Weight and Society

This handbook is for parents with overweight children and medical professionals who work with this population to help insure they don't grow up to be adults with serious health problems related to their excessive weight.

A clear explanation of causes, diagnosis, and treatment of childhood obesity

It is a unanimously accepted and widely condemned fact that the population of the world, in the prosperous regions at least, is getting fatter. Obesity, usually linked with declining levels of physical activity, is often cited as the single greatest cause of unnecessary death and disease. Both in fashion and in health science, 'thin is in'. But have the medical and scientific community been complacent in their analysis of the crisis? The Obesity Epidemic argues that the current state of scientific thinking is a complex mix of science, morality and ideological assumptions about people and their lives. The authors question the scientific legitimacy of accepted thought about the causes of obesity, arguing that ideological bias and debatable moral assumptions have had a significant effect on research. The authors examine the 'obesity epidemic' from a variety of angles, exploring both the science of obesity and the construction of the 'obesity epidemic' in the popular media. This is a controversial book about a critical theme in health and exercise studies. It provides much needed, thorough and reflective analysis of the current state of research and is set to contribute a great deal to the debate. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in health and obesity issues, including teachers, scientists, health workers, doctors and policy-makers.

"This is an exceptional collection--the subject is of obvious importance, yet terribly undertheorized and unexamined. I know of no other work that offers what this collection provides."--Marcia Millman, author of "Such a Pretty Face: Being Fat in America

." . . A valuable contribution to scholarly debates on the place of excessive bodies in contemporary culture. This book promises to enrich all areas of inquiry related to the politics of bodies."--Carole Spitzack, author of "Confessing Excess: Women and the Politics of Body Reduction

"This anthology includes a wide range of perceptive and original essays, which explore and analyze the underlying ideologies that have made fat "incorrect." Echoing the spirit of the nineteenth-century adage about children who should be neither seen nor heard, some of the authors powerfully remind us that we keep "bodies out of bound" silenced and unseen-unless, of course, we need to peek at the comic or grotesque."--Raquel Salgado Scherr, co-author of "Face Value: The Politics of Beauty

"Through textual analyses, video/film analyses, television theory, and literary theory, this collection demonstrates the various ways in which dominant representations of fat and corpulence have been both demonized and rendered invisible. . . . This volume will be a crucial corollary to work on the tyranny of slenderness; a collection of different perspectives on the fat body is sorely missing in women's studies, communication, and media studies."--Sarah Banet-Weiser, author of "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity

When the leptin gene was discovered in 1994, news articles predicted that there might soon be an easy, pharmaceutical solution to the growing public health crisis of obesity. Yet this scientific breakthrough merely proved once again how difficult the fight against fat really is. Despite the many appetite-suppressants, diet pills, and weight-loss programs available today, approximately 30 percent of Americans are obese. And that number is expanding rapidly. Fat is the engaging story of the scientific quest to understand and control body weight. Covering the entire twentieth century, Robert Pool chronicles the evolving blame-game for fat--from being a result of undisciplined behavior to subconscious conflicts, physiological disease, and environmental excess. Readers in today's weight-conscious society will be surprised to learn that being overweight was actually encouraged by doctors and popular health magazines up until the 1930s, when the health risks associated with being overweight were publicly recognized. Thus began decades of research and experiments that subsequently explained appetite, metabolism, and the development of fat cells. Pool effectively reanimates the colorful characters, curious experiments, brilliant insights and wrong turns that led to contemporary scientific understanding of America's epidemic. While he acknowledges the advances in the pharmacological fight against flab, he underscores that the real problem of obesity is not losing the weight but keeping it off. Drugs offer a quick fix, but they aren't the ultimate answer. American society must remedy the unhealthy daily environments of its cities and towns, and those who have struggled with their weight and have experienced the "yo-yo" cycle of dieting must understand the underlying science of body weight that makes their struggle more than a question of willpower.