Book Review

Natural toxicants in food

D.H. Watson, ed.
CRC Press, 1998, 335pp

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Uneven collection of reviews of toxic molecules associated in one way or another with food. Discusses secondary metabolite toxins such as pyrrolizidine alkaloids, glucosinolates, and natural estrogenic compounds, and food-contaminating toxins such as botulinum toxin, mycotoxins, and phycotoxins. The chapters on mycotoxins and seafood phycotoxins are well-written reviews, oriented toward the chemistry and toxicology of the toxins, while the chapters on nut allergens and botulinum toxin are oriented toward environmental health issues, and discuss the prevalence and epidemiology of the toxin in various foods, without discussing their chemistry. The chapter on botulinum and S. aureus toxins is particularly weak, considering the tremendous volume of biochemical information known about the various bacterial toxins. The last third of the book is oriented toward food quality control specialists and contains little information of scientific interest to biochemists.

Unfortunately, there are few books that discuss endogenous toxins in food, and almost none that discuss marine biotoxins. However, the book makes little attempt at comprehensiveness or consistency, and completely ignores the vast literature on important classes of food toxins such as solanine, oxalate, selenium, saponins, hemagglutinins or protease and amylase inhibitors, antinutrients such as polyphenols (including tannins and tannic acid derivatives), lectins, or phytate, barely touches on cyanogenic compounds or genetically-modified foods, and barely scratches the surface of the vast literature on toxic alkaloids. With a little effort (well, okay, a lot of effort), the editor could have created a unique, valuable, and much-needed authoritative work on this important subject. The book would have benefited from better proofreading. Also, like most books from CRC Press, this book is vastly overpriced.

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