Rating: 
Summary: Meticulously researched, smartly written
Review: "Fatland" is a meticulously researched, smartly written, frequently appalling screed of an explanation why Americans indeed are now the fattest people in the world. Greg Critser traces the history of today's obesity epidemic all the way back to Earl Butz, President Nixon's secretary of agriculture, whose free trade farming policies led to domestic corn surpluses (and thus a market push for high-fructose corn syrup, the unctious main ingredient in all those 32-ounce sodas) and cheap imported palm oil, a fat so highly saturated growers used to call it tree lard.Then there's our current habits of inactivity, constant snacking, excessive TV watching, wearing elasticised waistbands...all combined with the nefariously clever strategies of junk food purveyors. But the real roots to the obesity epidemic, Critser argues, is that beltless pants and unlimted refills are just symptoms of modern American culture's general lack of boundaries and self-control. Some people may have a problem with Critser's bluntness about the facts, and doubtless the "fat acceptance" movement will not like this book. But I say your right to overeat ends where my airplane seat begins.
Rating:
Summary: Is Gluttony Still a Sin?
Review: Here Greg Critser lays out the appalling and well-known statistics on obesity in America. In recent years the numbers of overweight people have ballooned alarmingly, along with all of the associated health problems. These horrific increases are not natural and also cannot be explained easily. Critser, formerly overweight himself, makes many keen observations in this book about the several different causes of the American fat epidemic. There are economic causes, such as the increased use of cheaper but more fattening artificial sweeteners in food manufacturing, or the relentless push of the fast food and snack industries to increase market share. Cultural influences include the current politically correct acceptance of the overweight (actually a mortal fear of hurting someone's feelings), the popularity of baggy fashions, and even the media fascination with J. Lo's.... There are even some religious influences - see the title of this review. Critser's greatest achievement here is his bold stance on the class issues behind the obesity epidemic. Poor people (of any race) are far more prone to being overweight, as healthy foods and exercise programs are too expensive, and many poor people can't even get simple exercise outdoors due to fears of crime. The politically correct aversion to discussing class issues in any way breeds a real sense of denial about these problems. Critser studies all these troublesome trends in very enjoyable and often brutally honest ways, holding no punches as he describes the dire consequences for American society. Beware that some of Critser's scientific coverage gets bogged down in statistical overload, while popular culture is his obvious weak point - like his disastrous take on hip-hop fashions in Chapter 3. But Critser definitely points out the issues that America should stop ignoring, and has some very good potential solutions to the epidemic. Critser also succeeded in encouraging me to stop lying around reading this book and to go out and exercise. Good thing this book is short and to the point.
Rating: 
Summary: Pseudo-science with a grain of truth
Review: Welcome, Savage Love readers, to the battlegrounds concerning this overpraised book. Mr. Critser has one good, solid point in Fat Land: American society has largely decided that it is bad form to shame someone for obesity. This much I'll give him, especially when there are stores like Torrid, selling skimpy clothing that would look too revealing on girls with svelte builds. But when he gets into his bizarre political diatribes about high-fructose corn syrup, palm oil and the Nixon administration, Critser loses me. He's just plain wrong about corn syrup's being a somehow magically diabolical chemical that forces your body to pack on extra fat. That's junk straight out of the fad diet playbook, and any nutritionist knows it. Feed rats 500 calories of pure corn syrup, lard or whey protein, and they're going to gain the same amount of weight. These discussions are so ignorant that it bores me even to entertain them. Look, the American obesity problem is easy to figure out: 1. Animals biologically crave the basics: sugar, starch, protein and fat, in as concentrated a form as possible. That's pretty much what you get in a hamburger and a soda. Pure starch (the bun), pure protein and fat (the patty), and pure sugar (the drink). No shock there that this meal is popular. It's hard-wired into us to desire our food in such an efficient delivery system. And it's only been in the past 50 years or so that it's been feasible to get meals like this cheaply. 2. The poor are fatter than the rich because the rich are generally there because of their superior impulse control. Does it surprise anyone that a person who's smart enough to figure out how compound interest works is also probably smart enough not to stuff his guts with chili-cheese burritos and Whoppers every day? 3. Critser's point: People don't point and laugh at gigantic people openly. And when someone does taunt an obese person, the taunter is generally chastised sternly. Mr. Critser loves the French, but he has apparently not spent much time in a European or South American culture. There is an enormous amount of sexism implicit in shaming the fat. It is quite common to see Euro/Latin men, especially older ones, who would qualify as obese. Women are not allowed to get fat, however, as sexual attractiveness is FAR AND AWAY more important a barometer of that woman's worth in a European/Latin country than it is here. I have fat female friends who live in Europe and are verbally attacked every single day they venture out on the streets in Lyon, Bern or even Rome. I know we just LOVE to blame a whitey conspiracy for everything negative that happens to poor minority citizens, but you literally cannot get more deranged than to try to blame their food choices on The Man. The poor eat like pigs for the same reason they burn through their cash like children: They generally have little impulse control, and our public schools teach sensitivity to "diversity" rather than real-life skills. Try again, Mr. C.
Rating:
Summary: highly readable research
Review: We all know that body weight is influenced by our diet, exercise choices, and culture -- what Fat Land shows us is that we must more look closely at the intersection of these factors, and add in a healthy dose of politics and economics. Greg Critser's well-researched and highly readable book walks us through the Butz years, as high fructose corn syrup and palm oil became a larger part of the American diet. Critser takes us into science, to illuminate how these products are processed (or not) by our bodies. There are discussions of the economics behind Supersize meals and the introduction of soda machines and fast food into our nation's schools, and the amount of calories these two additions to our culture have added to our daily diets. It had me reading out loud at the dinner table ("can you BELIEVE this?!") and then changing my children's eating habits (not to mention my own) without ever looking back. If dieting begins in the mind, then this should be your first step.
Rating:
Summary: A remarkable, sober-minded book--and I am a fatty
Review: I was prepared to hate this writer, given the vitriol on this site. But once I read the book, I realized he was right: it's one thing for fact acceptance people like myself to want NOT to be discriminated against, it's quite another to deny a legitimate medical and public health problem in order to score sophomoric debating points--as if it is going to help the fat by denying clearly established medical issues. Mr C--not everyone in the fat acceptance movement is in denial. Many of us thank you for telling it straight--WE can take it.
Rating: 
Summary: BRING BACK ANOREXIA!
Review: I was actually going to buy this book until I read the author's personal account of the events which led him to write it. Gee this is the first time I've heard the usual bizarrely inconsistent white liberal middle class guilt applied over easily lost weight!(?!! was this guy actually over weight?! Heroin has been proven easier to beat than food addictions like sugar. There is nothing easy about it-tragic that he is too self-defeating/effacing to celebrate such a feat!) Like most self-absorbed and self-obsessed/self-loathing white liberals, his own impossible and contradictory values lead him to blame the outcome such values often create/set up: This relentless media obsession over weight and fitness to a degree that is just not possible for most has led to this revolving and hopeless diabesity epidemic in the first place. More to the point and "culturally relative," fat is in the eye of the beholder. IT is upper class white culture that conflates emaciated thinnes (to the point where "attractive" women resemble adolescent boys) with beauty. (Why else would someone possessing the body of a Modern Marilyn Monroe, such as Kate Winslet, be compared to the elephant woman?) It is also those same irresponsible/"priviliged" sloths in power that he criticizes that obsess on the news nightly now about America's obesity epidemic-even speaking hopefully about the possible trend of insurance co.s discriminating against the obese and teachers "constructively" shaming fat children. Upper class white liberals like him are the original fat fattists who have driven two eating disorders which are really opposite sides of the same coin: Anorexia/Bulimia in the 80s and early '90s [the concern for which he actually laments in his account!] and now like the yo-yo dieting these prison camp diets set off: binge eating/obesity. This schizofrenia has produced so much food obsession that psychiatrists have coined a new term for the present preocupation with food: orthorexia disorder. While he anxiously laments the lower class blacks and hispanics who must be the helpless victims of super sizing w/out the benefit of Jenny Craig, he easily ignores the fact that non-whites with high obesity rates find upper middle class fat phobia unsexy, bizarre and unrelatable-the low fat high carb craze failing to corrupt their traditional diets.
Which brings me to overlook the final outrageous exclusion of his personal acct. Few people eat fast food for their health! This is where his attitudes toward the big fat underclasses are so condescending and wistfully missionary. I know people are getting stupid-but did anyone not realize supersize fast food was unhealthy. The idea that some benighted souls knew not that smoking was carcinogenic was hard enough to swallow. My point is, these are individuals who would be part of that unrepentent fat populace regardless (okay maybe there would be a difference between it being obese and morbidly obese-let's not split hairs.) This is comparable to the same percentage that was stable until the new pyramid following (posted at any gymn you might visited-taught to grade schoolers in my day) low fat, high carb, size obsessed fitness craze. (ON another point, produce and proteins such as soy curd, legumes and tuna are cheaper than fast food fatty junk-so choices and effort figure in-not just class.) THE OBESITY EPIDEMIC AS WE KNOW IT TODAY WOULD NOT HAVE COME ABOUT IF IT WERE NOT COMPOUNDED BY the antithetical diet results of THOSE HEALTHY EATING HIGH CARBING EARTH SUSTAINING GRAIN LOVING YUPPIES. PEOPLE WHO GOT FAT RELIGIOUSLY TRYING TO CUT IT OUT-TAKING STARVATION DIETS TO A POINT OF MORAL HOPE AND REDEMPTION! He overlooks the increasingly common overweight insulin resistant semi vegetarian-those who sucked down jamba juices desperate to get those recommended servings of fruits and vegetables, as we only now discover the truly disastrous results of subsisting on something that was only meant for fuel or storage (fat)- that something being CARBS instead of building blocks like protein or god forbid meat even meat with fat on it!-and no not the crap you find at McDonalds.
Look, if you condescend to and are fed up with American Excess this much and think this country so unjust b/c of your misplaced codependent sense of responsibility, just gleefully watch it eat and shoot itself to death. (...)
Rating: 
Summary: Supersized Read
Review: I felt guilty sitting on the couch reading this book. So I upped my cardiovascular workouts and began weight training. Then I questioned the food I put into my mouth. Will this book change your life like it did for me? Probably not, but it will empower you to question what goes into your tummy. Critser collects a wide range of facts, anecdotes, and myths about sugars, sodas, and fast food. In the end, you'll wonder if it's all really bad for you or if you've just been making bad choices.
Rating:
Summary: Crucial, and dense with detail
Review: Okay, pardon the pun in the "dense in detail". However, this is a comprehensive, extensively researched and documented study of American obesity, and plowing through the numerous facts and statistics does take some commitment. Critser starts off on an entertaining, and somewhat light tone which will engage the reader and secure his commitment when the arcane physiological and chemical terminology and statistics are somewhat overwhelming. After the author has made his point he does have a tendency to beat it into the ground with additional detail that brings to mind the expression "too much information". However, it's all very important in light of the ongoing tragedy of prevalent American obesity. Critser provides a very interesting history of recent food additives, which is extremely helpful in enabling you to be discriminating in what you eat -- specifically food additives such as palm oil and high fructose corn syrup about which our friends in journals such as the "Nutrition Action Newsletter" and "Prevention" have been warning us for years. This is hardly hysteria on the part of "health food diet Nazis"; the points Critser makes are intuitively obvious, and when understood simply common sense. The author also makes a much harder case for exercise, particularly strenous exercise, which is a hard sell in an increasingly sedentary culture. While his points are valid, from a feasibility perspective those prompting a movement from inertia to moderate exercise are more likely to find converts. Critser's observations on the cost to all citizens, in terms of increased health premiums, besides the more pervasive but subtle losses in worker productivity due to obesity related illnesses are poignant and frightening. However, he also makes a valid point that major processed food industries have an immediate interest in obscuring and outright challenging such facts. It is hard to contest the point that there are more Americans who are affected with obesity than who smoke cigarettes, which is a valid if terrifying observation. This is an important work -- unfortunately, I suspect its impact will be limited as most people will prefer to keep their heads buried in the sand (or trough).
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, quick read.
Review: "Fat Land" is a fascinating and quick read, very much in the same spirit as "Fast Food Nation." Instead of exposing one particular industry, like "Fast", this book seeks to answer why the U.S. has had such a rapid increase in obesity and weight-related health problems in the last 30 years. The author reveals a lot of primary causes, from thoughtless profiteers in the food industry to the denial of the populace, who have heard what they wanted to hear, and ignored their rapidly expanding waist bands. Just a few of the culprits: (1)an increase in the use of high fructose corn syrup, a cheap sweetener which helped profits but increased caloric intake; (2)the super sizing phenomenon in fast food and convenience food; (3) an overly sedentary culture (4) misinformation in the diet industry, which sold a lot of gimmick diet books and products (5)the media telling people what they wanted to hear, including that moderate exercise was as good as vigorous exercise and (6) corporations buying their way into poorly funded schools, serving teenagers a staple of junk food. Crister deals with each of these points in depth, but also gets into various sociological factors that play a part in obesity, including poorly funded schools, indigent cultures, and ignorant doctors (many of whom are never educated about nutrition and aren't giving sound or realistic advice about weight loss.) Although the book is thorough on the topics it covers, Critser ignores some of the more conventional theories. He doesn't touch nearly enough on genetic factors, which do play a role in weight gain, and seems to be giving a free pass to those who eat badly but don't show it. There are many with high metabolisms who are eating just as badly as the obese, and they too will have some of the health problems (like cancer and heart disease) that the book talks about. Some of the book is painful to read, because the cold facts about obesity-related illness and early death are grim realities. They are essential to know, though, and this book spells it out in a well written, compelling way. The book is well researched and balanced, and one of the better books I've read on the topic of nutrition.
Rating:
Summary: THIS BOOK WILL MAKE YOU LOSE WEIGHT
Review: I can't believe that horrible review bashing the author of this book. This is the most amazing and revealing book I have ever read. It is a thorough analysis of the events leading to today's fat trends and I can almost guarantee that after reading it, you will change your habits. I did!
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