Nutrition Guide for Physicians and Related Healthcare Professions

As gatekeepers to the nutritional health of their patients, it is important that healthcare professionals
have access to up-to-date nutrition resources – such as this handbook – as well as the nutrition
expertise of registered dietitians. Nutrition Guide for Physicians and Related Healthcare Professionals
endeavors to address the needs of those who would most benefit from up-to-date information on
recent advances in the field of nutrition. Accordingly, our book contains chapters by experts in a
diverse range of nutritional areas. Our aim is to present a succinct overview of recent thinking and
discoveries that have the greatest capacity to aid physicians and other healthcare professionals in
improving the nutritional health of their clients.

Some readers may disagree with particular opinions presented by the authors, but in nutrition differences
of opinion are often unavoidable because nutrition is an ever-changing science that lives and
breathes debate and controversy. Readers are also reminded that nutrition is a fast evolving science.
Many ideas regarding nutrition that are widely accepted today may be discredited in coming years.
The following two quotes illustrate our changing understanding of what constitutes nutritional and
medical wisdom.

The role of nutrition for creating optimal health has remained well known for millennia. An ancient
Chinese proverb says: “He that takes medicine and neglects diet, wastes the skills of the physician”
and the Greek physician Hippocrates noted: “Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food”.
If we had the wisdom to know “what” to eat.