I am so thankful that Paul Campos has attempted to debunk many of the myths surrounding obesity and health. He does a great work of demonstrating how obesity research is flawed and yet policy is made on that flawed research. He also elaborates on how the diet industry has been involved in much of the obesity research to its own advantage.
I went to a seminar on nutrition over 20 years ago during which it was explained that the insurance industry-based nutrition tables were arbitrarily determined much to the chagrin of nutrition experts. Furthermore, they did not include people over the age of 60 in the "studies" to determine those tables and yet they just extrapolated weights for people over the age of 60. The "studies" were actually done with thin, white, college-age males. How egregious!
I have always contended that the American Heart Association's promotion of a low fat diet is also based on the same faulty research cited in this book. It's difficult to argue against such large and embedded entities such as the diet industry and the AHA and I applaud this effort to do so. I used to work with a cardiologist who predicted that in a few decades we will start to see more people with osteoporosis (including a increase in men with this disorder) due to restriction of fat in cardiac diets.
I did not give this book 5 stars. The author gets rabid against his lawyer colleague for her diet book and rants a bit too much. This gets a bit obsessive and goes on a bit too much.
I do plan on using some of the information presented in this book to take to the University of Michigan Regents who recently denied any selling of sugar-sweetened beverages (including juices) anywhere on the campus, including the health system, in an effort to decrease obesity. Their paternalistic decision to do this smacks of discrimination against obesity and deprives people of making their own choice. Furthermore, the chemicals in "diet" drinks are now suspected of increasing food cravings and they are known to be unsafe for pregnant women and those with allergies to the chemicals. ( )

An enlightening book on the so-called obesity epidemic, and how focusing weight is much less important than focusing on health. ( )

The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos discusses the ideas of Obesity being a myth. It isn’t that obesity doesn’t exist, the book tells us that obesity just isn’t that much of a health hazard as it is made out to be. By using vital statistics and medical science Campos patiently dismantles the arguments saying that we have to be a particular weight. In that sense, it turns modern medical science on its head. Most people say that being a healthy weight is important to lower your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Campos just comes along and says that this is not correct.

Take the BMI chart for example; using a mathematical formula it takes your height and weight into account and tells you whether or not you are obese. The BMI charts are merely an offshoot of the MetLife Insurance tables that were drawn up in the 1940s. The BMI is supposed to be more accurate but doesn’t seem to take musculature and body type into account. There are many stories of people in the fitness and fat-loss industry lobbying Congress into approving horrible drugs like fen-phen and others. It is true that they took it off the market, but the initial idea was that it aided in weight-loss.

I don’t particularly appreciate being fed an agenda, and in some ways that seems like what the author is doing. The suggestions for further reading are mostly books on how weight issues are the core of feminism or something. Of course we all aren’t going to look like underwear models if we are healthy, that shouldn’t be a goal. The goal should be to not be sedentary, but what do I really know about all that? I’m not a doctor. ( )

This is a good book and the author makes a lot of good points debunking the idea that fat=bad. However, he repeats himself so many times that I found the book to get boring quickly and I just wanted it to end. ( )

This book literally changed my life. Cutting commentary, good research and a sociologist's view of America's weight complex. ( )