From birth to old age, there are more than 50 essential nutrients we all require for normal physiological functioning and optimum health. Though everyone requires the same nutrients throughout life, the specific amounts vary depending on age, gender, body composition, health status, and many other environmental and genetic factors. Nutrition Throughout the Lifecycle provides the reader with an overview of the complex relationship between dietary intake and health promotion and offers students and health care practitioners a detailed reference guide to key nutrient requirements, major food sources, and recommended meal patterns that align with evidence-based government guidelines for adequate intake. In so doing, Lifecycle covers the central nutritional issues unique to each major stage of life, including preconception care, pregnancy and fetal development, infancy, early and middle childhood, adolescence, and advanced age. Adequate nutrition is critical to every stage of the human lifecycle and eating habits during one phase of life can impact well-being and susceptibility to chronic disease in subsequent years. The goal of this book is to summarize the key points and concepts needed to understand the process by which nutrient needs, lifestyle, and environmental considerations affect human health from one stage of life to the next, and how dietary requirements shift with growth, development, and age.

1. Preconception nutrition -- 2. Nutrition for a healthy pregnancy -- 3. Feeding the infant -- 4. Early and middle childhood -- 5. Nutrition for the adolescent -- 6. The older adult -- Additional resources -- Index.