Understanding Food: Principles and Preparation (Available Titles CourseMate)

I am currently taking a nutrition course and I love this book. It is like the foundation for understanding the concepts of the foods we eat everyday. The chapters are short for the most part, but it contains very good information. I also like the chemist corner and how & why sections. Another aspect of this book is the profiles for the different professionals and wished the author would have shown more.The only other downside is the price, wish it was a cheaper option to actually purchase this book instead of just renting it.

When I needed this book for a class, I chose to rent it. I was supposed to buy the newer edition, which would've cost about $300. I'd seen reviews that the new edition has very, very few and minimal changes, so I rented the older version, for $40. I didn't expect I would use it much, and certainly didn't think I'd actually want to keep it. Turns out that for the science side of understanding food, it's really well written. It's concise, and it makes the concepts easy to understand. Admittedly, it's not a current edition. But I was able to purchase a copy (after returning my rental copy) for $9, and I'm happy to have it in my library as I move forward toward becoming a registered dietitian.

As some have mentioned, the book is in B&W. I think a lot would be added if published in color, but obviously not a choice. Information is good and I was able to save money by using this older version in my class rather than the most recent edition.

My book arrived in the mail today, I was a little nervous at first about purchasing the books online without being able to see them prior but I was wrong... They are in perfect condition, the ISBNs match, and a about half the price as my university was going to charge for new and even cheaper than what they were asking for used books. I am very pleased with the quality and transaction. Expected delivery was Monday but they arrived 2 days earlier (Saturday). Again, I am very pleased with this purchase and will be purchasing the rest of my text books in the future from amazon too!!

Bought it for my introduction to food science class. Sad that the majority of the textbook is not in color, but other than that has great info.

This was an excellent source of information and with a modern upgrade could become one again. There is a lot of information spread out too far to be enough for any one target. Black and white pictures at $200.00 plus dollars without any real reference to the material covered is a bit much. Keep your lap-top handy as your read to help pull the fundamentals out of the basics. I was unable to grasp this book as well as I needed to. My instructor was from another country which did not help. Te book has a wealth of information and in its time and space was probably very good.

Basic textbook, but there is a newer (much more expensive) edition out now. Unfortunately, my prof wants us to have the newer edition. Going to rent that one, since this has basically the same info and I can use it after class and returning the rental.

I was really disappointed (and surprised) to open this $160 textbook (in 2011) and find all the pages are printed in black and white. Give me a break. There is a small insert section of about a dozen pages that has color pictures of some meats and vegetables. That's it. The other other ~700 pages, the actual textbook content, is all grayscale! There is a lot of information in this book, with a lot of diagrams, and photos of a many foods, ingredients and techniques. And it's all in black and white. Students deserve better, especially for the high cost. There are few other annoyances with this book, sorry. In some chapters the author includes a "Professional Profile" where she highlights careers in the food industry. Several of these furtive advertisements are for big snack food and processed-food conglomerates, including Kellog, Kraft and Wrigley. For me, it felt like a strange choice for a nutrition textbook. I found myself wondering if the author had been compensated by any of the companies? I would have preferred to read about some of the many nutrition careers with organic/local businesses, education/school lunch, or the National Health Service Corps...or even the military; instead of snack food companies. One other oddity I can remember. In the section about coffee, the author mentions and describes many ways of brewing (drip, espresso, percolator, vacuum, etc.), but excludes the French press. As far I know this is still a very popular method of brewing coffee. Anyway, I'm nitpicking with that one. My main gripe is that for such a high sales price the publisher only provided black & white content. The content is informative. However, I feel that the subjects of food and science should be printed in color to help convey the information.

The book was as described. In very good conditions.