Customer Reviews

A Dictionary of Food & Nutrition (Oxford Paperback Reference)

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Oxford Dictionary of Food and Nutrition is probably the worst dictionary ever to come from Oxford University Press. In its second edition (2005) there was scarcely a page without a mistake and in its third edition (2009) there are still plenty of them: from misspelled entries and wrong definitions to the chaotic use of capitalization!

The author failed to correctly spell even the simplest foreign words which can be checked in every ordinary dictionary. For example: in the second edition he was trying to convince the readers, that the Roman word for starch was amulum*. Well, everybody who has some knowledge of the Latin language, and has ever heard for any of a flock of words beginning with amyl-, knows that the word was amylum. In the third edition this mistake is corrected, but tens of others, like the Italian word focaccia for a flat cake, which is misspelled foccacia*, are not.

Some of the mistakes from previous edition were 'corrected' in a very funny (i.e. not serious!) way. Example: a kind of Russian dumplings is called tvorozhniki, but the author invented(?) the spelling tvoroinki*, which is still an entry (now with the correct one in brackets) despite the fact, that as far as I know it exists in Oxford Dictionary of Food and Nutrition only.

Another 'gem' are definitions like that of nioigome: "perfumed rice". The dictionary does not tell us neither whose it is (probably Japanese) nor what exactly does it mean (perfumed with what?).

Besides, the author plays at hide-and-seek much too often for a decent dictionary. For example: 1) at soonf he says "see fennel", but at fennel there is no mention of soonf; 2) at soondth he says "see ginger", but at ginger there is no mention of soondth.

My advice is: avoid this dictionary! Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food is incomparably better choise (though it lacks information on nutrition).

The book is a little outdated, but the information inside it great. It is reader friendly and easy to find what you are looking for. I am studying to be a nutritionist and I have used this book many times. Every house should have one of these books on their bookshelf.

If you are a foodie and you like to know some of the finer details, this is for you. Not a dictionary; more a trivia collection. But not really trivia as the info is solid and useful.