Food Fight
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Advance Praise for Food Fight
“Food Fight is a blueprint for the nation taking action on the obesity crisis. In his analysis, Brownell is balanced but bold, courageous and creative. A public health landmark.” --David A. Kessler, M.D., Dean, Yale School of Medicine, Former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration
“We are indeed involved in a food fight. It is a fight for the health of America---especially our children. This book provides much of the necessary ammunition to win this fight.” --David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., former Surgeon General, Director of the National Center for Primary Care, Morehouse School of Medicine
“Provides a compelling approach to reverse the obesity epidemic now gripping our nation. Anyone concerned about this crisis, and that should include all Americans, will find this book enlightening.” --Walter C. Willett, M.D., Dr.P.H., Chair, Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health
“Food Fight is a very informative, provocative, and well-written account of the role of food in the growing public health problem of obesity. I highly recommend it.” --Steven N. Blair, P.E.D., President and CEO, the Cooper Institute
“Food Fight rings the alarm to enlist Americans in an effort to protect children from the ‘toxic environment’ that is leading to skyrocketing rates of obesity and other health problems.” --Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D., Executive Director, Center for Science in the Public Interest
“Kelly Brownell and colleagues were among the first to sound the alarm, that an increasingly "toxic environment" puts everyone, and especially children, at risk for obesity. Food Fight enters the front lines in the battle between public health and private profit.” --David S. Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D., Director, Obesity Program, Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School
How America is eating itself into a national health crisis and what we can do about it
In Food Fight, one of the world's best-known and most respected experts on nutrition, obesity, and eating disorders delivers the sobering message that America is quickly succumbing to a "toxic" food environment guaranteed to produce obesity, disability, and death.
Dr. Kelly D. Brownell goes beyond the bestselling Fast Food Nation to explore the roots of the obesity epidemic and the enormous toll it is taking on the nation's health, vitality, and productivity. And he offers an unflinching assessment of a culture that feeds its pets better than its children, that targets the poor and children as a market for high-calorie, low-nutrition junk food and manipulates children into poor eating habits with toy giveaways and in-school promotions.
But Food Fight isn't all bad news. It is also an inspiring call to action from one of the nation's most effective public health advocates. Dr. Brownell suggests bold public policy initiatives for stemming the rising tide of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, such as imposing taxes on junk food and using the proceeds to make healthy foods more affordable and available. He describes steps individuals can take to help safeguard their and their families' health, including pressuring schools to remove junk food vending machines. And he offers a workable plan for improving individual and family eating and exercise habits.
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The war against obesity must go beyond personal responsibility and will power to encompass a Gandhian mass movement against a food industry and a social order intent on fattening us, argues this fact-filled but ferocious manifesto. The authors, academics with the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, contend that our abundant, super-sized meals and our modern, sedentary lifestyles have formed a"toxic environment" that indulges our genetic fat-storage proclivities to a pathological degree. The result is an"epidemic" of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and low self-esteem. Brownell and Horgen blame these side effects on a car-centric culture that has virtually criminalized walking (27% of adult Americans, they report, get"no physical activity at all") while parking kids in front of television, video games and computers and eliminating gym classes from cash-strapped schools. But the worst villain of the book is the politically powerful food industry, which, the authors say, plies us with cheap fat and sugar while keeping healthier foods scarce and expensive, bribes schools to sell children soft drinks, and bombards children with junk-food ads from the moment they leave the womb. The authors recast the usual diet-and-exercise discourse in the rhetoric of social justice, calling for a grass-roots mobilization to fight Big Food, a"national strategic plan," and specific measures like junk-food taxes and banning ads that target children. Libertarians may consider this the worst kind of victimology. But the evergreen subject of American gluttony and sloth brings out the best in scientist-advocates, and the authors, while drawing on a mountain of statistics and studies, make their indictment both funny and appalling.