by Greg Critser
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Product Description
What in American society has changed so dramatically that nearly 60 percent of us are now overweight, plunging the nation into what the surgeon general calls an "epidemic of obesity"? Greg Critser engages every aspect of American life - class, politics, culture, and economics - to show how we have made ourselves the second fattest people on the planet (after South Sea Islanders).
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 brilliantly drawn 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.
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Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 A Mixed Bag, 2008-04-16
Fat Land is an interesting introduction to the topic of obesity as a public-health issue. The book, however, is very uneven and the author has no promising solutions.
At its best, Fat Land is an absorbing look at a critical issue that much of the public refuses to face. The author, Greg Critser, can make esoteric government decisions seem interesting. Some of his anecdotes - such as one about the 698-pound rap star Big Pun - are fascinating. I doubt that many people will walk away from Fat Land totally dissatisfied. At the very least, the book forces you to think about how much you're eating and how little you exercise.
Unfortunately, Fat Land is good only in places. I thought that most of the engaging material was in Chapters 1-4. Chapter 5 descends into babble about how poor people enjoy living in the "cocoon of obesity" (p. 112); this is especially disappointing because Critser criticizes others for just such flimsy thinking. Chapter 6, on the medical impact of obesity, was too technical for my taste. Chapter 7 offers some unoriginal solutions.
At his worst, Critser seems immune to nuance. American corporations are one-dimensional villains: "...the soft drink industry alone spends upward of $600 million annually to promote its trash..." (p. 173); "...these reversals serve notice to parents that the snack food industry will stoop to anything to protect its interests in maintaining their child's expanding belly, despites its medical consequences..." (p. 174). Isn't it possible that business could be part of the solution? Private companies control our food supply; I think, therefore, that we must encourage these businesses to be our partners - and not our adversaries - in promoting public health. One needs to think only of the success of organic produce to realize that there is a market for some healthy foods.
As many Amazon reviewers point out, a sense of gloom pervades Fat Land; there are no easy ways out of this mess. To Critser, government action is the panacea. Critser's answers to the problem include more P.E. classes, a national fat tax, and the return of 1930s New Deal agencies such as the Community Areas Foundation. I don't find these ideas to be very innovative; nor do they seem sufficiently promising to end the obesity crisis. Schools struggle to teach basic math and science, many people feel that taxes are sufficiently high at present, and government agencies often achieve mixed results. Critser's suggestions, moreover, focus on childhood obesity; he has little to say about how obese adults can improve their health.
In the end, unless we are willing to ban fatty food outright, personal responsibility must play some role in the solution. It's hard to admit it, but Big Macs, extra-large fries, and Big Gulps are popular because a lot of people prefer food that is terrible for us. Critser gives very little attention to personal responsibility, except to scoff that one conservative "...likes to sound the personal-responsibility trumpet..." (page xv).
Fat Land, in summary, is unlikely to bore you. But you will walk with a sense of despair about our declining national health.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 an in-depth look at reasons beyond the usual, 2007-12-03
As a dietitian, this book fascinates me not only due to the food/nutrition overview of the causes/etiology of obesity, but also the whole story behind the food production in the US. The book provides a historical overview of how high fructose corny syrup became popular as well as speculation on this obesity issue in the US/world. I loved it!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Scary , 2007-10-25
This book examines some of the various factors behind the current obesity epidemic in the United States. Critser, who formerly indulged in junk food himself, came to the realization one day that he was fat. He determined to do something about it, and put himself on a strict diet and fitness plan to get back in shape. Along the way, he also decided to investigate not only how he had managed to put on so much weight, but also how his neighbors and their kids had managed to become some of the fattest people on the planet.
Critser puts much of the blame on corn syrup and palm oil, two ingredients which have made it possible to supply more calories than ever at lower cost. Because of the low cost of these ingredients, the food industry, particularly those companies producing snacks, desserts, and fast foods, have been able to keep costs and prices low, within the budget of even the poorest of the poor. Indeed, as Critser points out, junk food and fast food is priced so low, it may be the only food poor people can afford to buy, which contributes to inordinate proportion of obesity amongst the country's lowest economic segments. Critser also discusses factors leading to less activity for the young, such as decreased hours for physical education instruction in school, and a physical education curriculum that focuses on recognizing the already fit and physically gifted rather than helping the average or below average kid.
Overall, the book is an interesting excursus into the causes of obesity in the modern American diet. While Critser does an admirable job of examining political decisions, marketing maneuvers, parenting styles, and technological factors behind the rise of obesity in America, there are still other topics he doesn't include in this book, such as anti-pedestrian development policies and cheap gas. (In countries where gas is much more expensive, people ride bikes and walk rather than drive cars, burning more calories than carbons.) And even if phys ed programs are required every day of the week for school children, they may not make a dent in the obesity epidemic unless they focus on developing lifelong fitness habits rather than team sport skills or simple physical activities popular with children. Nevertheless, the book is well worth reading for understanding why we are so fat as a nation and how we can begin to address the problem.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
The New Cultural Obesity, 2007-09-12
When I returned from the Peace Corps in Africa to the US the first thing that struck me was how heavy people were. I did not return from a country suffering from famine, the people there were mostly in excellent shape considering their situation and it was the first time I had really noticed with a new perspective how heavy Americans were. This struck again when I had spent some time hiking in the west and returned to the mid west to see the inactive people away from the trails of the national parks were very overweight.
In Greg Critser's book I think the only thing that was not well explained was this problem of sedentary lifestyle. He does an excellent job otherwise in explaining the politics and culture that have created America's obesity epidemic. This book has changed my eating habits and brought an awareness of the problem of convenience foods, high fructose corn syrup, and fast food culture to me by his explanation of how the most readily available inexpensive foods are also the cause of obesity and much of the nation's health problems.
This is an excellent book and will probably change your outlook on food and eating for the better.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Diet book, 2007-06-10
A good history lesson that is interesting and a fast read. A basic look at how kids and adults can get fat without knowing the makeup of the foods we consume. An eye opener.
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