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Title: Fat Land : How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser ISBN: 0-618-38060-4 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 05 January, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 (64 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Insulin Resistance Is Futile
Comment: In Fat Land, Greg Critser has written an important essay concerning the origins and effects of the looming obesity-driven health crisis facing the United States. This book is especially important in a country that can't seem to get its health care costs in line. Critser starts with the advent of cheap sweetner [high fructose corn syrup] and fat [palm oil], takes us through the development of supersized fast food and fast food in the public schools, and then moves on to what America's increased girth is doing to our health, with special focus on the youth of America. Critser never denies a genetic component in individual differences in weight, nor does he make light of the need for people to feel good about themselves, but he stresses that ultimately an obese person is not as healthy as a person with a normal body weight. Critser offers no panecea for weight loss, but sounds the now common [and accurate] refrain that a balanced diet that is lower in Calories accompanied by an increase in exercise is the only sure way to a healthy body weight. Critser is a tad strident at times, but given the urgency of the problem, I can forgive that in this highly readable [but scary] book. I wouldn't want the potential reader to base any decision on a small piece of anecdotal evidence, but I can attest to much of what Critser writes about. When I started teaching 18 years ago, I was only slightly heavier than what the charts say my normal weight should be, but I had already spent a decade since my teens fighting my weight and bad eating habits [which were not my Mom's fault - Mama tried!]. Last July, I was 150 pounds overweight, had high blood pressure [already medicated to normalcy], had high cholesterol [also medicated to normalcy], and my doctor was telling me that I was showing signs of impaired glucose tolerance. I faced my potential early demise [the morbid in morbidly obese] with great seriousness, went to the diabetic nutrition classes [I'm pre-diabetic, but my doctor doesn't want to wait until damage has been done], and I've lost 65 pounds. My diet is much healthier and I walk every day. It's hard, but the alternatives [are bad]! Some of my 9th graders are facing the obesity-related health problems that I didn't have to deal with until age 43! If you care about the health of your loved ones and the health of all Americans, I highly recommend that you read this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Fascinating, quick read.
Comment: "Fat Land" is a fascinating and quick read, very much in the same spirit as "Fast Food Nation." Instead of exposing one particular industry, like "Fast", this book seeks to answer why the U.S. has had such a rapid increase in obesity and weight-related health problems in the last 30 years. The author reveals a lot of primary causes, from thoughtless profiteers in the food industry to the denial of the populace, who have heard what they wanted to hear, and ignored their rapidly expanding waist bands.
Just a few of the culprits: (1)an increase in the use of high fructose corn syrup, a cheap sweetener which helped profits but increased caloric intake; (2)the super sizing phenomenon in fast food and convenience food; (3) an overly sedentary culture (4) misinformation in the diet industry, which sold a lot of gimmick diet books and products (5)the media telling people what they wanted to hear, including that moderate exercise was as good as vigorous exercise and (6) corporations buying their way into poorly funded schools, serving teenagers a staple of junk food.
Crister deals with each of these points in depth, but also gets into various sociological factors that play a part in obesity, including poorly funded schools, indigent cultures, and ignorant doctors (many of whom are never educated about nutrition and aren't giving sound or realistic advice about weight loss.)
Although the book is thorough on the topics it covers, Critser ignores some of the more conventional theories. He doesn't touch nearly enough on genetic factors, which do play a role in weight gain, and seems to be giving a free pass to those who eat badly but don't show it. There are many with high metabolisms who are eating just as badly as the obese, and they too will have some of the health problems (like cancer and heart disease) that the book talks about.
Some of the book is painful to read, because the cold facts about obesity-related illness and early death are grim realities. They are essential to know, though, and this book spells it out in a well written, compelling way. The book is well researched and balanced, and one of the better books I've read on the topic of nutrition.
Rating: 3
Summary: Less Filling
Comment: A worthwhile topic, disappointingly rendered, especially if you've read "Fast Food Nation".
Critser goes into useful levels of detail on tantalizingly few topics. Too many of his other points are supported only anecdotally, or worse, because-he-said-so.
He does make at least a few points excellently: the blistering critique of our feel-good fat-positive self-esteem etiquette nonsense, that prevents us from warning our friends and ourselves when we are literally gorging ourselves to death, was right on the mark and needed saying. I attended a women's college during a high-level eating disorder scare, and found it surprising and eye-opening to learn that the rates of anorexia and bulimia are far lower than our self-help culture has suggested. Certainly it is useful for everyone to place anorexia and bulimia in proper perspective alongside the skyrocketing rates of obesity, and ask ourselves what we've gained for conceding one in the name of fighting the others. (He does not detail, but in later years it has also become part of the thinking on eating disorders that they are primarily mental illnesses related to control and trauma, not food. We should stop treating them as being about food, and start treating obesity, which is about food!) And, the chapter on the "branding" of food and drink in our schools should be a wake-up call for parents and school boards nationwide.
Unfortunately, too many other topics represent missed opportunities or simply misfires. Sure, his high fructose corn syrup theory is supported by some initial dietary research, but so were all the other fad diets he himself decries. The opening chapter on America's food subsidies and ag policies is frustratingly thin and primarily devoted to an amusing character study of Mr. Butz instead of a weighty analysis of which foods we make available to ourselves and at what prices. It's been said that subsidies of specific unhealthy food types contribute to the disproportionate rates of obesity among the poor (because the cheapest foods are the worst for you, while lean meats and fresh produce are unaffordable for many working Americans), but you won't find that discussion here. There's no mention at all of the shift in the nature of employment for Americans... thanks to labor-saving and even safety devices, even minimum-wage work is increasingly sedentary (standing in one place all day as a cashier or Wal-Mart greeter is not physical activity), and at home, the villainous TV and video games get all the blame, with no discussion of everyday labor-saving devices and their effect on American sloth. I don't recall much information about Americans' rejection of public transit and our propensity to fight one another tooth and nail for a parking space five feet closer to the mall doors.
If we fail to recognize that modernity has changed the nature of our physical lives across the board, all of Critser's exhortations about PE will surely fail. He hints at it, but never really nails it... for most Americans, exercise has become artificial rather than an integral part of everyday life. And PE, no matter how skillfully taught, is artificial, in a structured form unavailable to adults. The affluent can afford to purchase their exercise in comparably tidy packages (clubs, leagues, etc.), but where does that leave the rest of us when we grow up?
And so, saddest of all, Critser's one and only proffered "solution" is: more PE in (public) schools. What a political football that is! Should our desperately cash-strapped schools (stripped of their fast food and soda sponsorship contracts, no less) pull money and time out of already underfunded and inadequate academic programs? Should we spend yet more of our resources teaching our kids how to have a sanctioned lifestyle instead of teaching them how to read and do math? Especially low-income kids, who need a real education more than anyone! Do our schools have to be everything to every child simply because they're the one and only opportunity in an American's entire lifetime where we have a captive audience? Can we serve Americans better all the way through adulthood if we teach literacy, history, statistics and general critical thinking instead of dodgeball?
"Fat Land" is a tasty appetizer. I hope the main course on this subject is yet to come.
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Title: Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (California Studies in Food and Culture) by Marion Nestle ISBN: 0520240677 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Food Fight : The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It by Kelly D. Brownell, Katherine Battle Horgen ISBN: 0071402500 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Pub. Date: 07 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser ISBN: 0060938455 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 08 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Hungry Gene: The Science of Fat and the Future of Thin by Ellen Ruppel Shell ISBN: 0871138565 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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