Nutrition: Science and everyday application

by Alice Callahan, Heather Leonard, Tamberly Powell

Published October 14, 2020

About the author

I am a former research scientist, and now an author, freelance writer, and a college instructor. My first book, The Science of Mom: A Research-Based Guide to Your Baby's First Year, was published by Johns Hopkins Press in August 2015. I've updated the book for a second edition, to be released fall 2021.

I'm mother to Cee (born in 2010) and BabyM (born in 2014). I live and work in Eugene, Oregon.

I completed my PhD in Nutritional Biology at the University of California, Davis, in 2008 and then spent 2+ years studying fetal physiology as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona. After the birth of my daughter in 2010, I decided to leave the world of academic science, trading it for more time with my daughter and the opportunity to write. Without a lab bench and experiments to run, I found myself satisfying my curiosity by diving into the scientific literature on parenting topics, sorting through the science and trying to write coherent stories about how science informs parenthood. I started with a blog, but I found so much fascinating material and so many curious readers that I soon turned my attention to writing a book: The Science of Mom: A Research-Based Guide to Your Baby’s First Year, first published in 2015 by Johns Hopkins University Press.

I am not selling anything, and I have no agenda or particular parenting philosophy to promote. I’m just curious, and my scientific training gives me the skill set to evaluate the science, to see its strengths and flaws, and to give my honest interpretation of how it applies to our parenting questions.

Reviews

[Jennifer Mafnas]

new textbook for the class I teach online. Easy to read, understand and much better than the last one!

[Henry Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was tremendous. While it is technically a textbook, it was delightfully digestible (no pun intended) and is not as long as the page count suggests. The content dives deep into the science if you want to know the cellular breakdowns for every aspect of nutrition, but also keeps things high level with practical dietary recommendations. I particularly appreciated how current the book is, as it references recent changes to dietary recommendations. The book also has a great section at the end on dietary needs across a lifecycle, which has very useful sections on children and the elderly. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to cut through the commercially-driven food media and read what the science has to say! I was fortunate to be able to download it for free on Open Textbook Library.