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Title: The Hungry Gene: The Science of Fat and the Future of Thin by Ellen Ruppel Shell ISBN: 0-87113-856-5 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press Pub. Date: October, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.37 (19 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Fast Food Nation Lovers Rejoice!
Comment: Anyone who enjoyed Fast Food Nation is going to love this book, because it makes clear why what we're eating and how we're living, has created the biggest public health problem since smoking. I really don't know where to begin getting into it, because this slim volume is so complete, covering everything from what starvation studies told us about why we eat, to the genetics of appetite, to social influences on eating behavior, to prenatal programming of obesity. It gets deep into the politics of the food industry, and into food marketing to children. It explains how changes in the diet made industry rich, and a growing number of people around the world fat and diabetic. It nails the smoking gun of the obesity epidemic, which is the impact of an obesegenic environment on suseptible genes--genes that most of us have, by the way. It doesn't eliminate personal responsibility as a factor in obesity, but it does show why some of us are more likely than others to over eat and why and what can be done about it. I read Hungry Gene in one sitting, on a cross country flight from New York to LA, because it was so well written, and so darn interesting. I mean, there is a whole chapter on Kosrae, Micronesia where an entire population got fat in just one generation, and that is written almost like a travel piece, with great verve and with tons of information. There's another very graphic and chilling chapter on stomach surgery, which incorporates a whole history of obesity treatments. There's another chapter on this scientist in the UK who is showing that obesity can be programmed in the womb. There's even a chapter on food marketing, where the author crashes a conference for food marketers and exposes how they con our kids into craving all their junk. It's entertaining, incredibly informative, and terribly important stuff. So buy it, read it, and then see if you can watch just one more fast food ad on tv without throwing the remote at the set.
Rating: 5
Summary: Enlightening and Comprehensive
Comment: If you enjoyed Jungle or Fast Food Nation, and/or are a nutrition/health enthusiast, this book is a must-read. It is fascinating, well-paced, reasonably comprehensive and enlightening about the history of obesity research and the current state. It balances scientific biographic accounts with social events/scenarios. Should help people show more sympathy towards larger people!
Rating: 3
Summary: Obesity Marketeers
Comment: While one can be grateful and admire the authors' acknowledgement of the marketing of obesity-just how much the obsessive desire of normal weight people to be stick thin body builders viciously escalated today's obesity epidemic is, of course as with all these eat less move more, political books never really examined. To her credit she is more sympathetic than scolding, and acknowledges homo sapiens' stunning ability to survive famine through "famine" metabolism control, (I wish I could regulate my heater so effectively in the winter!) and superior carb storing ability as fat. (If only I could get this kind of return on my bank acct. for such minimal but constant deposits!) The hope based on ignorance of this physiological truth is what the diet industries profits from with it's-hello-eat less! starvation sports drinks and reducing teas. This is the real evil cuplrit here-NOT Fast food! Who was believing that fast food supersized meals were beneficial to your health anyhow? No one, at least in that industry, was preying on false hope and America's moral obsession with thinness and fitness. In that sense "health bars" such as Jamba Juice, where one gulped down thousands of calories of fructose and fat free soy while the other hand slammed one's face with fat free carbs hoping to regain one's compromised modern health is the real problem. The junk food eaters woud've always been part of America's once stable fat percentage, but over looked is what compounded and created the Obesity epidemic one hears about ad nauseum: those miserable, self-loathing healthy eaters adhering tragically to the eat low fat replaced with earth sustaining carbs-move into the gymn self-flagelaters who found themselves more and more exhausted, deprived and self-blaming only to wake up fatter somehow. AT least anorexia had paid off-this was just killing you slowly and making you feel like a corpse in sweats. The majority of said "victims" were not cheating-which is truly heroic and unfathomable in the face of the kind of out of control cravings this way of eating sets you up for. Talk to the Great Generation who starved through the forties and rejoiced at having plenty again, bragging about having enough to even add back the more expensive meats. (This is why I don't buy the class argument! Produce, grains, low fat protein like soy and tuna recommended here for thinness are the cheap food! One has only to make a slight effort to eat these instead of Mc Donalds.) At this point obsesity was stable, appetites were satisfied, blood sugar was under control, and most importantly, the American obesity rate was stable. It is with the new food pryamid, (Any child attending school between the '70s and '90s remembers it.) when loading up on unsatisfying side dishes instead of building blocks stimulated a sort moral deprivation, fat cutting movement. Look at how the charts climb, notice how obesity rates, not to mention diabesity and all the other living deaths, (if not eventual deaths) became as out of control and all consuming as one's blood sugar. IT would be nice to see some acknowledgement of this reality, which could offer hope, since people can't very well give up eating altogether - Rather than chastising those already living like prsion camp laborers to do what they've been desperately trying to do-eat less, move more. I guess the shockingly frustrating trend where we've been eating less and weighing more is just something that will not be acknowledged for a very long time, and I keep hearing about how all of America will have eaten itself to death by then. The Roman empire certainly had a more admirable way of doing itself in, and we're not even enjoying the good stuff.
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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: Fat Land : How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser ISBN: 0618164723 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 14 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Food Politics : How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health by Marion Nestle ISBN: 0520240677 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Fat : Fighting the Obesity Epidemic by Robert Pool ISBN: 0195118537 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: February, 2001 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating by Walter C. Willett, P. J. Skerrett ISBN: 0743223225 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 06 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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