Customer Reviews

The Hungry Gene: The Inside Story of the Obesity Industry

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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.

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...

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.

This book a a truly superb work of science journalism. It tells a complex story of diverse research threads with sometimes contradictory conclusions, and it tells it incredibly well. By the time you finish this book, you will have a much better idea how to realistically interpret for yourself the claims for the latest diet or latest exercise machine or weight loss pill or program. You will have a much better idea what is "in your genes" and what is not, what you can attribute to "slow metabolism" and what you can't. In bringing together all of this diverse research and telling its story so well, this book is a landmark in explaining what sorts of things we can control, and where we are spinning our wheels.

Not only is the story of obesity research interesting and relevant to all of us, but it is extremely difficult to get the whole picture. Each article and each news story tends to cover what is novel or most fascinating about research, and the solution the author is promoting, and usually ignores the background and the consensus already formed. The Hungry Gene covers all of the central lines of research: the modification of behavior, the influence of genes, the way the body regulates its own weight, the role of food industries and marketing, and makes each set of findings clear. Equally important, the author makes it clear what we still don't know about human weight control.

There simply isn't any non-technical source to find out what is known about obesity, and the technical sources don't tell the story nearly so well, and they tend to be speciallized to a particular field. The Hungry Gene brings it all together coherently.

An important and highly relevant education-in-a-book on a deeply interesting topic. Hard to beat a bargain like that. It's rare to find a book that meets such a pressing need for scientific information in such a skillful way.

I rarely read non-fiction, let alone science books, but I ordered this one because I've been wondering about the obesity epidemic for some time--it seems that every other person has a serious weight problem these days, and I wondered why. I was drawn into The Hungry Gene from the first chapter--and literally could not put it down. It's fascinating--the chapters on obesity surgery and fat in Kosrae, Micronesia blew me away--they were so well written, more like a novel than like non-ficiton. But the book is also frightening--especially the chapters on the drug industry and food marketing to kids. I couldn't believe the tactics food makers use to draw children into eating stuff they probably shouldn't, and I also couldn't believe how they use kids as salesman, to get their parents to do their will. The book explains the science behind the obesity epidemic in a way that anyone can understand, and it crushes the myth that people are fat because they lack will power or have some sort of character disorder. It's the first book I've read that really puts weight into perspective--explains the big picture, and offers some realistic solutions that don't involve buying some new product or diet drug, or going on some hokey diet. As someone who has fought a losing battle with weight all his life, I can tell you this really opened my eyes. HIGHLY recommended.

From the title and abstract, I'd hoped to find an interesting and readable exposition of the known biochemical mechanisms regulating appetite, from the insulin/glucose cycle to protein encodings for hormonal messengers that regulate appetite, and possibly some discussion of stress and crisis-related changes to the body's delicate chemistry.

The first half of the book delivered somewhat on the title's promise, recounting at high-level some of the early genetic research into obesity and identifying key scientific discoveries in the field from the last couple hundred years. The author's accounts of academic in-fighting and jockeying between competing genomics researchers in the early '90's was pretty interesting, and I looked forward to reading about more pieces of the puzzle falling into place as research continued with better and more widely available technology later in the decade.

But at this point, the book took a bit of a turn to discuss the impact of fetal (mal)nutrition on the expressed genome. While also an interesting field of research, I was really wondering where the author was going... unless there's been an invisible and widespread epidemic of starved and/or gorged mothers giving birth over the last 50 years, it's hard to see how the learnings about the role of fetal environment in could be actionable in reversing the alarming trend toward obesity. And then the book left biochemistry behind completely, reprising Schlosser's Fast Food Nation in the space of the last few chapters.

I guess the author meant to construct a single argument along the following lines against obesity/overeating being a behavioral problem: (1) There are genetic factors that (almost) deterministically control eating behavior, whether in mice or humans. (2) It's not completely deterministic, though, because ultimately a genotype interacts with an environment and expresses as a particular phenotype (as proved by the impact of fetal malnutrition), and (3) the environment we've provided in Western developed nations is terrible; it encourages all the wrong outcomes.

Unfortunately, this thread of reasoning is neither particularly cogent nor necessary... if your point is that the proliferation of fast food and sugary soda is causing the obesity epidemic, you really don't need to detail the impact of leptin or CCK on the hypothalamus to explain what's going on. The Hungry Gene ends up reading like two separate books: a brief but interesting introduction to the biochemical nature of appetite, and one on the evils of Big Food. I don't disagree with the author's polemic against McDonald's et al, but it feels a little out of place given the book's title.

Ellen Ruppel Shell's prose is so beguiling I would willingly read her on any subject. Here her subject is fat, and she pursues it relentlessly, truthfully, compassionately and always compellingly---from the patients wheeled into gastric bypas surgery on extra-large "Big Boy" hospital beds, to an island in Micronesia where everyone is obese and diabetic, to researchers who are patiently unraveling the genetics of obesity. Unquestionably, this is THE book about fat and the search for a cure, and Shell has a rare talent for explaining the cutting edge of research lucidly and beautifully, without ever losing the lay reader. Along the way, she dispells myths, deflates fads, and demystifies confusion, so what we get--finally--is the straight story. No mean feat--and the book is a page-turner, too!

This is a spirited investigation of all the genetic and environmental cues that make us fat, and all the paths scientists are hurtling down to prevent it. Ellen Ruppel Shell has written one of those indispensable books that makes you re-think everything you thought you knew about a subject. She covers it all, from obese Paleolithic figurines to contemporary maps of the human genome. "The Hungry Gene" is one of the best books yet written about our national obsession.

Anyone who enjoyed Fast Food Nation is going to love this book, because it makes clear why what we're eating and how we're living, has created the biggest public health problem since smoking. I really don't know where to begin getting into it, because this slim volume is so complete, covering everything from what starvation studies told us about why we eat, to the genetics of appetite, to social influences on eating behavior, to prenatal programming of obesity. It gets deep into the politics of the food industry, and into food marketing to children. It explains how changes in the diet made industry rich, and a growing number of people around the world fat and diabetic. It nails the smoking gun of the obesity epidemic, which is the impact of an obesegenic environment on suseptible genes--genes that most of us have, by the way. It doesn't eliminate personal responsibility as a factor in obesity, but it does show why some of us are more likely than others to over eat and why and what can be done about it. I read Hungry Gene in one sitting, on a cross country flight from New York to LA, because it was so well written, and so darn interesting. I mean, there is a whole chapter on Kosrae, Micronesia where an entire population got fat in just one generation, and that is written almost like a travel piece, with great verve and with tons of information. There's another very graphic and chilling chapter on stomach surgery, which incorporates a whole history of obesity treatments. There's another chapter on this scientist in the UK who is showing that obesity can be programmed in the womb. There's even a chapter on food marketing, where the author crashes a conference for food marketers and exposes how they con our kids into craving all their junk. It's entertaining, incredibly informative, and terribly important stuff. So buy it, read it, and then see if you can watch just one more fast food ad on tv without throwing the remote at the set.

This book takes as its starting point the perception that people are getting too fat in general, and that a significant percentage of adults and even children are actually obese, and that THAT percentage is growing alarmingly. But our author, a journalist and academic, does not spend much ink talking about the gradations of the weight problem, the culture, the unintended consequences of our getting bigger, and so on, but jumps right into the research on obesity. Everyone admits there is a problem. Can science solve it?

Maybe. But first science has to decide what the problem is. Of course, research is not done in a vacuum: the holy grail of obesity investigations is a gene that controls appetite or one that controls fat storage, whose protein can be interdicted or encouraged without complicated side-effects. As Shell makes clear, great fortunes await the researcher and his or her institution for such a magic-bullet solution to the overweight problem. Some of the workers portrayed here care deeply about the monetary rewards their research might yield. Others have rather deliberately chosen to go at the questions differently, for rewards of different sorts.

About half of this book is given over to a blow-by-blow of various salients into Fat Science, as it were. There are the usual portraits of crusty or visionary or harried or just plain human scientists as they talk about their work, and their hopes for it. The writing here is pleasant but not dazzling, and sometimes the science is presented without sufficient prelude. But along the way we do learn something about the physiology of fatness, and also about those relatively small number of people for whom obesity is truly a disease. For must of us, overweight is no more a disease than taxes, but about as avoidable.

But the real subject of this book does not really kick in until almost two-thirds of the way through it. The real subject is how our eating habits and hopes are simultaneously fed and increased by the food and drug industries. Each, in its own way, caters to our dreams and our weaknesses. And, as Shell points out, nobody is really telling us to stop eating too much and taking too many diet pills of uncertain effect.

I think our author is trying to lay the blame for our excesses at the feet of profit-making corporations, with their power to influence government, and their massive, seductive advertising. To a certain extent the science at the beginning of the book paves the way for the social statistics at the end, yet the two sit rather uncomfortably together. And there is little discussion of the reasons we overeat. They must be more complicated than just corporate conspiracy: modern life has disrupted so many traditional social patterns. At bottom, though, this is a book about our health, and for anyone interested in THAT, a pleasant, if unsettling, read, and a good source.