It has been a gluttonous few weeks. The parties, the chocolates, the mince pies — all capped with that 6,000-calorie Christmas Day feast. A January detox sounds sensible. A chance to purge those toxins, burn away the flab and give our furred arteries a well earned break.

Millions of us will be making just such a resolve today as we prepare for New Year’s Eve and one last night of hedonistic indulgence. If, however, you are thinking of joining that bandwagon then you may be about to suffer in vain.

After sponsoring one of the biggest nutritional research programmes of its kind, the BBC is set to debunk the notion of detoxing, together with a list of other food myths.

“The detox diet idea is nonsense,” said Nigel Denby, a dietician at Queen Charlotte’s hospital in west London, who worked on the BBC’s detox experiment.

“Our research has confirmed what medics have long suspected: that our bodies are extremely efficient machines for doing all the detoxing needed and they don’t need much extra help.”

The BBC’s six-part series The Truth About Food will set out the results of dozens of scientific experiments commissioned to test popular beliefs about food.

Can, for example, foods really make you feel sexy? Some can, it appears — but not the ones you might think. (Forget oysters and chocolate, think garlic instead.) The new series, supported with a book, is not the only thing that will keep food in the headlines throughout January. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is also to hit the airwaves with advertisements promoting its traffic light labelling system for packaged foods.

The voluntary system, which puts a red warning blob on foods that are high in fat, salt or sugar is driving junk food retailers and manufacturers such as Tesco, Kellogg’s and Nestlé to distraction. They are expected to launch their own television counter-blast.

Neville Rigby, policy director at the International Obesity Task Force, said: “The labelling of food has been confusing consumers for too long. The FSA’s new traffic light system is the first attempt to give consumers clear, simple information that they can use to make simple decisions about which foods to buy. It would give consumers an easy way of spotting foods that are high in fat, salt or sugar — and that is why the industry is so set against it. It will be a hard-fought battle.”

All this comes as Ofcom, the communications regulator, is preparing to implement its long discussed ban on television advertising for junk food before the 9pm watershed. That could see advertisements for up to 75% of breakfast cereals and other products aimed at children being taken off the air.

What should we aim to be eating in 2007? Here are some of the answers:

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DETOXING