Includes index.

Your fitness, health, and well-being depend on food and proper nutrition. Yet, knowing what is in the foods we eat, understanding the differences between good and bad fat, learning which foods are good sources of vitamins, keeping up on the latest scientific discoveries, or discerning the effectiveness of different diets can be challenging. To help answer these questions there's The Handy Nutrition Answer Book. Additionally, the book scrutinizes the pros, cons, and effectiveness of the biggest, most popular, and trendiest diets on the market today. This handy reference examines, explains, and traces the basics of nutrition, the value of vitamins, minerals, fats, proteins, the science behind food-processing and the modern food industry. It traces nutrition—and nutritional misconceptions—throughout history. It explains how to read food labels and what to watch for in food additives.