Book Review: ‘Fat’ writer takes on obese America

Greg Critser knows America has a weight problem — and not

just a freshman 15 or holiday bulge dilemma. In his new book Fat

Land, Critser investigates what he sees as a Jacuzzi chock-full of

peanut oil fiasco, the health of our nation.

Fat Land does not argue that Americans eat too much fat, as the

title might suggest, but shows how and why the combination of

eating too many Value Meals and watching four hours of television

every day has made us the second fattest people in the world (after

South Sea Islanders).

Critser examines obesity and the quest to fight it from several

angles. He considers getting healthy “a rite in itself,

replete with its own social institutions (health clubs), tonics

(Meridia), taboos (Krispy Kreme), and aspiration totems

(Levi’s 501 regular cuts).”

Fat Land not only looks at the problem of obesity in America, it

suggests many solutions — some more controversial than

others.

Of course, most of these solutions require money, which usually

requires higher taxes, which usually means people are not

interested. Critser suggests training school cafeteria staffs to

make fruits and vegetables more appealing to kids, creating

after-school “health clubs” which would run similar to

latchkey programs, and expanding Americorps (a program that sends

college graduates to teach in inner-city schools for two years) to

target physical education and physical activity training.

He also mentions (but does not advocate) some of the more

“radical” solutions to obesity, like the “fat

tax,” a proposal calling for small taxes on unhealthy

foods.

The health of the American people is a complex scientific and

political issue which Critser, interestingly, chose to navigate

through in story format.

His chapters (“Who Let The Calories In,” “Who

Got The Calories Into Our Bellies”) are each miniature

timelines that work their way into the bigger timeline of the book

as a whole.

The story-like format makes reading the book easy, but at the

expense of simplifying some of the issues at hand.

The first chapter, “Where The Calories Came From,”

answers the question by telling the story of the development of

high-fructose corn syrup in Japan in 1971.

Perhaps Critser wanted to start his book with a quick and

specific example of how Americans became so fat, but doing so made

HFCS a shorthand scapegoat for all high-calorie foods.

Ricky Lax, Michigan Daily (U. Michigan)

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