I was first interested in reading this book when it was referenced in a podcast I listen to. I remember listening to the author talk about the "flimsy" evidence of the medical consequences of obesity and my jaw dropped. What do you mean the evidence is flimsy?! The entire United States, and much of the western world, takes these evidences as absolute fact, and I know my doctor preaches to me about them all the time! So, it must be fact or it wouldn't be touted as such....right? Then I happened to remember when I was a teenager and the public was being inundated with "facts" that regularly eating tomatoes or tomato products caused cancer. At the time I remember thinking that sounded weird, but if doctors said it was true then it must be true. Only later did I realize that these "factual" statistics were based on looking at people who died of cancer and seeing that most of them reported regularly eating tomatoes...then they took that association and called it a cause, so that was the basis for this "fact". Then recently you had a finding that sugar consumption has been shown to cause cancer in rats....though they neglect to include in the news reports that this occurred when they force fed rats 30 times their body weight in sugar every day for a month. Um, right, but I should be worried why? I'm pretty sure it's impossible for me to consume 1 times my body in sugar in a month, let along every day!

This was when I realized that I needed to read this book. I found it to be exceptionally well researched and well notated. The author looks at the statistics on obesity and tells the truth about what they really mean. This makes sense to me. I remember a quote I heard once...there's lies, there's damn lies, and there's statistics. The problem with statistics is that you can tweak them to say whatever you want them to say. And if the right people with the right motive get a frenzy started then it can take the focus away from the real problem. This is what has happened in this country with the obesity epidemic. We have pushed all the focus on weight, rather than health because weight is something that one can easily point a finger at and think they have determined what is healhty. But being healthy is much more ambiguous, someone who is thin could be much less healthy than someone who is overweight, but that isn't what the public wants to hear.

I have seen the "weight bias" of this country for years. Fat people are the new politically correct group to discriminate against. I mean, after all, if you're fat it's just because you're lazy and have no self control right? Well, part of it might be that, but weight is not that simple. And similar things have been said about black people, jews, or those of Hispanic heritage in the past too...was it true then? This is the main thing that the book addressed. Why have we focused so much on weight when the facts just don't support it while we completely ignore real solutions to improving health? I am not sure I can agree with all of the authors conclusions, but he raises some very valid points. I think this is a must read for anyone who has invested their belief in the obesity epidemic but hasn't really looked in depth into the facts that brought our society to this point.