Science of Food Nutrition and Health

Diet is one of the important facets of comprehensive approach to good health along with physical, social, emotional, and intellectual well-being. During the second half of the 20th century, we witnessed a dramatic change in our eating patterns and lifestyle aided by agricultural and industrial revolution, globalisation, and urbanisation and emergence of associated diet related chronic diseases such as obesity, coronary heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, some type of cancer, stroke, and degenerative arthritis. The science of food and nutrition is very complex. Nutrition science like many other fields of science is evolutionary and there are always conflicting research outcomes that need to be carefully evaluated. We ingest hundreds of dietary components every day and understanding various metabolic pathways and the effect of interactions of various dietary components in vivo is rather challenging. Recent advances in genetic research fostered the emergence of new disciplines such as nutrigenomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and transcriptomics which can shed light on the molecular level interaction between dietary nutrients and the genome. These technologies provide the vision for future nutrition research that may unravel how the diet/genome interactions modifies the phenotype. Food may not be the overall cure for the treatment of every possible disease, but the importance of food in both causing and relieving certain problems cannot be neglected. This is one of the most researched topics and there is a lot written about it. However, this book is probably the only text that provides up to date information on the various interrelated topics on food and nutrition that would be of interest to wider community.