The Hungry Gene: The Inside Story of the Obesity Industry [Paperback]

Ellen Ruppel Shell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2003

In a rare blend of erudition and entertainment, acclaimed science journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell reveals the secret history and subtle politics behind the explosion of obesity. Shell traces the epidemic's inception in the Ice Age, its rise during the Industrial Revolution, and its growth through the early days of medicine and into modernity. She takes readers to the front lines of the struggle to come to grips with this baffling plague — from a children's food marketing convention, to the cutthroat race to find the obese gene, to a far-flung tropical island, where a horrifying outbreak of obesity has helped unravel the disorder's genetic and evolutionary roots. Offering an unflinching insider's look into the radical and controversial surgical and pharmacological approaches used to combat what drug makers have dubbed the trillion-dollar disease, Shell takes aim at the collusion of industry and government that lies behind the crises and shows conclusively that obesity is not a matter of gluttony or weak will, but of an increasingly greedy culture preying on vulnerable human biology. Gripping and provocative, The Hungry Gene is the unsettling saga of how the world got fat — and what we can do about it.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

More than 1.1 billion people worldwide are overweight or obese. How and why did the world get so fat? Shell, a journalist and codirector of the Program in Science Journalism at Boston University, explores the issue from many angles including the roles of genetics, pharmaceutical companies, the food industry and social class. She charts the growth in scientific research on obesity and obesity treatments in the last decade (from stomach stapling to the notoriously dangerous drug Fen-Phen), explaining the biology of metabolism that makes it so difficult to circumvent the body's appetite. Shell also explores the lifestyle culprits behind obesity, traveling to Micronesia to document the residents of the island of Kosrae, whose average life span has plummeted in recent years due to the introduction of high-fat Western food. Though she lucidly explains the physiology of fat, Shell fills the book with chatty profiles of patients and doctors ("Rudy Leibel is a small man and trim... He has a degree in English literature, and a weakness for poetry") and her prose reads like that of a glossy magazine. There is also much in the book that may be familiar to readers; the spotlights on new obesity treatments are compelling, but it will come as no surprise that too much high-fat, calorie-dense food and too little exercise trigger obesity. On the other hand, given that Big-Tobacco-style class-action lawsuits against fast food companies are under consideration, some may find Shell's arguments for the regulation of junk-food TV advertising, among other measures, timely and provocative.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This is not quick-fix diet book. It's a science journalist's study of why we are fatter than ever (60 percent of Americans should be skipping dessert today) and what is being done about it.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (September 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802140335
• ISBN-13: 978-0802140333
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #971,655 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Super-sizing the proles, May 21, 2003

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hungry Gene: The Science of Fat and the Future of Thin (Hardcover)

Science journalist Ellen Shell notes near the end of this fascinating study about being fat and how we got that way that "Twenty-seven percent of Americans are already obese." She predicts that, unless something is done, "virtually all Americans will be overweight by 2030, and half will be obese." (p. 230)

Why? Lack of will-power? Lack of exercise? Our genetic constitution? Ignorance? Indoctrination through advertising by the fast and junk food industries? Answer: all of the above except lack of will-power. When it comes to eating, will-power really has nothing to do with it. Food is a "drug" we can't quit cold turkey. Abstinence is impossible. We must eat, and so the temptation to overeat and/or eat the wrong foods will always be with us. Not only that but we are constantly being bombarded with messages from the purveyors of food to eat this, eat that, eat more, more and more. Super-sizing the proles is a massively huge business.

So what to do? Are we looking at a future in which most of us are round mounds of huffing and puffing blubber subject to diabetes and an early death? Shell is hopeful. She believes that if we can somehow regulate the fast food industry in a manner similar to way we are regulating the tobacco industry (see the final chapter), if we educate the public, and turn down the constant din of fast and junk food advertizing, and keep sodas and junk food out of our schools while increasing exercise programs especially for school children, there is hope. However, as Shell illustrates graphically by the story she tells on herself to end Chapter Ten, it is more likely that instead of exercising, we will get into the car, "rev the engine, and steer toward dinner."

Regardless of how daunting the public health task of reducing obesity is, Shell makes it a fascinating read. She writes about the morbidly obese and their struggles with stomach stapling and gastric banding; about cultures lured away from their native diets by Spam, pizza and sugared sodas so that virtually everyone from child to adult is fat and many are diabetic (e.g., the Kosraen islanders of the South Pacific); about "Natural Born Freaks" (Chapter Three) children born with a genetic defect that makes them constantly hungry no matter how much or how often they eat; about being hungry during wartime or during food-deprivation experiments in which the hungry can think and talk of nothing but food and more food; and especially about "Big Food" which views critics as "food cops...intent on using junk science to build a socialist nanny state" (p. 230)

As I read the book and followed Shell's research I could see her learning the melancholy lesson that "Obesity represents a triumph of instinct over reason" (p. 221). I could sense her early optimism giving way to a realization that "The labyrinth of genes, peptides, and hormones regulating food intake is dense and byzantine, extremely difficult to fool or to manipulate." (p. 147) This is a lesson that Shell presents well. What it means is that all those scientists looking for the magic pill that will allow us to "lose pounds fast" (and incidentally make big bucks for themselves and their employer) are not likely to be successful any time soon.

Most of us know, as Shell reports, that people who go on diets of any kind may initially lose weight, but almost invariably gain it all back and usually with pounds to boot. The reason quite simply is that we can't fool mother nature. The evolutionary mechanism has structured in us the very fine ability to eat when there is a bounty of food so that we can put on fat to survive the inevitable times of lean. This is what we are good at. It is one of our talents. Mother nature isn't about to leave fat-storage to chance in human beings anymore than it leaves reproduction to chance. Dieting is just a mimicking of a time of lean. It has no lasting value as fat-reducing behavior.

Shell's prescription for individuals is the obvious and the very difficult one: turn off the TV, get off the couch, don't get into that vehicle, in fact trade the entire TV/car culture in for one in which we walk a whole lot more, actively recreate a lot more, eat more fresh fruits and vegetables and less high-fat and high-carb foods...in other words do those things that in fact we are not likely to do.

This is a very readable, well-researched, and incisive look at what is rapidly becoming the number one public health problem in not only the United States but world-wide. Shell covers the subject well and writes the kind of prose that turns pages and makes a difficult subject readily accessible.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Science, Politics, Suspense, December 15, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Hungry Gene: The Science of Fat and the Future of Thin (Hardcover)

I heard the author speaking on public radio--she was fascinating (I sat in my car listening.) The book is fascinating, too, there is so much in there--the history of dieting and obesity surgery, the race to clone the first obesity gene, the politics of the food and drug industry, even a travelogue of sorts when the author travels to Micronesia, where almost overnight more than three quarters of the adults became obese. There is a chapter on something called prenatal programming that talks about how life in the womb can effect long term health--that was totally new to me (and I work in a medical field.) I read a lot of books on science and health, usually just for the information, but this one is different--the author is a wonderful writer (I'll admit to having read other things she's written, in the Atlantic Monthly and Discover) so the book just flies by. And I learned so much. Excellent read, great information...this one has got it all. I don't usually review books, but this topic is so important I thought I'd let people know...

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Phat start...thin finish, August 27, 2003

By 

Gabriel J. Pereira (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hungry Gene: The Science of Fat and the Future of Thin (Hardcover)

Keeping the food theme alive, I'll start by way of analogy...

Have you ever dined at a fine restaurant, had a well planned, beautifully executed and thought provoking meal, only to have the entire experience scuttled by a ho-hum dessert and a burnt cup of coffee? Such was my encounter with The Hungry Gene.

Author Ellen Shell, a consistent contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, is among the top science writers in the United States today and she adroitly demonstrates her literary and research skills in every piece she creates. This book is no exception as she sets the stage with great finesse and takes us through a brief monograph of the philosophy and treatment of obesity from ancient history to the mid twentieth century. She then moves to the early theories of genetics and obesity and on to the core of her book, the absolutely riveting story (full of juicy back-stabbing details and deal making) of Dr. Jeffrey Friedman and his research team's obsessive search for the magic genetic bullet to cure obesity, and the resulting avarice of the pharmaceutical industry in trying to procure and apply the research.

Shell then elaborates on the genetic ties to obesity through a chapter dedicated to the Kosrae people (an indigenous Micronesian population brought to obesity by the Westernization of their foodways) and a chapter concerning pediatric and adolescent obesity illustrated through the study of children conceived and born during the Nazi siege of Holland of 1944-45 and additional prenatal research performed by Dr. David Barker, a Southampton, UK based epidemiologist. These studies are sited in support of the strong correlation between a pregnant mother's food intake and a child's pre-disposition towards obesity.

It's at this point the waiter pulls up the rather Spartan dessert cart featuring a tired looking cheesecake, a lonely slice of apple pie and coffee made fresh...this morning. Because in what reads like stream of consciousness, Shell tries to use childhood obesity as a bridge to the final chapters which are essentially a political harangue of the food industry and food marketing. Her points for the most part are well taken and quite valid, but they seem out of context for the case she was building previously on scientific and empirical evidence. Also there are several authors who frankly wear the mantle of angry reformer better than she: Greg Critser's, "Fat Land", Marion Nestle's, "Food Politics" and Eric Shlosser's, "Fast Food Nation" are infinitely better articulated and have more compelling arguments condemning the big business of food. There's a telling line in Shell's Acknowledgements section: "Current Atlantic Monthly editor Mike Kelly not only ran excerpts of this book in the magazine, but suggested that I direct at least some attention to what he called the 'marketing of obesity' - a brilliant stroke". That's exactly what the conclusion of this book feels like - a well intentioned afterthought encouraged by an editor.

For me, perhaps the greatest irony to be savored from the swelling (excuse the back to back puns) number of publications concerning the weight problem and obesity pandemic, is that even after all the scientific, psychological, and sociological pundits have weighed in, we're still faced with the same admonishments our mothers gave us starting as far back as the Eisenhower administration, namely turn off the television, go play outside, no candy before dinner, don't eat so fast, and finish your veggies.