Customer Reviews

Fat Politics: The Real Story behind America's Obesity Epidemic

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This is a book that should be read by everyone with a "weight problem." Oliver does a terrific job of showing how the so-called obesity epidemic has little to do with genuine health concerns. Instead, not surprisingly, it's all about money: drug manufacturers who finance "obesity institutes" that hype the dangers of overweight to sell diet drugs; diet and exercise companies with a vested interest in convincing people that their excess pounds are hazardous to their health; bariatric surgeons who want your insurance money; researchers who find that focusing on the dangers of obesity greatly improves their chances of getting grant money and publishing their findings.

Oliver isn't saying that it's OK to weigh 400 lbs; instead, he points out that (except in the most extreme cases) the dangers of overweight and the benefits of losing weight are greatly exaggerated -- in fact, trying to lose weight can be more harmful to one's health than staying fat, and very thin people are often far less healthy than fat people. Numerous studies (which he cites in detail) have disproved the conventional wisdom, but these are routinely ignored or misinterpreted. He also points out that the main reason that the incidence of obesity has increased in America is not that Americans have gained a lot of weight, but rather that the threshold for classifying someone as "obese" has been lowered (duh!).

Oliver's most noteworthy point, I think, is this: excess weight is not the problem, it's a symptom. The real culprits in "weight-linked" diseases aren't the pounds themselves, but the behaviors and conditions associated with them. Fat people who exercise are healthier than thin people who don't; following a healthy diet is beneficial even if it doesn't lead to weight loss; and many conditions (such as insulin resistance) are likelier to be the cause of excess weight, rather than the other way around.

From my own experience, I can confirm Oliver's contention that doctors' obsession with weight loss as a cure-all often diverts them from dealing with the real problem. High blood pressure runs in my family, and afflicts both fat and thin people; but the same doctors who prescribed medication for my thin relatives told me that ALL I had to do was lose weight and my blood pressure would go down. After 30 years (!), during which my weight was all over the map while my blood pressure steadily climbed, I finally found a doctor who listened to reason, and I've kept my blood pressure under control ever since with medication. (Footnote: A few years later, I lost 40 lbs -- and my blood pressure didn't budge.)

Being a political scientist and a statistician, Oliver also offers his conclusions about the social implications of fat, which I found interesting but not always convincing (his argument for why thinness is valued in white women seemed rather circular to me). The chief value of the book, I think, is that he's done an excellent job of amassing the medical and statistical data, and showing that many of our assumptions about obesity are based on myth rather than fact.

I really enjoyed this book and unlike the guy below, I'm not selling a diet plan. In fact, the only people I can see not liking this book are people trying to sell weight loss products. For the rest of us, Oliver's book is a very readable and really fascinating explanation for how weight gain has come to be called an "obesity epidemic" (and how they are different).

The book systematically goes through the evidence (but in a highly readable way) about how the idea of obesity came to be defined and how the idea that obesity was a disease became popularized (largely from a small group of weight loss doctors, diet hucksters, and bureaucrats).

Not only does he reveal the people who have been behind the scenes and promoting the idea that America's weight gain is an epidemic disease, he goes beyond this and describes why we hate fat people, why white women are expected to be thin, and most interesting why Americans are gaining weight and what this weight gain means.

Some interesting things that I learned from this book were 1) ceteris paribus, white women are twice as likely to be told be their doctor that they are overweight; 2) taxing junk food is only likely to make people eat worse; 3) the main reason why Americans gaining weight is not from super-size meals but from snacking; 4) the biggest source of the obesity epidemic is a powerpoint presentation; 5) the origins of the idea of obesity came from an astronomer.

I was not surprised to see that Steve Levitt, author of Freakonomics, said he "loved" this book on the back cover. Its the same kind of interesting and counterintuitive logic.

Pretty much everyone presumes that being fat is bad. It is one of those basic presumptions that is safe from debate, like the presumption that smoking is bad (which it is). But in this provocative and fascinating book, Professor Eric Oliver closely examines the facts behind our presumptions about weight and turns up a many inconsistencies. Oliver lays out the chronology of how modest weight gain on the average American coincided with an increasingly shrill alarm about an unfolding "obesity epidemic" and he explores a number of connections between Big Pharma and the NIH that raise questions about the fundamental elements of our national obsession about weight. He debunks a series of well established myths and puts forth a novel theory in the media hysteria over weight: That being overweight is not necessarily bad.

But most enjoyable aspect of the book is how readable it is. This is no slog through dry statistics about our weight and health. Nor is it a finger wagging polemic whose substance is obvious from the first pages. "Fat Politics" is a lively, even gripping read as Oliver takes us on a tour through the cultural history of weight and the relationship between modern capitalism and weight gain. Readers of "Freakonomics" or "The Tipping Point" will find here a similar irreverence for conventional wisdom and compelling set of contrary arguments. Even if you don't agree with every one, "Fat Politics" will leave you with a new way of thinking about the debate and a heightened skepticism about the received wisdom on the topic.

If you want to learn the real truth about weight, and what your doctor keeps telling you, this is the place to go. But beware, you may become so angry that you want to pound your head against the wall. People have tried suing McDonald's, but the ones who should be sued are the weight loss industry, the drugs makers, the doctors who push surgery, the Jenny Craigs, and so on. And yes, the media, which keeps pounding on how unhealthful being overweight is, how ugly ... but seldom mentions how deadly anorexia can be, and how many youngsters are pushed into anorexia or bulimea by the media's drumbeat of thin-thin-thin.

In the wake of Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (also on the Faculty of the University of Chicago), J. Eric Oliver has written a convincing work based on a close examination of statistical evidence (or lack of it) that calls in question the assumptions of the obesity epidemic and its consequences according to the governmental agency, Centers for Disease Control.

By demonstrating that: categories defined by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries have benefited those vested interests; that genetic factors almost always supplant will power and the pop morality that equates fat with sloth and self indulgence; and that "fatness and fitness" aren't necessarily antithetical, Oliver destroys a lot of the most entrenched conventional wisdom surrounding our body appearance obsessions. The book is well versed in both the epidemiological and popular literature of the subject, and is both readable and topical.

I wonder if later in this century when population issues and critical agricultural problems come to dominance, if this "obesity crisis" will seem a fanciful distraction.

I found this book to be very informative and at last see that someone beside me feels that fat is being blamed on everything. Being a middle aged woman, though, I can attest to what the extra pounds have done to my knees, hips and ankles. I have spent my entire life, though, trying to not make myself a victim, but with discrimination being what it is, rude people being who they are, and being the butt of stares and comments, even though I have spent my entire life fighting fat, it is hard not to be the victim, here. I hope that a few doctors and a lot of men read this book. I hate being fat and fear dying early, but this book made me start to reason out that maybe I was not meant to be a thin person. I have had an echo gram, exercise stress test, and I pay regular visits to my Dr. The tests show I am in the lower third of the population to die of heart related illness. I try and take better care of my health, knowing that I am fat, and I think I am more conscientous than many thin people.

Fat Politics is a gripping read because it highlights how certain oft-repeated mantras about weight can start to achieve the status of "truth" even though there is little empirical backing for these claims. Indeed, what is most disturbing, as Oliver outlines, is how the media replays and fails to really investigate claims that quickly associate weight with ill-health. Oliver also deftly shows how the ideas of what is classified as "overweight" and "obese" are constructed and hence permits us to get away from a kind of "scientism" where we believe anything passed off as fact is indeed so. My only criticism is the book seems to just end and not really conclude or suggest new paths of inquiry. While it certainly seems to be the case that politics, and not careful research, motivates our hysteria about weight, what is the connection between the research on health and weight? He thinks snacking mindless calories is some kind of answer (he uses his cookie-dough in the fridge as an example) and this "conclusion" is weak in comparison with the first part of the book which is compelling and well-researched. In one is interested in more elaborate discussion of weight and science surrounding weight, look at the Obsesity Epidemic which is a drier and less fun read but provides more quality research around just how little we really do know about the connection between weight and health.

At least this book mentions that osteoarthritis is highly correlated with body weight: the heavier you are, the more chance that your knees or hips will give out, especially if you are a woman (sorry, but it is true). I think that the author is right that to some extent, science has been manipulated by the diet industry and by scare tactics (let's face it, groups get heard by trying to scare us). I would not want to read this and then give myself the "all clear" as an overweight person, because I know about the impact (literally) of even 10 pounds of extra weight on the knees and hips. But this book is a good addition to the overall literature on dieting and weight.

As someone who does a lot of reading on this topic, I don't agree with everything in this book. However, I appreciate the amount of research the author did before writing it. The book is informative- just don't let it be your only source of information on obesity as it is definitely biased.

In the opening chapter of this book Oliver shows just how unclear and arbitrary are notions of what it is to be 'fat' or 'overweight'. This will be the first step in making the argument that the present hysteria over the 'overweight epidemic 'in the United States is just that 'hysteria'. He will go on in the book to confute the notion that overweight is the main factor in most major illnesses. He will make a strong argument that vested economic interests, including drug and insurance companies have promoted the 'America is Fat' campaign.
He too will make the case that a more critical health factor than one's weight is one's physical fitness, dependent in good part on the way one exercises.
All of this is in one sense very convincing. And yet there are clear signs and statistical evidence indicating that Americans have in the past ten years alone become considerably heavier. Oliver acknowledges that being very overweight does contribute to arthritis , aching joints, and makes physical activity more difficult. Moreover feeling overweight and feeling pain because of it connect very probably with an increased level of individual depression .
I am not a specialist in any of these areas, but my overall feeling is that while there may be much exaggeration, panicking, idiotic worshipping of thinness, futile and even damaging dieting, there is also a lot of illness and sorrow which comes from being overweight and worrying so much about it.
Oliver is probably right that this is not as massive a problem as it is being made out to be. But I do not think he is right to by and large deny its existence.