NUTRITIONAL SURVIVAL MANUAL FOR THE 80S: A Young People 's Guide to ""Dietary Goals for the United States

By way of explicating the Senate's Dietary Goals, the Franz's survey the major nutrients, explaining what is meant by complex carbohydrates, saturated fat, complete protein, and so on. Moderate change is the keynote to their advice, and the Franzes seem even more cautious than the Senate committee about offending food processors, cattlemen, and junk-food eaters. Thus readers are told not to eat ""too much"" food that is ""heavily"" processed; beans are not listed as a protein source; and, after reporting that 99 percent of surveyed world specialists, and 92 percent of American specialists, believe we should cut down on saturated fat and cholesterol, they later emphasize that not all experts agree and that two of the Committee's Senators ""felt strongly enough"" to say so in the report. (There is no mention of the political pressure that led to this insertion in the report's revised draft.) Only megavitamins and alcohol are condemned, the latter in a final chapter too loaded with worst-case horrors to be effective. Wishy-washy and textbookish, then, compared to most of the many adult books that have followed the Senate recommendations, this is still an improvement over the ""old nutrition"" and industry-boosting that still prevails in school materials.