Fat Politics: The Real Story behind America's Obesity Epidemic

By J. Eric Oliver

Book Overview

Our government is telling us that obesity is a major health crisis, that sixty percent of Americans are "overweight," and that one in four is obese. But how true are these claims?
In Fat Politics, Eric Oliver unearths the real story behind America's "obesity epidemic." Oliver shows how a handful of doctors, government bureaucrats, and health researchers, with financial backing from the drug and weight-loss industry, have campaigned to misclassify more than sixty million Americans as "overweight," to inflate the health risks of being fat, and to promote the idea that obesity is a killer disease. In reviewing the scientific evidence, Oliver shows there is little proof either that obesity causes so many diseases and deaths or that losing weight makes people any healthier. Our concern with obesity is fueled more by social prejudice, bureaucratic politics, and industry profit than by scientific fact.
Such misinformation, Oliver argues, is the true problem with obesity in America. By telling us we need to be thin, the proponents of the "obesity epidemic" are pushing millions of Americans towards dangerous surgeries, crash diets, and harmful diet drugs. Oliver goes on to examine the surprising reasons why we hate fatness and why we are gaining weight, and also the real threats to our health that are being displaced by our fat obsession.
Fat Politics not only topples our most basic assumptions about obesity and health, it highlights frightening dangers caused by making our weight a scapegoat for our real problems.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195169360
• ISBN13: 9780195169362
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.3" x 1.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

It's not the fat, it's the politics

This is a book that should be read by everyone with a "weight problem." Oliver does a terrific job of showing how the so-called obesity epidemic has little to do with genuine health concerns. Instead, not surprisingly, it's all about money: drug manufacturers who finance "obesity institutes" that hype the dangers of overweight to sell diet drugs; diet and exercise companies with a vested interest in convincing people that their excess pounds are hazardous to their health; bariatric surgeons who want your insurance money; researchers who find that focusing on the dangers of obesity greatly improves their chances of getting grant money and publishing their findings. Oliver isn't saying that it's OK to weigh 400 lbs; instead, he points out that (except in the most extreme cases) the dangers of overweight and the benefits of losing weight are greatly exaggerated -- in fact, trying to lose weight can be more harmful to one's health than staying fat, and very thin people are often far less healthy than fat people. Numerous studies (which he cites in detail) have disproved the conventional wisdom, but these are routinely ignored or misinterpreted. He also points out that the main reason that the incidence of obesity has increased in America is not that Americans have gained a lot of weight, but rather that the threshold for classifying someone as "obese" has been lowered (duh!). Oliver's most noteworthy point, I think, is this: excess weight is not the problem, it's a symptom. The real culprits in "weight-linked" diseases aren't the pounds themselves, but the behaviors and conditions associated with them. Fat people who exercise are healthier than thin people who don't; following a healthy diet is beneficial even if it doesn't lead to weight loss; and many conditions (such as insulin resistance) are likelier to be the cause of excess weight, rather than the other way around. From my own experience, I can confirm Oliver's contention that doctors' obsession with weight loss as a cure-all often diverts them from dealing with the real problem. High blood pressure runs in my family, and afflicts both fat and thin people; but the same doctors who prescribed medication for my thin relatives told me that ALL I had to do was lose weight and my blood pressure would go down. After 30 years (!), during which my weight was all over the map while my blood pressure steadily climbed, I finally found a doctor who listened to reason, and I've kept my blood pressure under control ever since with medication. (Footnote: A few years later, I lost 40 lbs -- and my blood pressure didn't budge.) Being a political scientist and a statistician, Oliver also offers his conclusions about the social implications of fat, which I found interesting but not always convincing (his argument for why thinness is valued in white women seemed rather circular to me). The chief value of the book, I think, is that he's done an excellent job of amassing the medical and statistical data, and

Place padding on the wall before reading this!

If you want to learn the real truth about weight, and what your doctor keeps telling you, this is the place to go. But beware, you may become so angry that you want to pound your head against the wall. People have tried suing McDonald's, but the ones who should be sued are the weight loss industry, the drugs makers, the doctors who push surgery, the Jenny Craigs, and so on. And yes, the media, which keeps pounding on how unhealthful being overweight is, how ugly ... but seldom mentions how deadly anorexia can be, and how many youngsters are pushed into anorexia or bulimea by the media's drumbeat of thin-thin-thin.

Conventional Wisdom Upended

In the wake of Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (also on the Faculty of the University of Chicago), J. Eric Oliver has written a convincing work based on a close examination of statistical evidence (or lack of it) that calls in question the assumptions of the obesity epidemic and its consequences according to the governmental agency, Centers for Disease Control. By demonstrating that: categories defined by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries have benefited those vested interests; that genetic factors almost always supplant will power and the pop morality that equates fat with sloth and self indulgence; and that "fatness and fitness" aren't necessarily antithetical, Oliver destroys a lot of the most entrenched conventional wisdom surrounding our body appearance obsessions. The book is well versed in both the epidemiological and popular literature of the subject, and is both readable and topical. I wonder if later in this century when population issues and critical agricultural problems come to dominance, if this "obesity crisis" will seem a fanciful distraction.

A Fascinating Read

Pretty much everyone presumes that being fat is bad. It is one of those basic presumptions that is safe from debate, like the presumption that smoking is bad (which it is). But in this provocative and fascinating book, Professor Eric Oliver closely examines the facts behind our presumptions about weight and turns up a many inconsistencies. Oliver lays out the chronology of how modest weight gain on the average American coincided with an increasingly shrill alarm about an unfolding "obesity epidemic" and he explores a number of connections between Big Pharma and the NIH that raise questions about the fundamental elements of our national obsession about weight. He debunks a series of well established myths and puts forth a novel theory in the media hysteria over weight: That being overweight is not necessarily bad. But most enjoyable aspect of the book is how readable it is. This is no slog through dry statistics about our weight and health. Nor is it a finger wagging polemic whose substance is obvious from the first pages. "Fat Politics" is a lively, even gripping read as Oliver takes us on a tour through the cultural history of weight and the relationship between modern capitalism and weight gain. Readers of "Freakonomics" or "The Tipping Point" will find here a similar irreverence for conventional wisdom and compelling set of contrary arguments. Even if you don't agree with every one, "Fat Politics" will leave you with a new way of thinking about the debate and a heightened skepticism about the received wisdom on the topic.

Opened my eyes

I really enjoyed this book and unlike the guy below, I'm not selling a diet plan. In fact, the only people I can see not liking this book are people trying to sell weight loss products. For the rest of us, Oliver's book is a very readable and really fascinating explanation for how weight gain has come to be called an "obesity epidemic" (and how they are different). The book systematically goes through the evidence (but in a highly readable way) about how the idea of obesity came to be defined and how the idea that obesity was a disease became popularized (largely from a small group of weight loss doctors, diet hucksters, and bureaucrats). Not only does he reveal the people who have been behind the scenes and promoting the idea that America's weight gain is an epidemic disease, he goes beyond this and describes why we hate fat people, why white women are expected to be thin, and most interesting why Americans are gaining weight and what this weight gain means. Some interesting things that I learned from this book were 1) ceteris paribus, white women are twice as likely to be told be their doctor that they are overweight; 2) taxing junk food is only likely to make people eat worse; 3) the main reason why Americans gaining weight is not from super-size meals but from snacking; 4) the biggest source of the obesity epidemic is a powerpoint presentation; 5) the origins of the idea of obesity came from an astronomer. I was not surprised to see that Steve Levitt, author of Freakonomics, said he "loved" this book on the back cover. Its the same kind of interesting and counterintuitive logic.