[Photograph: Other Press]

The new year is upon us, and surely many of us are taking the opportunity to reconsider our eating habits. Maybe losing weight is your goal, maybe just more veggies and fewer donuts—either way, you may hope to find guidance from the many nutritional scientists who make claims about how and what we should eat. Well, says Joe Schwarcz, you should dig a little deeper. In his book An Apple a Day: The Myths, Misconceptions, and Truths about the Food We Eat, Schwarcz examines the science and fallacy behind most of the foods and additives that allegedly improve or ruin our diets.

A professor and prolific writer, Schwarcz takes an analytical approach to food myths. The book looks at the health impacts of chemicals that naturally occur in our foods, additives that allegedly make foods healthier, contaminants and how they affect our bodies, and overall diet trends that have prevailed in the past. Each section has two- or three-page chapters isolating particular compounds and analyzing the science that either validates or disproves widespread health claims.

The first section of the book yields interesting and generally intuitive conclusions. Flax and oats are good for you, and keep you full longer. The lycopene in tomatoes is excellent for cardiovascular health, but you'd need to eat a lot of tomatoes to see real benefit. But occasionally amidst the dense pages detailing nutritional experiments, Schwarcz shares a particularly fascinating tidbit. Apparently, the only reason we think spinach has incredible amounts of iron is because of a misplaced decimal point in initial analysis of the vegetable in the early 1900s! And no studies have conclusively determined benefits of consuming acai berries—though its smoothie omnipresence would lead one to believe that consumers have taken the bait anyway.

The first section of this book is decidedly hard to get through. Indeed, he states up front that each chapter of the book stands alone—yielding a choppy, encyclopedia-like narrative. The book's saving grace is Schwarcz's somewhat awkward but genuine attempts at humor. At least an eye roll and generous chuckle keeps one from a looming mid-book nap.

Schwarcz hits his stride when he begins discussing food additives and preservatives. Generally, I'm used to nutrition authors claiming that the less manipulated our foods are, the better they are for us. This is not Schwarcz's mentality. By and large, he points out that there has been little reliable scientific data to indicate the harm done by pesticides, leaching plastics, or MSG. While he is careful to say that these products are not proven safe, either, his bottom line is always science. And if science says that impossibly high doses of pesticides are required to cause ill health in humans, then Schwarcz says we'd better hang on to our food-producing, pest-free plants.

There are many fun tidbits to be gleaned from An Apple a Day, if you can dig your way through the data. But it is important to recognize that Schwarcz's money is on hard science. While he appears to be more than receptive to miracle foods and their surprising health benefits, his overall approach is to avoid isolating one food over another. Indeed, his concluding chapter is something of a dieter's letdown, instructing us all to maintain a well-balanced diet of healthy foods, with occasional indulgence thrown in to prevent utter depression. Well, thanks, Doc. At least I can walk away with the comfort of knowing that studies have indicated that dark chocolate improves blood pressure—when consumed in moderate amounts, of course.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves consuming and learning about as much food as possible. Her work is also featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine. She blogs at Feasting on Providence.