The Composition of Foods - McCance and Widdowson ***

I find this book hypnotically wonderful. The fact that it has three stars reflects the fact it is a book that is only going to interest specialists - and the £50+ price tag underlines this. However what you've got here is a reference that well tell you how much water and fats and sugars and nutrients you'll find in anything from a kebab (really) to an aubergine. For instance, need to know how much phosphorous there is in a creme caramel*? It's 77mg. Ask me another.

Clearly this is going to make anyone who buys a copy a surefire success at dinner parties. But more to the point it is hugely valuable if you have a professional interest in nutrition. The nutritionist's bible, you might say. Sugar in a raw onion? It's 6.2 grams. And I can, of course, give it to you broken down by sugar type, if you prefer.

Aside from its value as a reference (and as a doorstop at a chunky 630 pages), it's also something of a curiosity in that both the apparent authors are dead, which I guess is why it is 'McCance and Widdowson's The Composition of Foods' rather than The Composition of Foods by McCance and Widdowson. Their demise was not recent, either. They died in 1993 and 2000 respectively - but the title recognises their contribution.

So not one for everyone's shelf. But if it's right for you - and you know who you are - it's well worth it.

* Yes, I know all creme caramels are not the same. A typical creme caramel.

Paperback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Battle of the Big Bang - Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Harper *****

It's popular science Jim, but not as we know it. There have been plenty of popular science books about the big bang and the origins of the universe (including my own Before the Big Bang ) but this is unique. In part this is because it's bang up to date (so to speak), but more so because rather than present the theories in an approachable fashion, the book dives into the (sometimes extremely heated) disputed debates between theoreticians. It's still popular science as there's no maths, but it gives a real insight into the alternative viewpoints and depth of feeling. We begin with a rapid dash through the history of cosmological ideas, passing rapidly through the steady state/big bang debate (though not covering Hoyle's modified steady state that dealt with the 'early universe' issues), then slow down as we get into the various possibilities that would emerge once inflation arrived on the scene (including, of course, the theories that do away with inflation). ...

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that ‘Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...

Ctrl+Alt+Chaos - Joe Tidy ****

Anyone like me with a background in programming is likely to be fascinated (if horrified) by books that present stories of hacking and other destructive work mostly by young males, some of whom have remarkable abilities with code, but use it for unpleasant purposes. I remember reading Clifford Stoll's 1990 book The Cuckoo's Egg about the first ever network worm (the 1988 ARPANet worm, which accidentally did more damage than was intended) - the book is so engraved in my mind I could still remember who the author was decades later. This is very much in the same vein, but brings the story into the true internet age. Joe Tidy gives us real insights into the often-teen hacking gangs, many with members from the US and UK, who have caused online chaos and real harm. These attacks seem to have mostly started as pranks, but have moved into financial extortion and attempts to destroy others' lives through doxing, swatting (sending false messages to the police resulting in a SWAT te...

Search This Blog