Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World

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.

Review :
"Just perusing the book, and seeing the [obesity] problem presented in such an articulate and lucid manner, can't help but make more informed food consumers out of readers." -- Los Angeles Times & quot; Just perusing the book, and seeing the [obesity] problem presented in such an articulate and lucid manner, can& #39; t help but make more informed food consumers out of readers.& quot; -- Los Angeles Times & quot; Urgent and easily digested . . ..Critser lays out the smorgasbord of cultural and economic ingredients that combine to make fatness as American as a deep-fried apple fritter.& quot; -- San Diego Union-Tribune " Urgent and easily digested . . ..Critser lays out the smorgasbord of cultural and economic ingredients that combine to make fatness as American as a deep-fried apple fritter." -- San Diego Union-Tribune " Just perusing the book, and seeing the [obesity] problem presented in such an articulate and lucid manner, can' t help but make more informed food consumers out of readers." -- Los Angeles Times "[An] absorbing volume, of living large." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times "A fluidly written, riveting tale . . .[an] impassioned, graphic account." -- Heller McAlpin, Newsday "ÝAn¨ absorbing volume, of living large." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times "A fluidly written, riveting tale . . .Ýan¨ impassioned, graphic account." -- Heller McAlpin, Newsday "An in-depth, well-researched, and thoughtful exploration of the 'fat boom' in America." -- Boston Globe "Interesting and provocative . . . A lively book . . . Critser is rightly incensed." -- Laura Miller, Salon.com "Just perusing the book, and seeing the Ýobesity¨ problem presented in such an articulate and lucid manner, can't help but make more informed food consumers out of readers." -- Los Angeles Times "Reading this book will take ten pounds right off you." -- Vanity Fair Greg Critser shows how obesity has become the United States' leading social issue." -San Francisco Chronicle "Urgent and easily digested . . ..Critser lays out the smorgasbord of cultural and economic ingredients that combine to make fatness as American as a deep-fried apple fritter." -- San Diego Union-Tribune "Highly readable." -The New York Times Book Review The New York Times Book Review "An in-depth, well-researched, and thoughtful exploration of the 'fat boom' in America." -- Boston Globe Boston Globe Greg Critser shows how obesity has become the United States' leading social issue." -San Francisco Chronicle The San Francisco Chronicle "Reading this book will take ten pounds right off you." -- Vanity Fair Vanity Fair "[An] absorbing volume, of living large." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times The New York Times "A fluidly written, riveting tale . . .[an] impassioned, graphic account." -- Heller McAlpin, Newsday Newsday "Interesting and provocative . . . A lively book . . . Critser is rightly incensed." -- Laura Miller, Salon.com Salon "Just perusing the book, and seeing the [obesity] problem presented in such an articulate and lucid manner, can't help but make more informed food consumers out of readers." -- Los Angeles Times The Los Angeles Times "One scary book and a good companion to Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. Consider it Critser's cry of 'Watch it, Fatso!' to our bloated nation." -- Seattle Post-Intelligencer Seattle Post-Intelligencer "Urgent and easily digested . . ..Critser lays out the smorgasbord of cultural and economic ingredients that combine to make fatness as American as a deep-fried apple fritter." -- San Diego Union-Tribune The San Diego Union-Tribune "Incisive . . .The book makes you slightly ill at the notion of an overfed wasteland." -- Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia Inquirer