization because the acquisition and flow of energy and nutrients connect individuals to populations, populations to communities, and communities to ecosystems. Integrative Wildlife Nutrition connects behavioral, morphological and biochemical traits of animals to the life history of species and thus the dynamics of populations. An integrated approach to nutrition provides a practical framework for understanding the interactions between food resources and wildlife popu- tions and for managing the harvest of abundant species and the conservation of threatened populations. This book is for students and professionals in animal physiology and ecology, conservation biology and wildlife management. It is based on our lectures, dem- strations and practical classes taught in the USA, Canada and Australia over the last three decades. Instructors can use Integrative Wildlife Nutrition as a text in wildlife and conservation biology programs, and as a reference source for related courses in wildlife ecology.

'A must-read ... satisfying, rich ... loaded with flavour' Sunday Telegraph This book is a celebration of food. By food, Michael Pollan means real, proper, simple food - not the kind that comes in a packet, or has lists of unpronounceable ingredients, or that makes nutritional claims about how healthy it is. More like the kind of food your great-grandmother would recognize. In Defence of Food is a simple invitation to junk the science, ditch the diet and instead rediscover the joys of eating well. By following a few pieces of advice (Eat at a table - a desk doesn't count. Don't buy food where you'd buy your petrol!), you will enrich your life and your palate, and enlarge your sense of what it means to be healthy and happy. It's time to fall in love with food again. For the past twenty years, Michael Pollan has been writing about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: food, agriculture, gardens, drugs, and architecture. His most recent book, about the ethics and ecology of eating, is The Omnivore's Dilemma, named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is also the author of The Botany of Desire, A Place of My Own and Second Nature.