FOOD AND NUTRITION

This is Volume 24 in the Life Science Library and there are a good many things wrong with it which could not be compensated for by the pictures (not seen here). In the first place, the body of information (which might possibly implement a term paper) is disturbingly discontinuous: in a chapter at the close on food fads and frauds, we proceed with all admiration to the cuisine at a fine French N.Y. restaurant. In the opening chapter which deals with the 45 essential nutrients in their five principal classifications, there are country by country prevalent dishes and diets: in the U.S. for instance cucumbers figure as one of the five carbohydrates eaten and one of the nine sources of vitamins. Not a carrot nor an orange in sight. The main content is, in its spotty orientation, adequate (farming, production, processing and preserving, digestion and assimilation, the diseases of malnutrition and ""of feast,"" diet and weight (eat less, exercise more), etc. One is appalled on a paragraph summation of U.S. farming today which reads like a Chamber of Commerce release and concludes that ""the individual farmer works hard, he lives well--and he puts something in the bank at the end of the year, with not a furrow on his forehead.