The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health (Hardcover)

~ Paul Campos (Author)
Key Phrases: endless debut, significant independent health risk, fat elicits, United States, Bill Clinton, Glenn Gaesser (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When an entire society is told that thinner is better and studies everywhere agree diets don't work, it's time to take a look at the assumptions behind the messages. For better or worse, this happens in Paul Campos' (Jurismania) book The Obesity Myth. Packed full of lengthy discussions of popular studies (particularly the Harvard nurses study), dense chapters run through statistics and conclusions at a breathtaking pace. Campos regularly insists on two points: BMI is basically meaningless, and a variety of media-based sources are contributing to an enormous industry that blends oversized portions with trendy, potentially harmful, diets. He grabs attention to the first claim with early assertions that by BMI standards, Brad Pitt is overweight and George Clooney is obese; more detailed discussion covers how insurance companies developed the BMI tables in their earliest forms and the federal government later tinkered with measurements in a way that accounts for much of the sudden "explosion" in obesity (yes, a BMI chart is included at the end of the book). Repeatedly, Campos rails against media stars whose main qualification is their leanness, questions medical conclusions, and demands that we look at weight as a class issue. Also highlighted is the idea of the diet industry being an extremely powerful political force, which may be at the root of the controversy; the hollering about his sources is likely to be louder than the comments about his accuracy in assessing those sources. As with any highly inflammatory topic, a single book presents only a part of the whole picture--but the myth-busting opinions offered here are an important part of the weight-based discussions. --Jill Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

Just as low-carb dieting becomes a national obsession and McDonald's begins downsizing its super-sizing, Campos, a law professor and syndicated columnist, offers a sure-to-be scandalous message: maybe fat isn't all that bad. Through solid prose, Campos builds a case against the "social institutions" that have misled the public about the dangers of being overweight. He boldly states that a cultural phenomenon—society's hysterical fear of body fat—is the real health hazard, not the over-consumption of food. Through a series of anecdotes, readers are told that the media is responsible for crushing healthy body images (particularly women's); how the dieting industry perpetuates the myth of obesity for its own gain; and how yo-yo dieting cycles have destroyed more lives than obesity ever will. Campos also says there's no real medical or scientific justification that fat is bad. "Given that Americans are enjoying longer lives and better health than ever before, the claim that four out of five of us are running serious health risks because of our weight sounds exactly like the sort of exaggeration that can produce a cultural epidemic of fear." While the studies and statistics Campos presents are convincing enough to launch a new debate about weight, some of his conclusions border on the absurd (e.g., he blames "Fat Politics" for the impeachment of President Clinton). And so begins the anti-fat backlash.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Gotham (May 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592400663
• ISBN-13: 978-1592400669
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #89,730 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read the book, not the knee-jerk negativism, May 26, 2004

By A Customer

In the process of reading this book, I'm struck at how amusing the response is from Michael Fumento and his friends/alter-egos posting here. Every point they raise to "refute" Campos is specifically addressed in the first chapters of the book. Campos carefully addresses the flaws in these arguements and backs up his assertions with a straight-forward presentation of the facts behind the accusations of fat bashers. Nothing Fumento and his ilk have brought up addresses any of the criticisms Campos levels on their arguement, leading me to the conclusion that not a one of them has opened this book. They are just offering the same knee-jerk hyperbolic condemnation fat bashers always offer when anyone questions their highly unfounded attacks on fat. Campos has provided the public with a valuable study of the issues surrounding weight and health. It may not be what you're used to hearing, but don't make the mistake some have made by damning the book without examining its arguement.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended reading for all past and present "husky boys", June 13, 2005

By	Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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"From the perspective of a profit-maximizing medical and pharmaceutical industry, then, the ideal disease would be one that never killed those who suffered from it, that could not be treated effectively, and that doctors and their patients would nevertheless insist on treating anyway. Luckily for it, the American health-care industry has discovered (or rather invented) just such a disease. It's called 'obesity'."

In THE OBESITY MYTH, author/law professor Paul Campos makes an erudite and scathing case against the American diet industry, which, with its paid-lackey researchers and gullible fellow travelers in the medical and government health establishments, directly and simplistically links obesity with disease and generally compromised health. Rather, Campos concludes that the evidence shows that:

1. It's more dangerous to be underweight than overweight.
2. Health is not improved by long-term weight reduction.
3. Health is adversely affected by the yo-yo pattern of weight loss and subsequent regain experienced by serial dieters.
4. The nebulous connection between weight and health disappears when other factors are considered, e.g. the individual's cardiovascular and metabolic fitness. An overweight fit person is better off than a thin sedentary person.

Rather than being a monotonous, 250-page diatribe against the Fat Police, Campos goes out on a limb in a couple of chapters to make some novel observations. For instance, regarding the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky sleazefest in the chapter "The Feeding of the President", the author postulates that the entire affair wouldn't have happened if "at several crucial junctures in their respective lives, either the fat boy from Hope of the zaftig princess from Beverly Hills had simply been allowed to eat what they wanted to eat." Later, in "Anorexia Nervosa and the Spirit of Capitalism", Campos asserts that the true anorexic - the perfect dieter endlessly laboring to achieve perfection and salvation, but never satisfied - is the new embodiment of the Puritan work ethic.

It would be difficult, I think, for any American that's grown up in our fat-conscious society not to relate to this most excellent volume. At 56, I've never perceived myself as slim or trim, a rather odd admission since, if I look at pictures of myself taken in late elementary and high school, that's what I indeed was; in my first year of college, I had a 29-inch waist. Perhaps my misperception stems from my days as an admittedly chubby 5-8 year old when my Mom would buy me "husky boy" jeans. Far from being an omniscient observer of something that's never personally affected him, Paul Campos remembers much the same childhood experience, when he was called "stocky". As an adult, he admits to being a slave to the same cultural imperative for thinness, going so far as to state that his periodic weight losses from "overweight" come when the women in his life have left him, or hinted they might.

In the "Conclusion", Campos mildly castigates himself for not saying in THE OBESITY MYTH all those things which might have made it better. (For instance, surprising to me, he virtually ignores the current fad for weight loss surgery - stomach stapling and banding.). But he concludes:

"Yet still, certain things that needed to be said were, in the end, said." Yes, they were. And it was smartly done, too. Good man!

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars eye-opener, May 27, 2004

By A Customer

When will the mainstream media get round to addressing how shockingly interwoven the field of obesity research and the diet industry are?

Did you know, for instance, that the claims that a BMI of 25 or above is a major health risk are based on reports issued by groups like, among others, the World Health Organization, and that the WHO panel consisted entirely of physicians who run weight loss clinics?

Intrigued?

You can read more about this and other little-known facts about obesity research in this excellent book.
And if you don't want to shell out 17 bucks for the hardcover version (although I assure you, it's worth every penny), don't wait for the paperback - run, run, run to your local library and ask for it. (Or if they haven't already bought a copy or two, suggest that they do.)

To say this book is an eye-opener is almost an understatement. After reading it, you will see the mainstream media and medical establishment in a whole new light.