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Vitamania : our obsessive quest for nutritional perfection / Catherine Price.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, New York : Penguin Press, 2015Description: xv, 318 pages ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 1594205043 (hardback)
  • 9781594205040 (hardback) :
Subject(s):
Contents:
High seas and Hi-C -- Plants and plants -- Death by deficiency -- The journey into food -- From A to Zeitgeist -- Nutritional blindness -- From pure food to pure chaos -- The people's pills -- Foods with benefits -- The nutritional frontier -- Appendix A. The vitamins -- Appendix B. Abbreviations and definitions -- Recommended dietary allowances chart.
Summary: "The startling story of America's devotion to vitamins-and how it keeps us from good health. Health-conscious Americans seek out vitamins any way they can, whether in a morning glass of orange juice, a piece of vitamin-enriched bread, or a daily multivitamin. We believe that vitamins are always beneficial and that the more we can get, the better-and yet despite this familiarity, few of us could explain what vitamins actually are. Instead, we outsource our questions to experts and interpret "vitamin" as shorthand for "health." What we don't realize-and what Vitamania reveals-is that the experts themselves are surprisingly short on answers. Yes, we need vitamins; without them, we would die. Yet despite a century of scientific research (the word "vitamin" was coined only in 1912), there is little consensus around even the simplest of questions, whether it's exactly how much we each require or what these thirteen dietary chemicals actually do. The one thing that experts do agree upon is that the best way to get our nutrients is in the foods that naturally contain them, which have countless chemicals beyond vitamins that may be beneficial. But thanks to our love of processed foods (whose natural vitamins and other chemicals have often been removed or destroyed), this is exactly what most of us are not doing. Instead, we allow marketers to use the addition of synthetic vitamins to blind us to what else in food we might be missing, leading us to accept as healthy products that we might (and should) otherwise reject. Grounded in history-but firmly oriented toward the future-Vitamania reveals the surprising story of how our embrace of vitamins led to today's Wild West of dietary supplements and investigates the complicated psychological relationship we've developed with these thirteen mysterious chemicals. In so doing, Vitamania both demolishes many of our society's most cherished myths about nutrition and challenges us to reevaluate our own beliefs. Impressively researched, counterintuitive, and engaging, Vitamania won't just change the way you think about vitamins. It will change the way you think about food. "-- Provided by publisher.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Notes Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 612.399 P945 Available stains noted 33111007955764
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"Measured, funny, and fascinating... If you need vitamins to survive (you do), you should read this book."  Scientific American ("Food Matters")

Most of us know nothing about vitamins. What's more, what we think we know is harming both our personal nutrition and our national health. By focusing on vitamins at the expense of everything else, we've become blind to the bigger picture: despite our belief that vitamins are an absolute good--and the more of them, the better--vitamins are actually small and surprisingly mysterious pieces of a much larger nutritional puzzle. In Vitamania , award-winning journalist Catherine Price offers a lucid and lively journey through our cherished yet misguided beliefs about vitamins, and reveals a straightforward, blessedly anxiety-free path to enjoyable eating and good health.

When vitamins were discovered a mere century ago, they changed the destiny of the human species by preventing and curing many terrifying diseases. Yet it wasn't long before vitamins spread from labs of scientists into the realm of food marketers and began to take on a life of their own. By the end of the Second World War, vitamins were available in forms never before seen in nature--vitamin gum, vitamin doughnuts, even vitamin beer--and their success showed food manufacturers that adding synthetic vitamins to otherwise nutritionally empty products could convince consumers that they were healthy. The era of "vitamania," as one 1940s journalist called it, had begun.

Though we've gained much from our embrace of vitamins, what we've lost is a crucial sense of perspective. Vitamins may be essential to our lives, but they are not the only important substances in food. By buying into a century of hype and advertising, we have accepted the false idea that particular dietary chemicals can be used as shortcuts to health--whether they be antioxidants or omega-3s or, yes, vitamins. And it's our vitamin-inspired desire for effortless shortcuts that created today's dietary supplement industry, a veritable Wild West of overpromising "miracle" substances that can be legally sold without any proof that they are effective or safe.

For the countless individuals seeking to maximize their health and who consider vitamins to be the keys to well-being, Price's Vitamania will be a game-changing look into the roots of America's ongoing nutritional confusion. Her travels to vitamin manufacturers and food laboratories and military testing kitchens--along with her deep dive into the history of nutritional science-- provide a witty and dynamic narrative arc that binds Vitamania together. The result is a page-turning exploration of the history, science, hype, and future of nutrition. And her ultimate message is both inspiring and straightforward: given all that we don't know about vitamins and nutrition, the best way to decide what to eat is to stop obsessing and simply embrace this uncertainty head-on.

By exposing our extraordinary psychological relationship with vitamins and challenging us to question our beliefs, Vitamania won't just change the way we think about vitamins. It will change the way we think about food.
 
Booklist , *STARRED*
"A hidden, many-faceted, and urgent story."

Wall Street Journal 
"The baselessness of our hopes for various elixirs, alongside our baseless fear of science's true achievements, opens up a rich vein of hypocrisy that Ms. Price mines with engaging relish."

Includes bibliographical references (pages [255]-306) and index.

High seas and Hi-C -- Plants and plants -- Death by deficiency -- The journey into food -- From A to Zeitgeist -- Nutritional blindness -- From pure food to pure chaos -- The people's pills -- Foods with benefits -- The nutritional frontier -- Appendix A. The vitamins -- Appendix B. Abbreviations and definitions -- Recommended dietary allowances chart.

"The startling story of America's devotion to vitamins-and how it keeps us from good health. Health-conscious Americans seek out vitamins any way they can, whether in a morning glass of orange juice, a piece of vitamin-enriched bread, or a daily multivitamin. We believe that vitamins are always beneficial and that the more we can get, the better-and yet despite this familiarity, few of us could explain what vitamins actually are. Instead, we outsource our questions to experts and interpret "vitamin" as shorthand for "health." What we don't realize-and what Vitamania reveals-is that the experts themselves are surprisingly short on answers. Yes, we need vitamins; without them, we would die. Yet despite a century of scientific research (the word "vitamin" was coined only in 1912), there is little consensus around even the simplest of questions, whether it's exactly how much we each require or what these thirteen dietary chemicals actually do. The one thing that experts do agree upon is that the best way to get our nutrients is in the foods that naturally contain them, which have countless chemicals beyond vitamins that may be beneficial. But thanks to our love of processed foods (whose natural vitamins and other chemicals have often been removed or destroyed), this is exactly what most of us are not doing. Instead, we allow marketers to use the addition of synthetic vitamins to blind us to what else in food we might be missing, leading us to accept as healthy products that we might (and should) otherwise reject. Grounded in history-but firmly oriented toward the future-Vitamania reveals the surprising story of how our embrace of vitamins led to today's Wild West of dietary supplements and investigates the complicated psychological relationship we've developed with these thirteen mysterious chemicals. In so doing, Vitamania both demolishes many of our society's most cherished myths about nutrition and challenges us to reevaluate our own beliefs. Impressively researched, counterintuitive, and engaging, Vitamania won't just change the way you think about vitamins. It will change the way you think about food. "-- Provided by publisher.

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