This is the story of man's enduring curiosity about the way that food sustains life, and of our ongoing struggle to find the vital ingredients of a healthy diet. Through these pages marches a procession of remarkable heroes and villains, scientists risking their lives in self-experimentation, and quacks and charlatans preying, as they still prey, on a gullible public. For Terrors of the Table tells the strange history of the science of nutrition: from our gradual dawning awareness of the link between malnutrition and disease, to the rush to develop new diets and supplements, and onwards to our present-day dread of obesity and cholesterol, Walter Gratzer offers a wry historical perspective on food fads, nutrition, and the terrors that may lurk on the dinner table. Book jacket.