 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | Eat salmon. It’s full of good omega-3 fats. Don’t eat salmon. It’s full of PCBs and mercury. Eat more veggies. They’re full of good antioxidants. Don’t eat more veggies. The pesticides will give you cancer.
Forget your dinner jacket and put on your lab coat: you have to be a nutritional scientist these days before you sit down to eat—which is why we need Dr. Joe Schwarcz, the expert in connecting chemistry to everyday life. In An Apple a Day, he’s taken his thorough knowledge of food chemistry, applied it to today’s top food fears, trends, and questions, and leavened it with his trademark lighthearted approach. The result is both an entertaining revelation of the miracles of science happening in our bodies every time we bite into a morsel of food, and a telling exploration of the myths, claims, and misconceptions surrounding our obsession with diets, nutrition, and weight.
Looking first at how food affects our health, Dr. Joe examines what’s in tomatoes, soy, and broccoli that can keep us healthy and how the hundreds of compounds in a single food react when they hit our bodies. Then he investigates how we manipulate our food supply, delving into the science of food additives and what benefits we might realize from adding bacteria to certain foods. He clears up the confusion about contaminants, examining everything from pesticide residues, remnants of antibiotics, the dreaded trans fats, and chemicals that may leach from cookware. And he takes a studied look at the science of calories and weighs in on popular diets. |
Average Customer Rating:   Some neat tidbits, but it's somewhat repetative and unfortunately it's unlikely to change anyone's mind Near the end of the book, Joe Schwarcz quotes Mark Twain's famous maxim that "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." If (some of) the reviews for this book are any indication, Dr. Joe was right: scientific scrutiny is unlikely to change anyone's mind. People continue to smoke, people continue to eat mostly red meat, etc. Those people who eat red meat and smoke are often willing to admit they are participating in unhealthy behaviour. So much more, then, is it difficult or impossible to convince people through the scientific literature that their preconceived notions are not correct when the topic is not something for which literally billions of people have served as experimental subjects (through their normal activities). That is an observation that is mostly independent of the book's qualities as prose and entertainment, but it does identify the point from which this book starts.
In a series of bite-sized chapters (3-5 pages), Schwarcz takes us through some of the topics he's encountered and researched in his role as a science commentator over the last 30 (?) years. As such, I would suggest that the topics are a little skewed to the supplements side - there are many chapters devoted to particular dietary supplements with supposedly miraculous effects (to cure cancer, lose weight, etc.). These claims are usually laughably easy to dismiss because the "evidence" of their efficacy is non-existent. The book is much more interesting when he tackles issues of pesticides, teflon, and artificial sweeteners. Generally, the scientific literature shows that the amounts of these items in an average diet are so small as to be non-issues. Sure, they cause cancer - in amounts millions of times as large as humans take in. And these amounts are far less than the naturally occurring carcinogens that we are exposed to automatically because we breath and eat food. This leads to the primary thesis of the book, with which no nutritional expert could argue: eat a good balanced diet that emphasizes vegetables, fruit, and whole grains.
This thesis is proven again and again throughout the book, and the primary problem of this book is its repetative nature. In trying to keep each chapter reasonably autonomous, and because the conclusions are virtually the same each time, the author cannot possibly make the book entertaining for long reading times. It's more of a "pick up, read a bit, put down for a couple days" kind of book.
Other reviewers have objected to the lack of footnotes. This is a valid criticism; I suppose it was a conscious choice on the author's and editor's parts (for ease of readability). Certainly I would have prefered if the studies he cites were more clearly referenced. (Rise and Fall of the Third Reich had thousands of references, so it's insulting to think that the reader would pass on buying the book simply because they are in there, especially as this book's raison d'etre is to bring to the public the objective scientific conclusions on the nutritional questions raised in the book). I would add the criticism that two hot-button nutritional issues are not dealt with. (1) Bisphenol-A, a monomer used in polycarbonate synthesis, has been banned by Health Canada and others, but ruled safe (in the amounts present in polycarbonate drinking and storage vessels) by the FDA. Based on the number of articles I see (in newspapers and even the American Chemical Society's magazine), this chemical is perfectly positioned for the Dr. Joe treatment, and I find it curious that it is omitted. (2) Perhaps because this movement has only gained real traction since the book was written it was not included, but the "eat local" mantra is in conflict with the "eat lots of variety" mantra espoused by nutritionists and featured prominently in the book. If you live in a breadbasket (e.g. California), you can have a widely varied diet throughout the year. If you live in a northern clime (e.g. northern Minnesota, most of Canada), you will not have access to locally grown fresh fruit and veggies for most of the year. Eating as Dr. Schwarcz suggests would leave you with an enormous carbon footprint due to the transportation and refrigeration costs of moving the food from southern locations.
It is also curious that Dr. Joe never mentions the placebo effect. Some remedies are effective because the patient thinks they will be effective. Sure, double-blind studies take this into account (people receiving the placebo and the test compound are both going to benefit from the placebo effect, so any additional effect in the test group will be due to the efficacy of the test compound), but anecdotal "evidence" is easy to accumulate by charletons, and these testamonials can certainly be true! If you're one of the lucky ones whose cancer goes into remission at the same time as you started drinking three litres of acai juice a day, you will certainly "know" that the acai juice caused the remission. So it's my unfortunate conclusion that Dr. Joe is singing to the choir with this book - those with a scientific/statistical background will be convinced, but we were convinced anyways. Those who are the statistical outliers will still be convinced of their positions, and the charletans will continue to make money off of them. A Mixed Chemical Bag Overall, I found this book to be comprehensible and reasonable. The main points were there for the reading, and the more comprehensive research was there for those who want something deeper. He says what he's going to say, goes into detail, then sums it all up at the end. I can't ask for much more.
I felt that he did a good job of handling a wide variety of subjects. I agree with other reviewers who say that his chapter on milk was overly simplistic and cursory, which is odd because the rest of An Apple a Day seems very well thought out.
Mr. Schwarcz covers dioxins, BPA, fish oils, caffeine, floridation and various vitamins, among others. The book answered a number of questions I've had for a while, and some I hadn't thought of.
In general, Mr. Schwarcz was skeptical of research funded by people with a stake in the results, but he breaks his own rule a couple of times, which I found odd. I made a note of those times and tended to dismiss those particular research results. Those instances were rare, however, so I didn't find that it took away significantly from the book as a whole.
I would recommend this book for anyone with specific questions about major nutritional talking points, who wants a (mostly) even-handed evaluation of the scientific literature. An Apple A Day keeps old age away! Joe Schwarcz tells us what to eat and backs his advice up with the best and most verified lab results from all over the world. If you just love chemistry you'll love this book but if you care about yourself you'll find him a treasure chest of tips to live a long healthy time. Excellent book, no citations This is a good book, lots of useful information, in a nice "bite-sized" mini-chapter format. I work a lot in the field of nutrition and so recognized that a good deal of the information contained in "Apple a Day" is backed by sound medical research and published literature. In other cases, if you are familiar with the medical literature, his analysis seems a bit superficial. That said, the biggest flaw of this book is that the author did not provide citations so other readers could backtrack and check his data and assumptions. Sound Argument, Badly Structured In "An Apple a Day" the McGill University professor Joe Schwarcz offers salient useful nutritional advice. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Meat is fine but make sure you have more whole grains on your plate. Emphasize variety and balance in your diet. Avoid processed foods, especially those high in fat, sugar, and salt. Exercise. There are no miracle foods and short cuts to a healthy diet.
That's great advice that comes at page 353 of this 355-page book. I have many issues with the structure of the book, the main being Dr. Schwarcz's decision to divide his book into easily digestible chapters tackling all the major food debates out there: organic, genetically modified, detox, and so on. It would have been a much better book if Dr. Schwarcz structured it around his main thesis: that there are no short cuts to a healthy diet.
Science has spent decades and billions of dollars analyzing the different components of food in the hope of distilling the magical qualities of apples and tomatoes, and selling it in a bottle. There is no scientific basis for the overwhelming superiority of a certain vitamin, chemical, or nutritional supplement. Quite the opposite: eating or drinking too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. Seeking balance, moderation, and variety in nutrition is the best and only path to good health.
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