Picture of author.
5 Works 284 Membros 9 Críticas

About the Author

A professor of law at the University of Colorado and a nationally recognized expert on America's war on fat, Paul Campos is the author of a weekly opinion column that appears in more than forty newspapers nationwide. His articles have appeared in The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, the Los mostrar mais Angeles Times, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Boston Globe. He lives in Boulder, Colorado mostrar menos

Includes the name: Paul F. Campos

Image credit: Paul Campos

Obras por Paul Campos

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Data de nascimento
20th Century
Sexo
male
Nacionalidade
USA
Educação
University of Michigan Law School
Ocupações
Professor of Law
lawyer

Membros

Críticas

I am so thankful that Paul Campos has attempted to debunk many of the myths surrounding obesity and health. He does a great work of demonstrating how obesity research is flawed and yet policy is made on that flawed research. He also elaborates on how the diet industry has been involved in much of the obesity research to its own advantage.
I went to a seminar on nutrition over 20 years ago during which it was explained that the insurance industry-based nutrition tables were arbitrarily determined much to the chagrin of nutrition experts. Furthermore, they did not include people over the age of 60 in the "studies" to determine those tables and yet they just extrapolated weights for people over the age of 60. The "studies" were actually done with thin, white, college-age males. How egregious!
I have always contended that the American Heart Association's promotion of a low fat diet is also based on the same faulty research cited in this book. It's difficult to argue against such large and embedded entities such as the diet industry and the AHA and I applaud this effort to do so. I used to work with a cardiologist who predicted that in a few decades we will start to see more people with osteoporosis (including a increase in men with this disorder) due to restriction of fat in cardiac diets.
I did not give this book 5 stars. The author gets rabid against his lawyer colleague for her diet book and rants a bit too much. This gets a bit obsessive and goes on a bit too much.
I do plan on using some of the information presented in this book to take to the University of Michigan Regents who recently denied any selling of sugar-sweetened beverages (including juices) anywhere on the campus, including the health system, in an effort to decrease obesity. Their paternalistic decision to do this smacks of discrimination against obesity and deprives people of making their own choice. Furthermore, the chemicals in "diet" drinks are now suspected of increasing food cravings and they are known to be unsafe for pregnant women and those with allergies to the chemicals.
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Assinalado
Kimberlyhi | 6 outras críticas | Apr 15, 2023 |
A Fan's Life: The Agony of Victory and the Thrill of Defeat, by Paul Campos, looks at fandom both within sports and in society at large.

While the book holds together very well as a single examination of fandom, even when it moves out of sports fandom, I was like two very different people reading it. Both of me (what??) enjoyed it but for different reasons.

The sports fan, more on definition in a moment, spent a lot of time going into the past and remembering the heartbreaking moments. I seem to fall into a category that would include former diehard fans (such as Campos) and the casual fan. From my earliest memories until about age 26 or so I attended games, lived and breathed, for two sports franchises. The Baltimore Orioles and the Baltimore Colts. I think you can guess where I'm from, huh? At 8 years of age I attended all four games of the '66 World Series (my grandmother lived in Van Nuys so I had family to put me on and take me off the flight). There was no better (in my eyes) place to watch a game than Memorial Stadium. Within 9 months I became unusually jaded for some of only 10-11, 1969, January the (no way they can win) Jets beat my Colts in the Super Bowl and October the (no way they can win) Mets beat my Orioles in the World Series. I have never felt comfortable or confident when watching a game of anything (even tiddlywinks!). Traumatized, I tell ya, traumatized. Or at least it seemed so to me. When I was 26 the Colts ran out on the city and their fans in the middle of the night, and I quit being such a diehard fan for anyone. If they don't care, I don't have to care. So much for memory lane!

The other me, in looking at fandom, my own, Campos' Wolverines fandom, and the many stories that illustrate it for others and how it has become the way we conduct government and politics, is also jaded. But where I am powerless to keep sports teams from being evil, I can become more of an activist and try to right the ship that has almost floundered completely due to politics as (empty-headed) fandom. The analogy is spot on, and the chapter where the full argument is presented, I had to read twice.

I would recommend this to both the sports fan as well as anyone curious for how to understand at least some of what has gone wrong in the country.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
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Assinalado
pomo58 | Aug 2, 2022 |
An enlightening book on the so-called obesity epidemic, and how focusing weight is much less important than focusing on health.
 
Assinalado
Bean31 | 6 outras críticas | Mar 22, 2020 |
The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos discusses the ideas of Obesity being a myth. It isn’t that obesity doesn’t exist, the book tells us that obesity just isn’t that much of a health hazard as it is made out to be. By using vital statistics and medical science Campos patiently dismantles the arguments saying that we have to be a particular weight. In that sense, it turns modern medical science on its head. Most people say that being a healthy weight is important to lower your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Campos just comes along and says that this is not correct.

Take the BMI chart for example; using a mathematical formula it takes your height and weight into account and tells you whether or not you are obese. The BMI charts are merely an offshoot of the MetLife Insurance tables that were drawn up in the 1940s. The BMI is supposed to be more accurate but doesn’t seem to take musculature and body type into account. There are many stories of people in the fitness and fat-loss industry lobbying Congress into approving horrible drugs like fen-phen and others. It is true that they took it off the market, but the initial idea was that it aided in weight-loss.

I don’t particularly appreciate being fed an agenda, and in some ways that seems like what the author is doing. The suggestions for further reading are mostly books on how weight issues are the core of feminism or something. Of course we all aren’t going to look like underwear models if we are healthy, that shouldn’t be a goal. The goal should be to not be sedentary, but what do I really know about all that? I’m not a doctor.
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Assinalado
Floyd3345 | 6 outras críticas | Jun 15, 2019 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
5
Membros
284
Popularidade
#82,067
Avaliação
4.1
Críticas
9
ISBN
19
Línguas
1

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