Customer Reviews

Fat: The Anthropology of an Obsession

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Fat porn? Spam? Starbucks? I will never think of fat the same way again. This book was so much fun to read--it really made anthropology accessible, and helped me look at fat as something completely subjective. I love that fat is beautiful in places around the world. I also love that other places around the world obsess about fat as much as we do. I highly recommend this book and can't wait for Fat II!

Once again, another fun and insightful read. I'm also a big girl myself and the book did what it promised, made me think about my body and the images of the media and how other cultures respond to the idea of fat.

This book promises to make you think about fat in lots of new ways and that is exactly what it does. Although this is a book on 'anthropology' it is very easy to read and also a very enjoyable read. It is very intelligently written and is sure to make you aware of issues surrounding fat that you weren't aware of previously.

This book, like Fat Is a Feminist Issue which I also read (finally!) recently, leaves you with lots of food for thought.

The standout essays for me were the first and last ones featured in the book.

Rebecca Popenoe essay on villages in Niger where women try to be as fat as possible was as fascinating as it was disturbing. I think being force fed millet porridge to become as fat as possible in your youth is just as bad if not worse than a society being obsessed with thinness.

The final essay on the activist group Pretty Porky and Pissed Off was funny, and intelligent and fiery ...and made me want to march on the streets and join the group members in throwing peanut butter sandwiches at people. (I agree with the need for advocacy and the sandwich throwing bit just sounded really fun.)

The essay on olive oil was very good as well and made me want to put good quality extra virgin oil on something and eat it, immediately.

The essays are each quite short and the book is short so I don't want to write too much and give too much away to those that are yet to read this book.

I did have one quibble with this book though, and that is in the quality of the nutritional information it gave about fat. I know that this topic is really beyond the scope of this book. I understand that. This book would be absolutely hideous if it had a weight loss diet plan at the back of it!

I'd not have said anything if the dietary fat information had been neutral, but it wasn't neutral. Unfortunately this book was very dietary fat phobic, and reinforced some of the worst myths about dietary fat being bad for our health and something to fear and avoid at all costs.

Not being unreasonably scared of dietary fat is important and is very much tied in with accepting fatness and fat people and our own fat, I feel, and so I'd like to set some of those myths straight, briefly.

Embracing fats is also very good for your physical health!

*Dietary fat information interlude*

In the brilliant book The Diet Delusion: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Loss and Disease and Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (Vintage) Gary Taubes explains that:

1. Saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet DO NOT cause heart disease.

2. Your body needs saturated fat and cholesterol to function properly.

3. The 'calories in, calories out' mantra is a myth. Overweight and obese people often eat no more calories, or even less, than their thinner counterparts

4. Dietary fat, including saturated fat, is not a cause of obesity. Refined and easily digestible carbs causing high insulin levels cause obesity.

5. Most people are overweight due to bad medical advice, NOT a lack of willpower, greed, laziness or because they lack 'moral fibre' or eat too much fatty and greasy foods!

For more on cholesterol see The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It

Other books which celebrate fats and oils and even the much maligned animal fats include Real Food: What to Eat and Why and Know Your Fats : The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol. The Weston A Price Foundation site is also very good and gives lots of information on why we need to eat real traditional foods to be healthy and why heavily processed foods are making us ill and fat, not old fashioned foods with fat in. One of my favourite quotes from the site is how you should always add enough butter to your bread so that when you've taken the first bite, the butter has 'teethmarks' in it!

The book Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food explains why avoiding fats (including saturated fats) and other traditional foods in our diets can have negative consequences for you and also for your offspring but how these can be turned around by eating real food.

Most of the information we are given about fats is wrong. Saturated fat sounds scary and gluggy and is often described as 'artery clogging' and 'not heart healthy' but the truth is very different. Saturated fat isn't saturated by some sort of horrific 'glop' but by hydrogen! The same element that is in water.

Saturated fats such as coconut oil are an important part of a healthy diet. We need to eat them to be healthy. Don't believe all the saturated fat hype!

Trans fats and hydrogenated vegetable oils are to be avoided, but not all fats should be tarred with this same brush.

Non-factual mentions of dietary fat in the book include the following:

- Despite the fact fattening up diets were described as consisting of millet porridge and milk - which does have some fat in but also lots of sugar - the fattening up diet was summarised by the author as causing weight gain because it was high in fat.

- One essayist writes, 'Modern eaters don't need these fat calories in their diets' and comments that while it was necessary for people to eat lots of fatty natural foods in the past, this isn't true today where the only reasons we might eat them are prestige and luxury and taste. Our need for fats in the diet, including saturated fats, are the same now as they were hundreds of years ago! They taste good because we are supposed to be eating them.

- The fact a food contains cholesterol is commented on as if this is synonymous with it being unhealthy, which isn't at all true.

- The book claims that whipped cream hardens your arteries, which is just not true; the saturated fats = heart disease theory has been scientifically dis-proven.

- The idea that someone battling illness would try hard to avoid natural whole foods with cholesterol and saturated fat in, nutrients that are good for you and essential for health, and replace them with lots of pasta, a highly processed junk food which has nothing in it whatsoever that is good for you and is just turned into sugar by the body, is appalling. Sugar depresses the immune system and causes all sorts of problems, as is well known. Etc. etc.

This book is great but may be even more powerful if you can combine reading it with reading about why dietary fat is good for you and not the enemy.

Double fat acceptance has to be a good thing!

Again, I think they each feed into the other, no pun intended.

*Annoying nutrition lecture over*

This book has a great cover page design as well, I love it.

I highly recommend this book. I don't buy many books but I am glad I bought this one. I look forward to loaning my copy to a few friends and family members and then talking to them about what they thought about it, too.

Jodi Bassett, The Hummingbirds' Foundation for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

I might not have otherwise read this book were it not assigned reading for my graduate course on the anthropology of food, but I found it to be a fascinating read. After I read the eight assigned essays (out of 14), I continued to read them all and was glad I did. I think the compilation of essays is a very interesting way to present and explore the concept of fat, representing a complex and diverse array of views.

Some of the ways fat is explored is as an aesthetic, as a substance to be guarded or discarded, valued and desired, or abhorred. Most importantly, the essays examine the social, political, psychological, and historical contexts in which "fat" is constructed. I would recommend at least a few of the essays to friends (and have), in particular the essays on olive oil and Starbucks.

While I thought some of the essays might be a little dated (the book was published in 2005 and I read it in 2011) (e.g. the essay titled "Phat"), the book nevertheless presented valuable and intriguing points of view. I think it challenges people to think about fat in new ways.