Fat: Fighting the Obesity Epidemic

by Robert Pool

Book Overview

Fat is the engaging story of the scientific quest to understand and control body weight. Covering the entire twentieth century, Robert Pool chronicles our evolving evolving understanding of obesity--from being a result of undisciplined behavior to subconscious conflicts, physiological disease, and environmental excess. Pool effectively reanimates the colorful characters, curious experiments, brilliant insights and wrong turns that led to contemporary...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195118537
• ISBN13: 9780195118537
• Release Date: February 2001
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Great book that covers all aspects of obesity and its causes

Millions of dollars are spent every year on diet books, personal trainers, weight loss pills and gym memberships so what is stopping people from shedding the extra pounds? America is the most highly developed country in the world so why can a reliable weight loss method not be devised? These are the sorts of questions that baffled and frustrated scientific journalist and author Robert Pool to the point that he was determined to find answers. Years of research and hundreds of interviews later, Pool would publish his remarkable findings in a topical, research-based book titled Fat: Fighting the Obesity Epidemic. Pool uses fascinating research stories as he unravels the history of obesity research. He discusses the environmental, psychological and biological factors that must be taken into consideration when searching for the cause of weight problems. Pool concludes that while genetics, heredity and other factors play a significant role in body size, the unhealthy environment that Americans are forced to face daily is the culprit responsible for the current "obesity epidemic." Although, professionals such as personal trainers, medical professionals and dieticians are probably the most likely to read and benefit from Fat, anyone with an interest in the history and science behind the obesity epidemic would enjoy this book. Pool uses minimal amount of scientific terms as he states personal stories, historical facts and medical findings to prove his theories on the obesity epidemic. Fat offers a great alternative to the current fad diet books that do not even touch on the science or underlying causes of weight problems. It is hard to find un-biased books dealing with weight loss which makes Fat very different from other books of the same topic. I would highly recommend this book to anyone.

Well-written research thesis!

I couldn't put this book down, it was very interesting and showed some amazing discoveries in the field of obesity research. We are learning so much about why we overeat but we have yet to conquer 'FAT'. The author of this book explores the 'lighter' side of being heavy. It is beautifully written and reads more like a work of science fiction than non-fiction. Not a boring page in the whole book. Laymen will especially appreciate some of the intriguing studies on 'fat rats' and 'skinny rats'. Well worth the investment, especially if interested in losing weight.

Good summary of research on obesity

Robert Pool's Fat: Fighting the Obsesity Epidemic is a very accessible review of research on obesity. He covers the history of obesity research and explains how various research studies have influenced attitudes towards obesity and how to treat it. Contrary to what another review states, this book is not based on the premise that leptin is the cause of obesity. This was merely an illustration of current research that Pool uses to open the book.Fat is not a guide to weight loss for individuals. The research is very discouraging for anyone currently obese -- most studies show that weight can be lost, but no one knows how to help people keep it off. However, Pool discusses some of the research that investigates why people cannot keep off weight they lose, including studies demonstrating that those who lose wait not only have slightly slower metabolisms, but they also burn fewer calories through fidgeting, etc.Pool also discusses obesity from a public health perspective. Given that losing weight and keeping it off is so difficult once one becomes obese, he argues that some effort should be paid to keeping the population from becoming obese in the first place. In this discussion, he looks at studies examining when and how various populations became obese. Such studies -- like that of the obesity difference between Pima groups in the US and Mexico -- provide clues for how the current environment could be modified to prevent some obesity.

Strong research, weak conclusion

The bottom line of Mr. Pool's book is that humanity is growing fat thanks to a plague of plenty. Fatty food is readily available and labor-saving devices are everywhere. Those who have the capacity to become fat are much more likely to do so today than they were fifty or a hundred years ago. His suggested solution incorporates findings of the National Weight Control Registry. The "successful losers" of the Registry -- those who have averaged a 67 pound loss sustained for at least five years -- have shielded themselves from society's fat-promoting environment by creating, in Pool's words, "mini-environments" free of easy calories and endless invitations to consume. He asks us to consider whether the changes embodied by mini-environments could be woven into the general social fabric, thus enabling those who might otherwise grow heavy to benefit from the discoveries of the successful losers. Seems reasonable enough. Reasonable, that is, until you visit a medical library and read what these successful losers are actually doing. They are consuming an average of 850 to 1990 calories daily and burning off, through exercise, an average of 400 to 500 of those calories, seven days a week. Which means these folks are living on anywhere from 450 to 1500 calories a day and burning off the balance with exercise that is the equivalent of a daily 4 mile walk. Given the intensity of this regimen, it's not too surprising that the total enrollment of the Registry is only a few thousand; a few thousand out of a population of hundreds of millions. Whatever else the successful losers are, they are rare. Though Pool admits that the "eat less, exercise more" programs have not worked, the National Weight Control Registry findings seem to boil down to "eat way less, exercise way more." It is difficult to imagine how society could be transformed to help the potentially overweight to eat way less and exercise way more without hopelessly inconveniencing and/or starving those for whom weight will never be a problem. This difficulty provides the foundation for Pool's call to action. Are we up to the challenge of reshaping our environments to fit us or will we continue to allow the environments we have created to deform us? While this is an admittedly tough call, I think it's a safe bet that we'll continue to allow the environments we've created to deform us.

Scientific Summary of Much of What We Know About Obesity

This book is not a diet book, nor a guide to losing weight. It is a serious popular summary of the scientific studies into how people become overweight. On the other hand, if you are overweight and want to be lighter or want to learn more about the causes of obesity, this book is very well done and will help you overcome important misconceptions.There is more that we do not know about obesity than we do know. Despite this, obesity is a rapidly increasing problem in the United States. From 1991 to 1998, the U.S. population that is obese (more than 30 percent overweight) grew from 12 percent to 18 percent. Studies suggest that this trend, as alarming as it is, hides the severity of the problem, because many people understate their weight in surveys. Weight is affected by environment, genes, and behavior. Little is known about how the three interact with each other. The author argues that the current growth in obesity mainly relates to an environment that is getting less and less healthy rather than some sudden negative change in genetic make-up or intentional behavior. He also does not suggest any specific solutions. Many people do not understand that the process of losing weight often causes the body to burn fewer calories. So you have to feel like you are literally starving to death to lose weight past a certain point. That point is your "set point" and we each have a different one. For many overweight people, that set point is well above the weight that the physicians encourage. So many overweight people aren't "indulging" themselves more than thinner people, they just have a different body chemistry. So remove those value judgments when you see overweight people. Give them a hug instead. The other flaw in thinking about weight is that that being overweight is the cause of many diseases like heart disease and diabetes. Recent research suggests that the connections are not always linear. Being overweight is sometimes a symptom of some other problem, rather than the cause of the disease. The main weakness of this book is that it does not include the work described in Sugarbusters! and Live Right for Your Type that suggest a role for the mix of foods you eat as affecting your weight level. Mix of foods is referenced, but mostly in the context of behavioral treatments for overweight that emphasize creating aversions for certain foods.Hearing about how scientists have worked on this problem makes me feel pretty discouraged. My suggestion is that only obese scientists work on overcoming obesity. At least they will have a bodily experience as a reference point. In picture after picture in this book, the pioneers of obesity research are displayed as extremely trim individuals.After you read this book, I suggest you think about the problems of discrimination that obese people face. How can those barriers be lowered? How can the emotional pain of being obese be reduced? I suspect that the harm in these two areas is even greater