In this eye-opening book, New York Times science writer Gina Kolata shows that our society's obsession with dieting and weight loss is less about keeping trim and staying healthy than about money, power, trends, and impossible ideals. Rethinking Thin is at once an account of the place of diets in American society and a provocative critique of the weight-loss industry. Kolata's account of four determined dieters' progress through a study comparing the Atkins diet to a conventional low-calorie one becomes a broad tale of science and society, of social mores and social sanctions, and of politics and power. Rethinking Thin asks whether words like willpower are really applicable when it comes to eating and body weight. It dramatizes what it feels like to spend a lifetime struggling with one's weight and fantasizing about finally, at long last, getting thin. It tells the little-known story of the science of obesity and the history of diets and dieting—scientific and social phenomena that made some people rich and thin and left others fat and miserable. And it offers commonsense answers to questions about weight, eating habits, and obesity—giving us a better understanding of the weight that is right for our bodies.

Theoretically informed and empirically grounded, Rethinking Obesity invites readers to reconsider the medical and public health framing of population weight (gain) as a massive global problem, epidemic or crisis. Attentive to social values, scientific uncertainty and possible harms, the book furthers critique of the weight-centred health paradigm and world war on obesity. Building upon existing international literature from critical weight studies, fat studies and critical obesity research, the book advances scholarship with reference to body politics and health policy, epidemiology and obesity science, media reporting and weight-related stigma. The authors resist the common moralised narrative that ‘the overweight majority’ are lazy, gluttonous, and personally responsible for their actual or potential ills and the solution ultimately necessitates individual lifestyle change. Critique is also extended to seemingly compassionate public health interventions that putatively avoid victim-blaming through an appeal to ‘the obesogenic environment’, a consequence of modern living. Empirical case studies are grounded in women’s repeated and often frustrating experiences of dieting and schoolgirls’ encounters with fat pedagogy, which challenges dominant obesity discourse. Recognising that declared public health crises may become layered and cascade through society, this book also includes timely research on the COVID-19 pandemic response amidst concerns about lockdown weight-gain, heightened risk of infection and death among people deemed overweight and obese. Rethinking Obesity interrogates how social injustice is reproduced not only through cruelty but also through seemingly benevolent representations, pedagogies and policies. Alternative approaches and action, ranging from weight-inclusive health paradigms to broader social change, are also considered when seeking to foster collective hope in crisis times. This is valuable reading for students and researchers in medical sociology, social and population health sciences, physical education, critical weight and fat studies, and the social dimensions of the body.

For fifty years, the medical establishment has preached the same rules for losing weight: restrict calories, eat less, and exercise more. Yet in that time, obesity in the United States has skyrocketed. So why has this prescription so clearly failed? Based on twenty years of investigative reporting and interviews with more than a hundred practicing physicians who embrace ketogenic (low-carbohydrate, high-fat) eating as the best formula for health, here bestselling author Gary Taubes puts the keto movement in the necessary historical and scientific perspective. He makes clear the vital misconceptions about obesity and diet (no, people do not become fat simply by eating too much or being sedentary; hormones play the critical role) and uses collected clinical experience from the medical community to provide much-needed practical advice on healthy eating. A groundbreaking manifesto for the fight against obesity and diabetes, in The Case for Keto, Taubes reveals why the established rules about eating healthfully might be the wrong approach to weight loss for most people, and how ketogenic diets can help many of us achieve and maintain a healthy weight for life.

Leading Harvard Medical School expert and "obesity warrior" (Time magazine) Dr. David Ludwig rewrites the rules on weight loss, diet, and health in this guide to retraining your cells and reclaiming your health for life. Forget everything you've been taught about dieting. In Always Hungry?, renowned endocrinologist Dr. David Ludwig explains why traditional diets don't work and presents a radical new plan to help you lose weight without hunger, improve your health, and feel great. For over two decades, Dr. Ludwig has been at the forefront of research into weight control. His groundbreaking studies show that overeating doesn't make you fat; the process of getting fat makes you overeat. That's because fat cells play a key role in determining how much weight you gain or lose. Low-fat diets work against you by triggering fat cells to hoard more calories for themselves, leaving too few for the rest of the body. This "hungry fat" sets off a dangerous chain reaction that leaves you feeling ravenous as your metabolism slows down. Cutting calories only makes the situation worse by creating a battle between mind and metabolism that we're destined to lose. You gain more weight even as you struggle to eat less food. Always Hungry? turns dieting on its head with a three-phase program that ignores calories and targets fat cells directly. The recipes and meal plan include luscious high-fat foods (like nuts and nut butters, full-fat dairy, avocados, and dark chocolate), savory proteins, and natural carbohydrates. The result? Fat cells release their excess calories, and you lose weight - and inches - without battling cravings and constant hunger. This is dieting without deprivation. Forget calories. Forget cravings. Forget dieting. Always hungry? reveals a liberating new way to tame hunger and lose weight for good.

Rationalities and models of obesity -- Energy balance, genetics and obesogenic environments -- Governance through measurement -- Inequalities -- Food and eating -- Global transformations of diet -- Obesity science and policy -- Complexity -- Systems and rationalities

Obesity science has reached a crossroads: The carbohydrate hypothesis is poised to overtake "calories in, calories out" as the predominant understanding of weight gain. Physicians, dietitians and trainers have come to treat "carbs are bad" as a new gospel, preaching a lifestyle that strays very far from the true scientific consensus. In "What Is Fat For?" Ignatius Brady, a weight loss physician and science writer, presents a fresh perspective on obesity based on critical new research that has gone largely overlooked. The protein leverage hypothesis holds that neither dietary fat nor dietary carbohydrate "cause" us to gain weight. The issue is re-framed and discussed as an imbalance between "protein" and "non-protein" energy. A current imbalance in our food supply has caused a widespread human adaptation: the obesity epidemic. In a thorough yet readable style, the book takes the reader through normal human weight regulation, the time frame needed for weight loss, and what's missing in the "carbs are bad" thinking. This is not a diet book, but a scientific exploration of the inner workings of human biology and our interactions with the modern nutritional environment. The question, "What is fat for?" drives this narrative, which takes nothing for granted, analyzes all possibilities and presents detailed evidence for the reader's best judgment. Biases are overturned, accepted wisdom is re-considered and new answers are discovered.

New York Times Bestseller What happens when you eat an apple? The answer is vastly more complex than you imagine. Every apple contains thousands of antioxidants whose names, beyond a few like vitamin C, are unfamiliar to us, and each of these powerful chemicals has the potential to play an important role in supporting our health. They impact thousands upon thousands of metabolic reactions inside the human body. But calculating the specific influence of each of these chemicals isn't nearly sufficient to explain the effect of the apple as a whole. Because almost every chemical can affect every other chemical, there is an almost infinite number of possible biological consequences. And that's just from an apple. Nutritional science, long stuck in a reductionist mindset, is at the cusp of a revolution. The traditional “gold standard" of nutrition research has been to study one chemical at a time in an attempt to determine its particular impact on the human body. These sorts of studies are helpful to food companies trying to prove there is a chemical in milk or pre-packaged dinners that is “good" for us, but they provide little insight into the complexity of what actually happens in our bodies or how those chemicals contribute to our health. In The China Study, T. Colin Campbell (alongside his son, Thomas M. Campbell) revolutionized the way we think about our food with the evidence that a whole food, plant-based diet is the healthiest way to eat. Now, in Whole, he explains the science behind that evidence, the ways our current scientific paradigm ignores the fascinating complexity of the human body, and why, if we have such overwhelming evidence that everything we think we know about nutrition is wrong, our eating habits haven't changed. Whole is an eye-opening, paradigm-changing journey through cutting-edge thinking on nutrition, a scientific tour de force with powerful implications for our health and for our world.

Children's health has made tremendous strides over the past century. In general, life expectancy has increased by more than thirty years since 1900 and much of this improvement is due to the reduction of infant and early childhood mortality. Given this trajectory toward a healthier childhood, we begin the 21st-century with a shocking developmentâ€"an epidemic of obesity in children and youth. The increased number of obese children throughout the U.S. during the past 25 years has led policymakers to rank it as one of the most critical public health threats of the 21st-century. Preventing Childhood Obesity provides a broad-based examination of the nature, extent, and consequences of obesity in U.S. children and youth, including the social, environmental, medical, and dietary factors responsible for its increased prevalence. The book also offers a prevention-oriented action plan that identifies the most promising array of short-term and longer-term interventions, as well as recommendations for the roles and responsibilities of numerous stakeholders in various sectors of society to reduce its future occurrence. Preventing Childhood Obesity explores the underlying causes of this serious health problem and the actions needed to initiate, support, and sustain the societal and lifestyle changes that can reverse the trend among our children and youth.

Abstract: This volume of the Journal of Obesity and Weight Regulation is devoted to one article which reevaluates our ideas and treatment of obesity. The authors suggest that the health risks of obesity have been greatly overestimated and that our efforts to control weight gain may be less than beneficial for many patients. Their skeptical appraisal of the data makes it clear that some of the interpretations of current research may be less than objective. It is suggested that authoritative public statem ents on the health implications of obesity that place great emphasis on associated hazards run the risk of provoking potentially harmful responses by an alarmed public.

From the best-selling author of Why We Get Fat, a groundbreaking, eye-opening exposé that makes the convincing case that sugar is the tobacco of the new millennium: backed by powerful lobbies, entrenched in our lives, and making us very sick. Among Americans, diabetes is more prevalent today than ever; obesity is at epidemic proportions; nearly 10% of children are thought to have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. And sugar is at the root of these, and other, critical society-wide, health-related problems. With his signature command of both science and straight talk, Gary Taubes delves into Americans' history with sugar: its uses as a preservative, as an additive in cigarettes, the contemporary overuse of high-fructose corn syrup. He explains what research has shown about our addiction to sweets. He clarifies the arguments against sugar, corrects misconceptions about the relationship between sugar and weight loss; and provides the perspective necessary to make informed decisions about sugar as individuals and as a society.