Nutritional Epidemiology / Edition 3

by Walter Willett

Overview

Willett's Nutritional Epidemiology has become the foundation of this field. This new edition updates existing chapters and adds new ones addressing the assessment of physical activity, the role of genetics in nutritional epidemiology, and the interface of this field with policy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199754038
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/07/2012
Series:	Monographs in Epidemiology and Biostatistics , #40
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	552
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 10.00(h) x 4.10(d)

About the Author

Walter Willett, MD, DrPH, is the Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition and Chair of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Table of Contents

1. Overview of Nutritional Epidemiology
2. Foods and Nutrients
Walter C. Willett and Laura Sampson
3. Nature of Variation in Diet
4. 24-Hour Recall and Diet Record Methods
Tom Baranowski
5. Food Frequency Methods
6. Reproducibility and Validity of Food-Frequency Questionnaires
Walter Willett and Elizabeth Lenart
7. Recall of Remote Diet
8. Biochemical Indicators of Dietary Intake
Rob M. Van Dam and David Hunter
9. Anthropometric Measures and Body Composition
Walter Willett and Frank Hu
10. Assessment of Physical Activity in Nutritional Epidemiology
Frank Hu
11. Implications of Total Energy Intake for Epidemiologic Analyses
12. Correction for the Effects of Measurement Error
13. Issues in Analysis and Presentation of Dietary Data
14. Genetics in Dietary Analyses
15. Nutrition Monitoring and Surveillance
Tim Byers and Rebecca L. Sedjo
16. Policy Applications
17. Vitamin A and Lung Cancer
Walter Willett and Graham Colditz
18. Dietary Fat and Breast Cancer
19. Diet and Coronary Heart Disease
20. Folic Acid and Neural Tube Defects
Walter C. Willett and Elizabeth Lenart
21. Future Research Directions

Index

Editorial Reviews

"This path-breaking book by Walter Willett documents such critical relationships between diet and disease. Beyond that, this book is a guide for students and scientists to develop and conduct studies that would examine those relationships and provide critical data showing cause-and-effect evidence between certain types of diets and certain diseases. This is a vital book in the study of diet and disease—not only on the 'how-to' for students but also on the 'what was found' from actual studies. We congratulate him on his important work in nutritional epidemiology." -Nano Khilnani, Biz India

"Dr. Willett in his third edition of Nutritional Epidemiology provides a practical and straightforward discussion of how to conduct and interpret studies of diet in relation to chronic disease risk, which is unparalleled in breadth and depth. He incorporates many recent advances, encourages rigorous and thoughtful conduct and interpretation of study results and often challenges conventional interpretations from medical and nutritional sciences. This outstanding book is essential reading for graduate students and researchers in the field. It is also a useful resource for any nutritional scientists, epidemiologists, and health professionals who use results of epidemiological studies to make policies that promote healthy eating." — Julie A. Mares, PhD, Professor of Nutrition, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health

"In this new edition, Dr. Willett condenses a vast and rapidly expanding literature, from the history of nutritional epidemiology to future directions. New chapters on physical activity and genetics, as well as discussion of new methodologies-and thoughtful analysis of recent debates on measurement error-make this required reading for anyone working in nutrition and health research, and a welcome up-to-date text for graduate teaching." — Katherine L. Tucker, PhD, Professor, Department of Health Sciences, Northeastern University

Praise for earlier editions

"Very valuable reading for anyone considering undertaking a dietary survey. For those attempting to measure dietary intakes in an epidemiologic context, Willett's book will be essential reading." — American Journal of Epidemiology

"Very valuable to the growing group of researchers and graduate students wanting to understand the relationship between diet and the incidence of chronic disease among adult Americans... The volume as a whole makes a valuable contribution, since it is comprehensive and summarizes significant developments from the last ten years; a compilation of information about nutrition epidemiology has long been lacking. Willett's book will be most useful to advanced students, practitioners, and researchers." — Journal of Nutrition Education

"Covers, with unusual clarity, complex issues related to the nature of variation in diet and its implications in the design and interpretation of studies of nutritional epidemiology."
— International Journal of Epidemiology

"Walter Willett, of the Harvard School of Public Health, is recognized as working at the cutting edge of this demanding field... Nutritional Epidemiology was written specifically for researchers actively engaged in studies of diet and disease. It is a clear, coherent, and eminently readable expose of a very complex, multifaceted new discipline." — Community Health Studies

"This remains an excellent textbook for students learning to evaluate the literature or design their own studies. New chapters on physical activity, genetics, and policy provide much needed updates on the methods used by today's researchers. Overall, the book is a nearly comprehensive introduction to the basic principles of studying diet and long-term health and disease." — DOODY'S

From the Publisher

This is the second edition of what has become the standard text in nutritional epidemiology, an area of intense research activity and public interest. The aim is to provide the reader with the conceptual and methodologic grounding essential for conducting studies of diet and disease. The complexity of carrying out population-based studies of nutrition makes bringing practical and theoretical issues together in one volume invaluable. This book is intended to be an introduction to the field and a resource for investigators, as well as an aid to those interpreting the published literature. Striking a balance between the basic concepts a student needs and the analytic cutting edge which the more experienced investigator would like is difficult. This book functions primarily as a solid introduction for students or researchers who are already familiar with basic epidemiologic and statistical methods but who are relatively new to nutritional assessment and its particular analytic challenges. Some of the more complex recent methods are mentioned and references are provided. The first half incudes a description and evaluation of data collection methods for carrying out dietary assessment, including biochemical indicators. The next section covers analytic issues, while the final chapters present literature reviews of four much-studied associations (e.g. vitamin A and lung cancer; folic acid and neural tube defects) and directions for future research. The author is an expert in this field and both the chapters he has written as well as those contributed by others are uniformly well-organized and written with notable clarity. Much of the material in this edition is carried over from the firstedition, but there are three new chapters. References have generally been updated, but the classics of this relatively young field are included as well.

Diane S. Lauderdale