The importance of nutrition in the prevention and treatment of disease and the maintenance of good health is being increasingly recognised. Nutrition is an area that all health professionals need to be aware of and yet one in which few are specifically trained. Nutrition is also becoming a valued topic in many curricula. It is a vast subject and textbooks are by necessity large and can stay stuck on the bookshelf. The Oxford Handbook of Nutrition and Dietetics makes this information more accessible to dieticians, doctors, nurses, nutritionists and other healthcare professionals by providing a practical, easily accessible, concise and up to date evidence-based guide in a user-friendly portable handbook. The health professional who encounters nutritional problems will find the necessary information in this book on either how to respond to patient queries, or when to refer to a more specialized practitioner. The handbook covers the entire life cycle from preconception to old age and is arranged in 36 chapters which include nutrition assessment, food labelling, functional foods and food supplements, non-nutrient components of food, drug-nutrient interactions and prescription of nutritional products, nutrition in systems-based diseases, nutrition in special groups, such as the very young and older people, and popular diets.