Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World

This book is a short history to date (2003) of the rising statistics of obesity in America. It details the impact on the day-to-day individual, as well as the on the educational and national health care systems. Reading this book will help you understand how obesity has become a pandemic in America and will inspire a change of habit.

Summed up, as America progresses into a more sedentary culture/civilization with food (read: calories) becoming increasingly easy to gather and even easier to consume, individuals will consequently balloon in weight. Greg Critser argues that while obesity is an individual responsibility, it may be a social and environmental (access to food, sedentary workforce, etc) consequence.

Although Critser threatens a bleak future, both for individuals and society, if obesity rates continue to increase, he offers a simple solution to combating, and more importantly, beating obesity: eat fewer calories and exercise more...or at the very least, eat fewer calories. ( )

As an overweight (a bit, not too much) person myself, I found much to fear in this book about the growing trend toward obesity within the population of the United States. Daily, I see more and more people around me (good friends and relatives as well) who are truly obese, and I do worry about them.

Critser's book talks about the forces which have driven Americans to be the most overweight people in the world, the way the products Americans eat (or maybe should not eat) change our bodies, and techniques for dealing with the now startling rate of growth of obesity among children. I found there to be some dry reading in the parts of Critser's book where he cites various studies. However, the best part of the book is the end where he discusses how we can and should help our children deal with weight issues now.

This book is a good introduction to the serious issue of obesity as a health problem. I think what was missing from this book was more of a focus on how this problem should be addressed currently with adults. ( )

Hey, we needed this. To have a nice short book that makes the case of what is really driving up health care costs in addition to seriously affecting Americans' self esteem is good. Not a "how to do it" diet book which probably says the same thing in an introduction or another scientific article, or even Michelle's pussyfooting around the subject, but a short monograph written to a nonprofessional population. ( )

http://thenovelworld.com/2009/05/27/fatland-review/ ( )

This book was revolutionary to me in my ideas about food. It talks about the relationship between diabetes and government subsidies for corn (high-fructose corn syrup). Wow! ( )