This text is intended for those who wish to understand the complex relationships between diet and risks of important diseases, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. It is aimed both at researchers engaged in the unraveling of these complex relationships and at readers of the rapidly multiplying and often confusing scholarly literature on the subject. The book starts with an overview of research strategies in nutritional epidemiology-still a relatively new discipline that combines the vast knowledge compiled by nutritionists during the 20th century with the methodologies developed by epidemiologists to study the determinants of diseases with multiple etiologies and long latent periods. A major section is devoted to the methods of dietary assessment using data on food intake, biochemical indicators of diet, and measures of body composition and size. The reproducibility and validity of each approach and the implications of measurement error are considered in detail. The analysis, presentation, and interpretation of data from epidemiologic studies of diet and disease are explored in depth. Particular attention is paid to the important influence of total energy intake on findings in such studies. To illustrate methodological issues in nutritional epidemiology, relationships of dietary factors to the incidence of lung and breast cancer, heart disease, and birth defects are examined in depth. The first edition of Nutritional Epidemiology, published in 1989, was widely praised and quickly established itself as the standard reference in this field. The second edition, published in 1998, added new chapters on the analysis and presentation of dietary data, nutritional surveillance, and folic acid and neural tube defects. This new edition, in addition to substantial updating of existing chapters, includes new chapters on assessment of physical activity, nutrition and genetic epidemiology, and the role of nutritional epidemiology in policy. This book will benefit epidemiologists, nutritionists, dietitians, policy makers, public health practitioners, oncologists, and cardiovascular and other clinical specialists.

Walter Willett, MD, DrPH, is the Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition and Chair of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

1. Overview of Nutritional Epidemiology 2. Foods and Nutrients Walter C. Willett and Laura Sampson 3. Nature of Variation in Diet 4. 24-Hour Recall and Diet Record Methods Tom Baranowski 5. Food Frequency Methods 6. Reproducibility and Validity of Food-Frequency Questionnaires Walter Willett and Elizabeth Lenart 7. Recall of Remote Diet 8. Biochemical Indicators of Dietary Intake Rob M. Van Dam and David Hunter 9. Anthropometric Measures and Body Composition Walter Willett and Frank Hu 10. Assessment of Physical Activity in Nutritional Epidemiology Frank Hu 11. Implications of Total Energy Intake for Epidemiologic Analyses 12. Correction for the Effects of Measurement Error 13. Issues in Analysis and Presentation of Dietary Data 14. Genetics in Dietary Analyses 15. Nutrition Monitoring and Surveillance Tim Byers and Rebecca L. Sedjo 16. Policy Applications 17. Vitamin A and Lung Cancer Walter Willett and Graham Colditz 18. Dietary Fat and Breast Cancer 19. Diet and Coronary Heart Disease 20. Folic Acid and Neural Tube Defects Walter C. Willett and Elizabeth Lenart 21. Future Research Directions Index