The Nutritional Trace Metals

Book excerpt: The Nutritional Trace Metals covers the roles played by trace metals in human metabolism, a relatively neglected area of human metabolism and nutrition. The book focuses its attention on the vital roles played by the relatively small number of trace metal nutrients as components of a wide range of functional proteins. Its structure and content are largely based on the approach adopted by the author, Professor Conor Reilly, during more than 30 years of teaching nutrition to a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate students. The introductory chapter covers the roles of metals in life processes, the metal content of living systems and metals in food and diets. This is followed by chapters, each dealing with an individual trace metal. Those discussed are iron, zinc, copper, selenium, chromium, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, boron, vanadium, cobalt, silicon and arsenic. In each case attention is given to the metal's chemistry and metabolic roles, including absorption, transport, losses, status and essentiality, as well as the consequences both of deficiency and excess. The Nutritional Trace Metals is essential reading for nutritionists, dietitians and other health professionals, including physicians, who wish to know more about these vital components of the diet. The book will also be of value to food scientists, especially those involved in food fortification and pharmaceutical product formulation. It will be an invaluable reference volume in libraries of universities and research establishments involved in nutrition teaching and research. Conor Reilly is Emeritus Professor of Public Health at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, and is also Visiting Professor of Nutrition at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, U.K.