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

by Paul Campos (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Gotham Books (May 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1592400663
  • ISBN-13: 978-1592400669
  • Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14.2 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 78,096 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Book Description

Is your weight hazardous to your health? According to public-health authorities, 65 percent of us are overweight. Every day, we are bombarded with dire warnings about America's "obesity epidemic." Yet studies show that a moderately active larger person is likely to be far healthier (and to live longer) than someone who is thin but sedentary. And contrary to what the fifty billion dollar per year weight loss industry would have us believe, medical science has not yet come up with a way to make people thin.

After years spent scrutinising medical studies and interviewing leading doctors, scientists, eating-disorder specialists and psychiatrists, professor Paul Campos is here to lead the backlash against weight hysteria - and to show that we can safeguard our health without obsessing about the numbers on the scale. But The Obesity Myth is not just a compelling argument, grounded in the latest scientific research; it's also a provocative, wry expose of the culture that feeds on our self-defeating war on fat. Campos will show:

* How the nation's most prestigious and trusted media sources consistently misinform the public about obesity
* What the movie industry's love affair with the "fat suit" tells us about the relationship between racial- and body-based prejudice in America
* How the skinny elite - with their "supersized" lifestyles and gas-guzzling SUVs - project their anxieties about overconsumption on the poorer and heavier underclass
* How weight-loss mania fueled the impeachment of Bill Clinton

In this paradigm-busting read, Professor Campos challenges the conventional wisdom regarding the medical, political and cultural meaning of weight and brings a rational and compelling new voice to America's increasingly irrational weight debate.


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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Clear-cut, logical, honest - thank God SOMEone is!, 3 Sep 2005
This book is a logical, intelligent, thoughtful expose on the complete lack of scientific basis behind current attitudes and trends towards body weight, body image and the near-constant pursuit of a false, unattainable 'ideal' through dieting (in its many forms), drugs, etc. It is frankly disturbing to discover how self-regulated the diet industry is, how 'obesity experts' are defined by the NIH as 'those who run diet clinics' (and therefore inevitably have a massive conflict of interest), how the BMI has little more scientific basis than the old Insurance Tables did, how in many cases being more than 70lbs 'overweight' (i.e. more than the government guidelines say you should be) is significantly less detrimental to good health and longevity than being 5lbs 'underweight', how obesity is now the accepted face of discrimination in a supposedly 'sensitive' society, how, the more studies show that exercise rather than dieting is the key to good health and longevity, the more the 'professionals' focus on the extremes to capture sensationalistic headlines and keep the people oppressed by a false belief system and a false ideal.

Read this book. It will change your outlook on yourself, your perception of what is 'healthy', your attitudes towards food, your attitudes towards society. With any luck it will free you from the feelings of self-hatred and disgust and 'not good enough', constantly insisted upon by today's society.

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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended reading for all "husky boys", past and present, 14 Jun 2005
By Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
"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!

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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Common sense and good science, 16 Aug 2004
By Kurt A. Johnson (Marseilles, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
In this fascinating book, author and professor of law Paul Campos looks at the war being waged against fat in American culture. Conventional wisdom declares that being even a little overweight increases the chances of suffering health problems, and 65% of all Americans are overweight. And yet, when Professor Campos began analyzing the studies that purport to uphold these axioms, he found out that the data does not really support the conclusions that are being thrust upon the American public. What is going on here? That is what Professor Campos wanted to know, and this is what he found.

I must admit that this book came as quite a revelation to me. Professor brings a lot of common sense and good science to bear on the question of weight and health. Now, don't be fooled, this book is no rubberstamp for overeating and under-exercising, but it does explain a lot about your health, and those who claim to have your best interests at heart. I highly recommend this book to everyone!

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars How I learned to stop worrying about weight and enjoy food
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... Read more
Published on 29 Jul 2006 by Philippa Pigache

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