With a now wide choice of key texts in nutrition to choose from, the new edition of this book enters a competitive market. The book is spread over two volumes, with volume 1 (entitled Systems Biology) dedicating itself to energy, macronutrients and micronutrients, with preliminary chapters on systems biology and body composition. The organisation of chapters is, as expected, systematic, although the content of the first chapter serves as an interesting insight into emerging approaches in nutrition in terms of ‘omics’ technologies including genomics, proteomics and metabolomics. The next chapters cover some aspects of energy balance and include specific considerations of body composition and of exercise, although the aspects covered in these chapters may be equally served in the context of volume 2 which looks at more applied aspects of nutrition. The main advantages that this book has over other comparative texts is the level at which the content is pitched. Each chapter serves as a scholarly, in-depth literature review of the area and cites a number of relevant and up-to-date references. For this reason, this text is likely to be of use to postgraduate students and new lecturers in nutrition who seek to gain an in-depth grounding of current understanding on a particular nutrient. I myself have found it useful in helping to expand some lectures and in preparing new lectures for undergraduates. The book would benefit from more annotated diagrams in places and improved clarity on some existing diagrams, although this is a fairly minor criticism. A greater concern for potential purchasers or readers outside of North America is that fundamentally this is an American text book, with almost exclusively American-based authors and hence for the most part refers to US consumption data and dietary reference values which do not always directly correspond to those for the rest of the world. This is a frustration that is not restricted to this book, but is common, and a more global approach to such books should be considered in the future. Nevertheless as a reference text this serves as a worthwhile purchase for those in need of good further insight.