Fat land : how Americans became the fattest people in the world / Greg Critser.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 185-222) and index.

fashion, religion, fitness standards, and baby boom parenting are all subject to Critser's sharp eye. He looks at the very personal stories of scores of health professionals, their patients, and individuals who don't receive medical attention. Finally, Fat Land is a chilling but brilliantly rendered portrait of the cost in human lives - many of them very young lives - of America's obesity epidemic."www.powells.com

What in American sociery has changed so dramatically to make nearly 60 percent of us overweight? Can we fix what the surgeon general calls a national "epidemic of obesity"? Greg Critser engages every aspect of American life to determine how we have made ourselves the second fattest people on the planet (after South Sea Islanders). Fat Land grapples with the expanding American waistline by tracing surprising connections among class, politics, culture, and economics. With groundbreaking research, Critser also investigates the dark metabolic underside of cheap fats and sugars and how their calories stick. Incisive, discerning, and disarmingly funny, Fat Land leaves no diet book unturned