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A carregar... Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World (edição 2004)por Greg Critser (Autor)
Informação Sobre a ObraFat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World por Greg Critser
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Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. Published in 2003, this is a study of all the reasons American waistlines have expanded over the previous decades. Starting with agricultural deals to save the farmers and cut food costs that turned into the development of high fructose and the push for palm oil, how fast food chains were the first to make larger portions to norm, the difference ethnicity plays in weight, and the study of the health risks of obesity on the body. What a great time of the year for me to pick this one up! Btw, the author admits in the book that America isn't the fattest nation, as there are several small nations that are fatter. Critser is on a mission to convince the reader of the horrible impacts of poor eating habits stemming from fast foods and of limited exercise on the current obesity crisis. He does a good job of describing the economic, societal and cultural elements which have all contributed to this state: from cheap eats made from unhealthy ingredients to cuts in physical education programs, there is a convergence of issues which have led to huge weight gains throughout the US. There are some weaknesses: a vague attempt at the genetics and biology of weight gain (which did nothing to convince me), a gross exaggeration of 'future man combating excessive weight' and the esthetics whereby men and women prefer their lean counterparts (while ignoring cultural canons), but generally the message is clear: the poorer you are, the more likely you are to be fat. Like all one-sided presentations, this book fails to turn to other, more successful, cultures like European ones (especially France which has tremendous success with its five fruits and vegetables campaign) but I found the conclusions and next steps solid with some innovative and optimistic conclusions. Ultimately only education and access to healthy foods will help reshape mentalities, a process that will be slow. This book is a short history to date (2003) of the rising statistics of obesity in America. It details the impact on the day-to-day individual, as well as the on the educational and national health care systems. Reading this book will help you understand how obesity has become a pandemic in America and will inspire a change of habit. Summed up, as America progresses into a more sedentary culture/civilization with food (read: calories) becoming increasingly easy to gather and even easier to consume, individuals will consequently balloon in weight. Greg Critser argues that while obesity is an individual responsibility, it may be a social and environmental (access to food, sedentary workforce, etc) consequence. Although Critser threatens a bleak future, both for individuals and society, if obesity rates continue to increase, he offers a simple solution to combating, and more importantly, beating obesity: eat fewer calories and exercise more...or at the very least, eat fewer calories. As an overweight (a bit, not too much) person myself, I found much to fear in this book about the growing trend toward obesity within the population of the United States. Daily, I see more and more people around me (good friends and relatives as well) who are truly obese, and I do worry about them. Critser's book talks about the forces which have driven Americans to be the most overweight people in the world, the way the products Americans eat (or maybe should not eat) change our bodies, and techniques for dealing with the now startling rate of growth of obesity among children. I found there to be some dry reading in the parts of Critser's book where he cites various studies. However, the best part of the book is the end where he discusses how we can and should help our children deal with weight issues now. This book is a good introduction to the serious issue of obesity as a health problem. I think what was missing from this book was more of a focus on how this problem should be addressed currently with adults. sem críticas | adicionar uma crítica
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Fat land highlights the groundbreaking research that implicates cheap fats and sugars as the alarming new metabolic factor making our calories stick and shows how and why children are too often the chief metabolic victims of such foods. No one else writing on fat America takes as hard a line as Critser on the institutionalized lies we've been telling ourselves about how much we can eat and how little we can exercise. His expose of the Los Angeles schools' opening of the nutritional floodgates in the lunchroom and his examination of the political and cultural forces that have set the bar on American fitness low and then lower, are both discerning reporting and impassioned wake-up calls. Disarmingly funny, Fat land leaves no diet book - including Dr. Atkins's - unturned. Fashions, both leisure and street, and American-style religion are subject to Critser's gimlet eye as well. Memorably, Fat land takes on baby-boomer parenting shibboleths - that young children won't eat past the point of being full and that the dinner table isn't the place to talk about food rules - and gives advice many families will use to lose. Critser's futuristic portrait of a Fat America just around the corner and his all too contemporary foray into the diabetes ward of a major children's hospital make Fat land a chilling but brilliantly rendered portrait of the cost in human lives - many of them very young lives - of America's obesity epidemic. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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The second half of the book is more technical, deals with diabetes and other health issues, plus the author has some suggestions on how to solve some of our problems. I was not as entertained toward the end.
Considering the book has been around for many years, I am interested in reading a more up to date book. I think there are some things that have changed, maybe for the good, maybe not.
I know at one point, probably during a chapter on excessive, needless snacking, I just had the urge to go open a bag of chips and dig in. And I did! But, a couple chapters later, probably during a chapter describing our lazy attitudes and inability to get off our butts, I got motivated and had to stop and get on the treadmill for half an hour. So in some ways, this book was an interactive book! ( )