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| View Larger Image | Fat Politics: The Real Story behind America's Obesity Epidemic
by J. Eric Oliver
| | List Price: | $15.95 | | Price: | $10.85 | | You Save: | $5.10 (32%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 154841 | | Studio: | Oxford University Press, USA | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 240 | | Publication Date: | September 14, 2006 | | Publisher: | Oxford University Press, USA |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
It seems almost daily we read newspaper articles and watch news reports exposing the growing epidemic of obesity in America. Our government tells us we are experiencing a major health crisis, with sixty percent of Americans classified as overweight, and one in four as obese. But how valid are these claims? In Fat Politics, J. Eric Oliver shows how a handful of doctors, government bureaucrats, and health researchers, with financial backing from the drug and weight-loss industries, have campaigned to create standards that mislead the public. They mislabel more than sixty million Americans as "overweight," inflate the health risks of being fat, and promote the idea that obesity is a killer disease.
In reviewing the scientific evidence, Oliver shows there is little proof that obesity causes so much disease and death or that losing weight is what makes people healthier. Our concern with obesity, he writes, is fueled more by social prejudice, bureaucratic politics, and industry profit than by scientific fact. Misinformation pushes millions of Americans towards dangerous surgeries, crash diets, and harmful diet drugs, while we ignore other, more real health problems. Oliver goes on to examine why it is that Americans despise fatness and explores why, despite this revulsion, we continue to gain weight.
Fat Politics will topple your most basic assumptions about obesity and health. It is essential reading for anyone with a stake in the nation's--or their own--good health. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 10 reviews)
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Fascinating research, weak conclusion 
Fat Politics is a gripping read because it highlights how certain oft-repeated mantras about weight can start to achieve the status of "truth" even though there is little empirical backing for these claims. Indeed, what is most disturbing, as Oliver outlines, is how the media replays and fails to really investigate claims that quickly associate weight with ill-health. Oliver also deftly shows how the ideas of what is classified as "overweight" and "obese" are constructed and hence permits us to get away from a kind of "scientism" where we believe anything passed off as fact is indeed so. My only criticism is the book seems to just end and not really conclude or suggest new paths of inquiry. While it certainly seems to be the case that politics, and not careful research, motivates our hysteria about weight, what is the connection between the research on health and weight? He thinks snacking mindless calories is some kind of answer (he uses his cookie-dough in the fridge as an example) and this "conclusion" is weak in comparison with the first part of the book which is compelling and well-researched. In one is interested in more elaborate discussion of weight and science surrounding weight, look at the Obsesity Epidemic which is a drier and less fun read but provides more quality research around just how little we really do know about the connection between weight and health.
February 03, 2008 | |
Mostly right but 
In the opening chapter of this book Oliver shows just how unclear and arbitrary are notions of what it is to be 'fat' or 'overweight'. This will be the first step in making the argument that the present hysteria over the 'overweight epidemic 'in the United States is just that 'hysteria'. He will go on in the book to confute the notion that overweight is the main factor in most major illnesses. He will make a strong argument that vested economic interests, including drug and insurance companies have promoted the 'America is Fat' campaign.
He too will make the case that a more critical health factor than one's weight is one's physical fitness, dependent in good part on the way one exercises.
All of this is in one sense very convincing. And yet there are clear signs and statistical evidence indicating that Americans have in the past ten years alone become considerably heavier. Oliver acknowledges that being very overweight does contribute to arthritis , aching joints, and makes physical activity more difficult. Moreover feeling overweight and feeling pain because of it connect very probably with an increased level of individual depression .
I am not a specialist in any of these areas, but my overall feeling is that while there may be much exaggeration, panicking, idiotic worshipping of thinness, futile and even damaging dieting, there is also a lot of illness and sorrow which comes from being overweight and worrying so much about it.
Oliver is probably right that this is not as massive a problem as it is being made out to be. But I do not think he is right to by and large deny its existence.
November 01, 2006 | |
Fat Politics
I found this book to be very informative and at last see that someone beside me feels that fat is being blamed on everything. Being a middle aged woman, though, I can attest to what the extra pounds have done to my knees, hips and ankles. I have spent my entire life, though, trying to not make myself a victim, but with discrimination being what it is, rude people being who they are, and being the butt of stares and comments, even though I have spent my entire life fighting fat, it is hard not to be the victim, here. I hope that a few doctors and a lot of men read this book. I hate being fat and fear dying early, but this book made me start to reason out that maybe I was not meant to be a thin person. I have had an echo gram, exercise stress test, and I pay regular visits to my Dr. The tests show I am in the lower third of the population to die of heart related illness. I try and take better care of my health, knowing that I am fat, and I think I am more conscientous than many thin people.
July 17, 2006 | |
Good book, that I didn't fully agree with
At least this book mentions that osteoarthritis is highly correlated with body weight: the heavier you are, the more chance that your knees or hips will give out, especially if you are a woman (sorry, but it is true). I think that the author is right that to some extent, science has been manipulated by the diet industry and by scare tactics (let's face it, groups get heard by trying to scare us). I would not want to read this and then give myself the "all clear" as an overweight person, because I know about the impact (literally) of even 10 pounds of extra weight on the knees and hips. But this book is a good addition to the overall literature on dieting and weight.
April 19, 2006 | |
It's not the fat, it's the politics
This is a book that should be read by everyone with a "weight problem." Oliver does a terrific job of showing how the so-called obesity epidemic has little to do with genuine health concerns. Instead, not surprisingly, it's all about money: drug manufacturers who finance "obesity institutes" that hype the dangers of overweight to sell diet drugs; diet and exercise companies with a vested interest in convincing people that their excess pounds are hazardous to their health; bariatric surgeons who want your insurance money; researchers who find that focusing on the dangers of obesity greatly improves their chances of getting grant money and publishing their findings.
Oliver isn't saying that it's OK to weigh 400 lbs; instead, he points out that (except in the most extreme cases) the dangers of overweight and the benefits of losing weight are greatly exaggerated -- in fact, trying to lose weight can be more harmful to one's health than staying fat, and very thin people are often far less healthy than fat people. Numerous studies (which he cites in detail) have disproved the conventional wisdom, but these are routinely ignored or misinterpreted. He also points out that the main reason that the incidence of obesity has increased in America is not that Americans have gained a lot of weight, but rather that the threshold for classifying someone as "obese" has been lowered (duh!).
Oliver's most noteworthy point, I think, is this: excess weight is not the problem, it's a symptom. The real culprits in "weight-linked" diseases aren't the pounds themselves, but the behaviors and conditions associated with them. Fat people who exercise are healthier than thin people who don't; following a healthy diet is beneficial even if it doesn't lead to weight loss; and many conditions (such as insulin resistance) are likelier to be the cause of excess weight, rather than the other way around.
From my own experience, I can confirm Oliver's contention that doctors' obsession with weight loss as a cure-all often diverts them from dealing with the real problem. High blood pressure runs in my family, and afflicts both fat and thin people; but the same doctors who prescribed medication for my thin relatives told me that ALL I had to do was lose weight and my blood pressure would go down. After 30 years (!), during which my weight was all over the map while my blood pressure steadily climbed, I finally found a doctor who listened to reason, and I've kept my blood pressure under control ever since with medication. (Footnote: A few years later, I lost 40 lbs -- and my blood pressure didn't budge.)
Being a political scientist and a statistician, Oliver also offers his conclusions about the social implications of fat, which I found interesting but not always convincing (his argument for why thinness is valued in white women seemed rather circular to me). The chief value of the book, I think, is that he's done an excellent job of amassing the medical and statistical data, and showing that many of our assumptions about obesity are based on myth rather than fact.
April 06, 2006 | |
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