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. 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.

Elizabeth Eilender, MS, RD, CDN has been teaching courses on health and nutrition for more than seven years, and holds graduate degrees in both clinical nutrition and journalism. She is currently an online adjunct instructor in the master's degree program in nutrition education at American University in Washington, DC, where she teaches courses in both introductory and lifecycle nutrition. Elizabeth is also an onsite instructor in the undergraduate nursing program at Saint Peter's University in New Jersey. She is an active member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, holding the chair of the Nutrition Educators of Health Professionals (NEHP) dietetic practice group for 2014-2015, and is now coeditor of the group's quarterly newsletter.