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Paul Campos

The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health Hardcover – May 1, 2004

by Paul Campos (Author)

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A provocative exposé of America's self-defeating war on obesity challenges conventional wisdom regarding the cultural, medical, and political meaning of weight, arguing against the myth that falsely equates thinness with health and explaining why dieting is bad for the health, how the media misinform the public, and the link between racial and body-based prejudice. 35,000 first printing.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Gotham
Publication date

May 1, 2004
Dimensions

5.74 x 1.15 x 8.6 inches
ISBN-10

1592400663
ISBN-13

978-1592400669
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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 phenomenonsociety's hysterical fear of body fatis 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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* The recent bowwow about rampant obesity shortening Americans' lives conflicts with the fact that Americans enjoy the longest life expectancy of any industrialized nation's populace. Not to worry, though, because, says law professor Campos, the obesity allegation isn't true. Obesity isn't rampant or, except in the most extreme instances, unhealthy, and the only reason it is classified as a disease is because fear of it fattens the pocketbooks of a multi-billion-dollar weight-loss industry. The measures used to determine obesity, Campos shows, are arbitrary at best and baseless at worst, and the only ones who stand to gain by perpetuating the obesity panic--besides, perhaps, millions of self-conscious, hapless yo-yo dieters--are the doctors, researchers, pharmaceutical houses, diet-food manufacturers, and self-help gurus who drool at the prospect of helping America slim down. Using his lawyerly skills, Campos examines the very studies and statistics used to encourage the war on fat and reveals the ambiguities and deceptions being fed to an unquestioning public. Illuminating everything from the empty promises of life-threatening obesity "cures" to restaurant menu items described in lurid, almost pornographic detail, Campos shines a beacon on the deadly irony of America's obsession--unjustified, unrealistic, and downright unhealthy--with thinness. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

A professor of law at the University of Colorado and a nationally recognized expert on AmericaÂs war on fat, Paul Campos is the author of a weekly opinion column that appears in more than forty newspapers nationwide. His articles have appeared in The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Boston Globe.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Foreword by Paul Ernsberger, Ph.D. ix
Introduction xv

Part I: Fat Science
1. Fat on Trial 3
2. The World Turned Upside Down 41

Part II: Fat Culture
3. Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles 57
4. Lost in the Supermarket 70
5. The Kings Two Bodies 79
6. The Bimbo Culture 90
7. Weight Problems 99
8. All the News Thats Print to Fit 107
9. The Endless Debut 113
10.Chronic Restrained Living 119
11.The Athlete Within 131
12.Why Do Americans Diet? 137
13.The Last 10 Pounds 144
14.Life During Wartime 153

Part III: Fat Politics
15.The Feeding of the President 185
16.Feminist Accused of Unsightly Weight Gain 199
17.Anorexia Nervosa and the Spirit of Capitalism 218
18.The Last American Diet 238

Conclusion 247
Notes 253
Body Mass Index Table 273
Suggestions for Further Reading 275
Acknowledgments 277
Index 279

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gotham; First Edition (May 1, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1592400663
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1592400669
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.02 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.74 x 1.15 x 8.6 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #727,336 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,563 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences
- #3,658 in Weight Loss Diets (Books)
- #5,052 in Other Diet Books

Customer Reviews:
62 ratings

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Paul Campos

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Paul Campos is a Professor of Law at the University of Colorado. In addition to his numerous academic publications, he is a widely published journalist, who writes a weekly column for Salon.com. His work also appears regularly in Newsweek/The Daily Beast, and in The New Republic. Campos’s blog “Lawyers, Guns, and Money,” where he co-blogs with five other academics, is one of the top 100 political blogs on the internet, as measured by site traffic. In August of 2011 Campos began another blog, “Inside the Law School Scam,” which in the first year of its existence hosted nearly two million visits. In January of 2012 Above the Law named Campos its Lawyer of the Year.

His books include DON'T GO TO LAW SCHOOL (UNLESS), THE OBESITY MYTH, JURISMANIA, and AGAINST THE LAW (with Steven Smith and Pierre Schlag).

Customer reviews

5 star		56%
4 star		23%
3 star		9%
2 star		8%
1 star		4%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Time for a new edition (we need it now more than ever)

Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2012

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Not only is this book well researched, well written, and, well, just plain true in the face of so much cultural pressure coming the other way; it also offers subtle and fascinating social analyses of WHY we have an obesity myth (for example, scapegoating of the lower social class).

The sad thing is that, in the 8 years since its publication, this analysis has not had a larger impact--and we are still, as we have been for 50 years, operating under the same model, one that defines "fat deviancy" down and that attributes health disorders to "fat" that have not been demonstrated by scientific, epidemiological studies. As Campos suggests, this misdirected effort may, more than anything else, be responsible for making Americans "fat." Deny a people something as essential as food for a half a century, and it is no surprise that you have a whole population that, each group in various ways, is dysfunctional in respect to food.

I also admire Campos for his staunch support of fat as a woman's issue. Unfortunately, the pressures he describes are increasingly migrating to men. He is also fearless in his resistance to the financial incentives that are served by the transformation of "obesity" into an epidemic.

This is such an important book. I wish he would update and reissue it.

11 people found this helpful

Helpful

marbief13

both eye-opening and funny

Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2016

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Liked this book a lot - debunks the conventional "wisdom" that being "overweight" is unhealthy. Fascinating to hear that the real differentiator (unless you are extremely thin or extremely fat) is whether you are FIT, not whether you are fat. So sad that the U.S. govt is giving the exact wrong message - trying to control our food and our intake instead of encouraging fitness. So much energy and time wasted on people focusing on the entirely stupid goal of just being thinner - is that what we want to say we accomplished in our lives - being thinner? What could be more stupid. The author posits theories that the bias against fat people is really a hidden bias against lower class people, and he really might be right about that.

Campos is also quite funny. I wake up in the middle of the night a lot and read, and I had trouble several times not laughing and waking up my husband. My one complaint is that he is pretty repetitive; he makes his points over and over and over and I want to say I GET it already. Other than that, great book. Wish idiots with big viewing audiences like Dr. Oz would have on people like this. Or that other idiot Dr. Phil. Instead of having shows where he tells people not to bully fat people, and then proceeds to tell the fat people how to lose weight, have Campos on to reveal that thinness is all about looks (which is fine, but let's be honest about it and not pretend it's for health).

4 people found this helpful

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Happy Sea Slug

Weird book

Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2013

Verified Purchase

I just... don't know what to make of this.

The author makes some good points that I agree with. Namely, that the problem is not obesity per se but that obesity is an indicator of unhealthy patterns of eating and sedentary behavior. The truth is, epidimeiological studies on chronic illness like heart disease and diabetes do not account for lifestyle patterns, and the few that have indicate that it's better to be fat and fit than skinny and sedentary. Many obesity researchers treat weight as its own independent risk factor when they should be more worried abou the underlying behaviors that often lead to overweight. The author's argument isn't that we should all eat what we want and park our butts on the couch. It's that weight loss for most people is a pipe dream and we should focus on nutrition and fitness behaviors as the ultimate goal rather than a means to an end. This makes a lot of sense to me.

That said, the science in this book is pretty thin. The first third addresses the issue by talking about a few specific studies, but mostly the argument is made with broad brush strokes and incomplete presentation of the evidence. Then it starts to read like a social justice manifesto. I think it's obvious fat people are discriminated against, but the author goes so far as to compare fat suits in films to historical black indignities such as minstrel shows. Last I checked, fat people as a group were never enslaved, beaten and raped for being fat. By overstating the case, he loses me. Then, in the political section, he goes into this long diatribe that basically implies the Bill Clinton/Lewinsky scandal would have never happened if we didn't live in a society obsessed with weight. Huh? Then he basically states that all Americans have an anorexic mentality. I think by framing is argument in this way he diminishes the very real problem of anorexia nervosa.

So the book is basically a mixed bag of science, cultural critique and politics, but not really in any organized way, and frankly this guy seems a little unhinged to me. I'm glad I read it, but I don't think I would reccomend it to anyone.

22 people found this helpful

Helpful

Robert Szekely

The Obesity Myth - Contemporary Witch Hunt

Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2004

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Not only does Prof. Campos burst the myths that higher BMIs and height/weight measurements correlate to increased risk to health and longevity, he also points out that the persecution, ridicule and vilifaction of those who are deemed "fat", is the last safe prejudice in our society. Branches of the United States military service have actually be known to withold earned advancements in rank, and abruptly terminate careers because of individuals who did not fit within the bell-curve of an arbitrarily-determined "acceptable weight". There have been instances where the individuals in question had no problem meeting the actual physical fitness requirements imposed by their service. But they were prejudged, in spite of professional performance, to be unfit for promotion or retention solely because their body shape or composition didn't confirm to an irrelevantly-mandated standard.

20 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

G. Noble

Health rather than weight?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 23, 2021

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Is your weight hazardous to your health? If you took as gospel everything the media tells us, then everyone would answer 'Yes', but is it that simple? This book looks at the science behind the headlines in the studies and asks why we are so often given advice that contradicts the results. After all, if it really were as simple as counting calories and exercise, then no-one would be overweight.

As this book was published quite a while ago, the reader has to exercise (pun intended) caution, however, the main thing that I came away with from this book is that we are focussing on the wrong aspect. We should be focussing on raising activity levels, therefore increasing health of the cardiovascular system among others, rather than purely on weight loss. After all, studies have shown that overweight and obese people benefit from being less sedentary, just as much and maybe more than thinner people. There were some interesting arguments in the book but some of the points were banged on about for too long.

youkayn00b

i would love to hear more from Campos on this

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 23, 2015

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this book changed my life. i would love to hear more from Campos on this topic

One person found this helpful

Philippa

How I learned to stop worrying about weight and enjoy food

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 29, 2006

Verified Purchase

Paul Campos' book is thorough and scholarly, but also a helluva good read. He separates the science from the hysterical hype about weight and health and focuses on the positive things you can do to keep healthy without hating yourself because you don't look like Kate Moss.

Badger his publisher, Penguin to bring out a British edition.

Next year Sheldon Press will be publishing my own book on to topic of health and weight which pays homage to Paul Campos' pioneering work. PHILIPPA PIGACHE

7 people found this helpful

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