THE GREAT NUTRITION ROBBERY

A nicely underplayed, no-nonsense indictment of food technology and the policies of the Food and Drug Administration. Hunter is concerned lest the unaware consumer believe that restructured, imitative, or otherwise tampered-with foods have a nutritive value equivalent to that of the natural foods they replace. Eighteen chapters organized in handbook style offer dozens of examples, from meat extenders to imitation dairy products, harmful food additives to breastfeeding substitutes. ""Creations by the Food Flavorists,"" for instance, zips through some of the most common examples of food-flavoring agents, including vanillin as a replacement for vanilla, its history, an assessment of government-labeling requirements, and its use in various products. Crude and unreliable safety tests surface in the history of the unresolved saccharin controversy, and the U.S. sanction of some 1500 food flavoring agents is contrasted with the limits imposed by the French and German governments. According to Hunter, Federal agencies fail in their responsibilities for research and for education of consumers about long-range health hazards. Thorough investigation, coupled with additional notes for delving more deeply into selected topics, makes this primly arranged volume a useful reference tool.