5 Responses

1. Anonymous

   2010 Jun 22 1

   What a pile of garbage. This book is looking for an excuse. “Its not my fault I’m overweight. I’m overweight because of ….. (fill in the blank)”

   Lets look for someone to blame and not address the real issues. Oh wait, lets file a class action lawsuit against the food places we eat after all McDonalds is forcing us to eat there. Maybe Kelly Brownwell should just say no (to a cheeseburger)!

   Here is an issue that the AMA will not address. Diabetes is related to insulin/sugar. The AMA is pushing a high carbohydrate diet. Carbohydrates are sugars! The AMA solution is to eat smaller portions. Who wants to be hungry? Where did the AMA come up with this portion size thing? The allotted portion for snack chips is three. With a protein diet one can eat a steak and not feel hungry afterwards.
   Rating: 1 / 5

2. Anonymous

   2010 Jun 22 2

   Do any of these people live in California?!! Is this being done in some Mc Donalds heavy midwestern back water? Because this is not my reality! I literally cannot turn on the t.v. without hearing about how fat Americans are intercut by endless lengthly ads for designer drugs for weight control (if not others ethereally and cheerfully explaining why ritalin is such an uplifiting and caring solution for grade schoolers!), Jenny Craig, “Carb Options” what have you. If we have learned anything in the 80s and 90s it’s that obsessing about food causes eating disorders-be it anorexia or binge eating-they are opposite sides of the same coin! I would hope the diet industry is receiving just as much consternation from the author as the soda industry. Many an average weight, moderate eating american has gone on a diet-fitness rutine- (Your Dean Ornish-ish eating less, moving more, hit the unrepentent fat americans over the head rutine) simply becuase in recent years, for example a 22 year old sadly, self-rejectingly and almost mysteriously feels she’s fat and wishes she could get down to the 90 lbs. she weighed at 12-only to ultimately down the road actually become overweight, in absolutely worse shape, AND uncontrollably obsessed with food. A lot of shortsighted Amercans are to blame-if not out of greed, certainly out of being inadequately informed-not just the politically incorrect ones.
   We’re only now seeing the disasterous results of the low fat high carb craze-yes a craze believe it or not where people were eating less (maybe a desciplined once a day binge -and the periodic rejoicing at contracting an appetite surpressing flu. Throwing bitter recriminations at themselves for ever actually needing to eat at all! A way of life where one desperately tries to survive on fake food and cut back on meat-anything with fat-who knew there were good and bad fats- struggling through workouts with-surprise!-no energy or motivation. This is what so many Americans do because they feel bad about eating at all-esp. the previously filling staples that now induce guilt-like red meat, thinking they are failures for not being able to fill up on those unsustaining but politically correct “grains.” Where-oh where-has this anorexic thinking author been?! AND yes I am in walking distance from gyms, juice bars, and of course every 3 blocks Starbucks-b/c now they are finding that completely cutting out fat causes stimant dependence. (Anyone notice the rise in Starbucks coincides with the low-fat eat less-eat more cheap earth sustaining carbs craze?!!)
   Yes I should read the book-but I can’t avoid hearing the same old clueless crap regardless-so is there truly a need? Time to move my fat @$$ off the computer and walk-yes I walk-to Jamba Juice (who knew the fructose in healthy juice was fattening?). Hopefully I won’t be killed by an SUV along the way. No I will see few soda vendor machines along the way either-kinda went the way of cigarette machines. But hight strung joggers who act like there on speed and make me feel fat and high in body fat percentages regardless of how I look-there are always plenty of those.
   Rating: 3 / 5

3. C. Cleet

   2010 Jun 22 3

   I’ve read both the book and the reviews, and it’s funny how saving the children is the “it’s not my fault” finger-pointing device du jour. I don’t purport to be a cross-section of America, but I have no problems getting my toddlers out of a grocery store without their Sponge-Bob cereal (my wife is a different story…she loves the stuff) and can drive by a McDonalds while ignoring the shrieks of “we want a happy meal!”

   However, I am overweight. I don’t blame Kraft or McDonalds (although I wouldn’t mind getting in on that cash cow once the lawsuits hit), I can perfectly well on my own decide to down the entire bag of Oreos without a 30-second ad telling me to.

   Mr. Brownell’s anecdotal descriptions of the effects of advertising on obesity do not create any link. As a matter of fact (forget citation of study…but could look it up if anyone wants it) the amount of calories consumed by the average person has increased about 1% over the last 20 years, while the obesity rate has soared. So…somehow the food industry has been plotting against my children by adding 400% more calories into that 1%? It doesn’t make sense, as do most of the arguments in the book.
   
   Rating: 1 / 5

4. Bucky

   2010 Jun 22 4

   Wow, what a depressing book Kelly Brownell has written. Agribusiness is apparently creating a “toxic environment” for us, especially children, and that environment makes it IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to choose foods wisely.

   As social science goes, this is garbage. As for even remotely enlightened insight into how any business works, it’s one of the stupidest books I’ve ever read.

   To begin with, Mr. Brownell is obese himself, which is rather shocking from the director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders. Like Dr. Phil McGraw, he has ZERO business writing a book about obesity.

   This topic is absolutely, concretely germane to his work. After all, a constant theme in the book is that Big Scary Food Companies have Big Scary Vested Interests in producing “toxic” foods. Wouldn’t a fat person have a vested interest in writing a book blaming his fatness on anything other than himself?

   Where to begin with the distortions here? My favorite, which is an overarching narrative throughout Food Fight: It’s apparently cheaper to eat junk food, according to Brownell, which is why the poor are so much more likely to be obese than the rest of the population.

   As someone who made his way through grad school on a weekly food budget of about $25, I’m here to tell you that black beans, brown rice and non-exotic fruits/vegetables bought in season are MUCH cheaper than a $5 trip to McDonald’s or Taco Bell three times a day. And the beans/rice/vegetables diet has the added advantage of being nutritionally dense instead of calorically so.

   Poor people also smoke, drink alcohol and do drugs at much higher rates than the general population. Is this because ciggies are cheaper than air, gin cheaper than water and drugs cheaper than jogging for endorphins? Does Mr. Brownell not understand that the same people who make poor money/employment/education choices often make poor dietary/substance consumption choices as well? But because he, an important Yale faculty member, is obese, he cannot see the general impulse-control problems that rule poor people’s lives.

   Brownell is right that we’re genetically programmed to want high concentrations of calories. Where he’s so wrong it hurts is that he believes the producers, not the consumers, are at fault when eaters overindulge. Again, being obese himself, he probably really believes that he’s not in control when he’s stuffing Malomars down his gullet.

   Bottom line to Kelly Brownell’s “science:” People are so dad-blamed stupid that they eat whatever’s advertised on TV. They’re just zombies with a taste for Big Macs instead of human flesh. Parents are powerless to refuse their children’s demands for Ding Dongs and Frosted Flakes. Food companies must quit selling the high-calorie items that are their most popular, or governments must start suing them, a la the tobacco industry.

   Moronic. Mr. Brownell needs to start where the real responsibility lies: In his own (obese) mouth.
   Rating: 1 / 5

5. Qit el-Remel

   2010 Jun 22 5

   Yes, fast food is everywhere. No, Americans don’t eat enough “real” food (that is, food which was prepared from fresh, natural ingredients). Yes, if we ate more real food and less fast food, we’d be healthier.

   But here’s where Dr. Brownell goes wrong. He pushes the popular myth (already rejected by cooler heads within the medical profession) that if we were healthier, we’d automatically be *slimmer.* As others have mentioned, he doesn’t take individual choice into account. Nor does he so much as mention the ill effects of dieting; from a researcher of eating disorders, such an oversight seems huge.

   It has also already been said that Dr. Brownell–also the author of several weight-loss books–is himself a fat man. Does this mean that he *himself* follows an unhealthy lifestyle rather than heeding his own advice to others…and is therefore no better off than anyone *else* his size? Or does it mean that weight loss is *not,* in fact, always a health solution or even a likelihood–and that he is therefore a living flaw in his own argument? Let the reader be the judge.
   Rating: 2 / 5