I found this book to be very helpful in understanding just what it is listed on my food labels. Just browsing through the book has opened my eyes to ingredients, that after a little more investigation,that I dont want near my family's food.

I use Ruth Winter's books on COSMETIC INGREDIENTS, MEDICINES, and FOOD ADDITIVES as reference books and find them quite helpful and informative. It is absolutely amazing how many ingredients can be listed on the back of a jar of cleansing cream, a tube of hand cream, or a can of soup. Simply identifying the salt and sugar isn't enough. We need to know about food substitutes, as well as other ingredients, many of them added to improve the appearance of the substance for sale, that can harm us and/or interfere with prescription drugs.

Now, you may be concerned about what is in your prescription medication, but if you are like most of us, you probably take over-the-counter drugs without a thought. After all, if they don't have to be licensed and disseminated by a pharmacy, they must be okay. Right? Wrong!! There is something called a synergistic effect. For example, consumers have been warned recently about the interaction between ibuprofen and statin drugs. Unfortunately, by the time the government steps in, many people may have been harmed. It pays to be informed and Winter's books are a good step in that direction.

I am a big fan of herbal remedies, but they need to be subjected to research and review in the same way synthetic drugs are studied. Heck, Parsley, can cause skin irritations.

If you want to acquire a little light on the subject of ingredients, consider buying all Winter's books. She has been published in Family Circle and Reader's Digest magazines as well as Homeopathic and Herbal publications.

Her books are so effective, I wonder how long it will be before the government kills the messenger, not by silencing Winter, but by withholding the identity of the contents of various products and reversing the `truth in labeling' and `organic measures enacted in the past. Of course, they can and do go to the other extreme and ban items that are only harmful if they are misused.

This book is aimed at ppl who're on the brink of understanding what toxins and allergic substances are contained within foods. After reading the reviews, I realised that you when you're severely allergic to foodstuffs, then it's not an axe to grind - it's pertinent facts you need.

And sadly, this is what the book lacks. It's more a P.R. book of why the government legally poisons our food with enhancers and food colorings - to make them more appealing...

This book is a good read for beginning information - but if you need real sources of allergies, there is abundant data freely available on the internet.

Don't listen to publicity - listen to allergy sufferers.

thanks for the information about citrus - I'm cutting that one out of my diet now. :os

As a quick read with a number of interesting facts, this is a good introduction to food additives as well as nutrients. It could be construed as a dictionary but not as a reference. To be a reference, it needs a standardized format to ensure the same kind of information is provided for each item. To be a quick reference, it needs a comprehensive index. As a potential source, it also seems to lack authority when it fails to consistently cite sources and makes statements which appear subjective. I'm still looking for something of the nature of Rodale's Encyclopedia of Herbs.

This is a good reference book to have on your shelf. It may not expound for pages and pages on every item, but it certainly gives a reasonably good yet brief definition of each entry. While I was surprised to see certain entries, such as oregano and cinnamon, I was not surprised at all to see such entries as aspartame, azo dyes, and monosodium glutamate.

The companion book "A Consumer's Dictionary of Cosmetic Ingredients" is a good complement to this book.