Can Books about Food Become Stale?

If you work in the medical field, you know that nutrition is important for health.  You may have heard that last June, the U. S. Department of Agriculture replaced MyPyramid, the chart demonstrating how people can keep a balanced diet with nutrition from the four food groups, with MyPlate, the new diagram.  You might have even seen the episode of The Good Wife that included a subplot about MyPlate and politics.

What if you want to know the facts about MyPlate?  You can look online at the Department of Agriculture’s website on the subject at http://www.choosemyplate.gov/.  You may remember that the .gov domain (the letters at the end of the URL, or website address) means that this is a government site, and therefore, probably reliable.  However, good researchers understand that people can disagree on a subject, and in order to understand a topic well, it is important to read various viewpoints.  For example, the Harvard School of Public Health has its own “plate” diagram which is slightly different from the Department of Agriculture’s.  There is an article about this at http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/09/harvard-serves-up-its-own-plate/?utm_content.

You might also want to read about MyPlate and how it affects health.  Remember that it was unveiled only last June (by Michelle Obama), so any books that you use would have to be recent.  If you search our catalog to find books about nutrition, pay attention to the last four digits of the books’ call numbers.  These are the years when the books were published and/or copywritten.  For this search, look for books that were published recently enough to include information about MyPlate.  Anything published before 2011 is too old to include this information.

If you search in our catalog, you may find a book in our collection called Nutrition for Health, Fitness, & Sport by Melvin H. Williams, Dawn E. Anderson, and Eric S. Rawson (ISBN 9780078021329).  Its call number, QP141 .W514 2012, shows that the book was published this year, so perhaps it does have the information we need.

The entry in our catalog includes the publisher’s description next to the words Summary note.  From reading this, we can see that this (tenth) edition of the book “…includes incorporation of the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the associated MyPlate model that has replaced the MyPyramid model. The new MyPlate model, which was designed to be more user-friendly for the American population, is discussed in several chapters….” (http://opac.libraryworld.com).

Bingo!  We know that this book has information about MyPlate before we even find it on the shelves.

Remember that IHE is closed for Presidents Day (or Washington’s Birthday) on Monday, February 20.