American Academy of Pediatrics Guide to Your Child's Nutrition: Making Peace at the Table and Building Healthy Eating Habits for Life- -The Offi Cial,

Editors Dietz (director of the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta) and Stern (associate clinical professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine) offer a parent-friendly guide to nutrition through the childhood years. They include instructions on breast-feeding and bottle-feeding (while favoring the health benefits of the former) and walk parents through the stages of their child's nutritional development, including starting solid foods, dealing with finicky toddlers and meeting the nutritional needs of kids through their teenage years. In addition, the guide provides advice on such problems as eating disorders and overweight kids. Parents will also find helpful suggestions on fruits to feed kids who refuse to eat their vegetables, how to compensate when kids don't (or won't) eat meat and ways to meet the calcium and other vitamin and mineral needs of growing children. The text, which is enlivened by anecdotes from the authors' and other physicians' practices, presents information clearly and emphasizes that it's the parents' job to provide good, healthy foods, but it's the child's job to decide whether and how much he or she will eat. (Jan.)