Expert Reviews of Popular Diet Books

These days, it seems like every time you turn around there’s a new popular diet book being celebrated by the media. As ordinary consumers, it can be difficult to evaluate the claims being made, even if you do know the basics of good nutrition.

For this assignment, I want you to learn about one resource where you can go to find out what nutrition experts have to say about the hot new diet books.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (Links to an external site.)

(http://www.eatright.org/)

is a professional organization for registered dietitians and professional nutritionists. They have a number of resources for both nutrition professionals and ordinary consumers. One of their public resources is a database of detailed reviews of popular diet books. The reviews are all prepared by educated nutrition professionals. Each review summarizes the basics of the book’s recommendations, evaluates these recommendations in the context of what we know about good nutrition, and presents a “Bottom Line” take-home message.

The link below will take you to a listing of the latest diet book reviews. Click through the first few pages to find ones that interest you!

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Book Reviews

(http://www.eatrightpro.org/resources/media/trends-and-reviews/book-reviews#.U9wVZ2PG-9Q)

For this week’s assignment, I want you to read at least three of these professional reviews of popular diet/lifestyle books. Select books that you have read or are interested in reading.

A. Summarize three reviews from the website above. (2pts each)

Each summary must include:

–> The name and author of the book being reviewed.

–> The name of the person who prepared the review.

–> A brief (1 paragraph) summary of the main points of the review.

As with all work in this class, the summary must be in your own words. Summaries that are copied directly from the review will receive no credit.

–> Remember, you are summarizing the review. Don’t just tell me what the diet is, tell me what the expert reviewer thought of the diet!

–> Be very clear when you are expressing your own opinion and when you are reporting the reviewer’s opinion. Use phrases like: “The reviewer states that…”

B. Select one of these books to recommend to a friend and explain your selection. (4pts)

–> Your explanation may include why you recommend this particular book over the others and/or it may include why you do not recommend the other two books.

–> Your explanation must be based on the information revealed in the professional reviews and on what you’ve learned in this class about good nutrition.