The Obesity Epidemic: What Caused It? How Can We Stop It?

by Zoe Harcombe

The Obesity What caused it? How can we stop it? does what it says in the title it answers those two critical questions. It takes you on the journey that the author, Zoë Harcombe went on to answer those questions and hopefully it will shock you as much as it shocked her. The starting point must be when did The Obesity Epidemic start? The graphs and tables show a stunning increase in obesity levels at the turn of the 1980 s and obesity literally takes off, like an aeroplane trajectory, from that point onwards. Obesity in the UK, as an example, increases almost 10 fold between the 1970 s and 1999 from 2.7% to 25%. So what happened? The short answer is we changed our diet advice. More accurately we did a U-turn in our diet advice. We used to believe (and our grandmothers still do) that bread and potatoes were fattening and we should put butter on our vegetables. We changed this completely to tell citizens of the developed world to base our meals on starchy foods and to replace nature s butter with man-made hydrogenated spreads. Coincidence or cause? The Obesity Epidemic takes you through the actual documents that changed our diet advice, most importantly why the advice changed and what is stopping us from changing the advice back. This is a journey through the landmark turning points in the history of public health diet advice and the impact that this has had on obesity and all the accompanying modern heart disease; cancer; diabetes and the lack of well being that the average human suffers today. If you currently believe that energy in equals energy out be prepared to change your view, if you read this book with an open mind. If you think one pound equals 3,500 calories, you may be in for a surprise. If you assume that you will lose one pound for every deficit of 3,500 calories you create, you will see irrefutable evidence to the contrary. You will understand where five-a-day comes from and will hopefully revise your adherence to this marketing slogan afterwards. You will hopefully be shocked and appalled at the conflict of interest in the food and obesity industries. You may never drink fruit juice again. With 400 references and every fact backed up with sourced and presented evidence this is the most informative book on the subject of obesity ever written. You cannot fail to learn a great deal and to have your thinking continually challenged in a highly engaging way. The research for this book changed everything the author held to be true read with an open mind it could do the same for you. Love it or hate it, you have to read it.

Genres: Health, Nutrition, Nonfiction, Food

336 pages, Hardcover

First published September 20, 2011

Reviews

[Lynette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that comes along every now and then and changes your world view. Excellent.

[Juan Luis Cordero · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite informative, lots of figures, stats and strong arguments showing how sugar and carbs have been the main ones responsible for the obesity epidemic. I do agree with almost every single statement the author makes throughout the book.
However, the text it's more like a justice court report or an academic thesis rather than a book with stories and compelling narratives. Many times, the reading becomes painfully boring, making it difficult to keep moving forward. The author constantly throws up graphics, names of institutions, authorities, public programs, and the like, which, frankly, make reading an unpleasant experience. Also, it starts playing with numbers and calculations of calories that are a pain in the neck. It repeats several times the same arguments and statements again and again, once the point it's been clearly made.
It would've been much more kind to the reader to leave all that stuff as an annexe at the end.
If you're interested, I'd suggest searching for other books on the same topic.

[Matt Moutvic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book catalyzed my academic intended area of study with its examination of both the origins (corporate greed + lack of oversight over the ingredients in our food) and counter measures (eat natural food whenever possible) to the obesity epidemic. Zoe is a humorous writer who doesn’t exactly hide her biases but she is a smart researcher who bitingly attacks people directly she views as putting their profits above the health of children. Too technical generally to recommend to anyone not interested intently in the subject matter, as it took me two times reading it through to say that I truly understood most of what was being written about. In the absence of reading this book, she has some much less detailed YouTube lectures that served as the basis for Lindsey cleaning her diet. She’s awesome regardless of her biases!

[Diana Suddreth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zoe Harcombe's book is full of incredibly interesting, and scary, studies of obesity over many years. In short, she debunks the calories in = calories expended formula, shows that it takes more than a reduction in calories to lose weight, challenges diet advice with studies that clearly show it doesn't work, and points to the government and influence by major corporations as the culprit. The bottom line is to eat more real food with fewer carbs and get the government out of the health industry.

I found elements of the book mind blowing, especially the information on the nutritional value of animal products and specific examples of industry influence on government policy. I particularly appreciated the extensive research and citations supporting Harcombe's conclusions.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The truth about obesity

I loved this book. Zoe Harcombe doesn’t pull her punches when identifying the culprits but she also offers practical back-to-the-basics strategies to reverse the obesity pandemic. A must read for anyone and everyone who cares about their health and the future generations.

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author is very confident, but she throws out some logic that is unsound. I honestly don't know whether to believe her particulars. The ultimate answers - eat whole foods as often as you can and avoid heavily processed ones - is sound. I just lack confidence in the process.

[Caroline Jane Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want the truth

I wish those in authority would read this and do something about the current guidelines. Maybe then we can deal with the obesity levels.

[Shirin Reh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative and tons of actionable tips!

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book aimed at a general reader, rather than a specialist. The argument is clear: dietary advice for the last thirty years (particularly stressing low fat and high carbs) is not only incorrect, but has 'caused' the obesity epidemic.

The book is anti-government and anti-state interventions in health, well being, exercise and diet. The theoretical challenge of the book is that causality is located in a range of organizations and policies. Governments did not cause obesity. Casual links and alignments would be more correctly specified.

Noting those critiques, it is well written and is a clear intervention in flawed dietary advice. It is also powerful in the argument that it is incredibly easy to put on weight, and very complex to lose it.

[Katerina Koblentsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book and other research is changing how we think about food and food science. Time will tell if it is on the right track, but Harcombe's explanations of the Science behind her message make sense to me and I have cut down on carbs and sugar with resulting benefits of keeping weight off and still eating well. Not an easy path to follow if you are veggie, and if you are looking for a prescriptive 'measure and eat' approach this is not it. This is not a 'diet book' per se, more a treatise on how to change one's eating habits for good, which seems to me a much better approach than the on/off of a conventional diet.

[Rachel Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting, especially the revelation that American studies were used as evidence for the UK government to change its advice about cutting fat to lose weight in the late 70s/early 80s. Also the information on sugar is helpful. Now of course Zoe's ideas are quite mainstream.

I had a go at the diet but found it very hard to stick to. I found the 5/2 worked better for me, and reduced my BMI from 25.4 to 21.3. However the book did encourage me to change my eating habits (less sugar, smaller portions) and this is something I have largely continued with.

An informative and challenging read; well written and enjoyable.

[Till Noever · Rating 5 out of 5]

Troubling. Very

If essentially true—as I suspect it to be, having followed enough of the references—it indicates that medical progress is currently accompanied by, and wasted on, destructive patterns of public health advice that'll end up killing significantly more people than all recent world wars combined and wasting an unbelievable treasure of resources on fixing self-induced and created ills.

Somewhat dense and not as accessible as Gary Taubes's 'Diet Delusion', but very much worth a read anyway.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like books written by researchers rather than the scientists themselves. Researchers know how to research their material (funny that!), and can usually write in an easy journalistic style. This book is like that most of the time, although there is some repetition.

I would recommend it to anyone interested in what's going on in our world as far as weight and health is concerned.

[Viv JM · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full review on my blog: http://livegrownourishcreate.wordpres...