Food Fight

After reading the first few chapters of Food Fight, I thought "same old stuff." Americans are too fat, eat a poor diet, don't get enough exercise, what else is new. After a few more chapters, I became overwhelmed with the magnitude of the problem. The fast food companies and agribusiness corporations are too powerful, health care organizations are not really interested in solving the problem, and even the schools are inundated with Channel One advertising and contracts from soft drink companies. How on earth can we even begin to address this problem? Is there any hope? Then Brownell gets into solutions. Of course the individual needs to take responsibility and eat less, eat better, and exercise more. But communities need to demand changes, such as limits on what kind of advertising the kids see while they are in school, classes (for kids and adults) on nutrition and exercise, neighborhood walking and bicycle paths in safe places. And governments should be involved as well, providing national ad spots about health and fitness, perhaps using the anti-tobacco campaigns as a guideline. Brownell discusses the solutions in the last part of the book, then ends with a handy summary of recommended actions. What starts as a rather depressing book turns out to be a positive, optimistic look at what we can do at different levels to tackle a growing problem.

Dr. Kelly Brownell has spent much of his career fighting the food industry's attempts to make us all fat. He brings a crusader's passion and a scientist's accuracy and thoroughness to "Food Fight". He and co-author Katherine Horgen see obesity as a public health crisis like smoking or drunk driving. They take the social movement against smoking as a model and call on us all to get involved, for our own sake and our children's.This book is extremely well-referenced, drawing on scientific articles, popular journalism and books like Fast Food Nation. Brownell and Horgen reveal the huge scope of America's problem with weight and tell how the problem is spreading all over the world. They show how the food industry has penetrated schools, government agencies, and entertainment media to market sugary, fatty foods to adults and children.Brownell is especially concerned about children, who lack the power to defend themselves against food advertising and easily available sweets. He demolishes the "personal responsibility" argument used by the calorie pushers. How can children be expected to say "no" to food that tastes good, is readily available in their schools and communities, is recommended by their favorite media characters or sports stars, and which nobody is warning them against?The authors give dozens of suggestions for social changes that could increase physical activity (ex. bike paths), reduce soft drink consumption (ex a small tax that would go to fund nutrition education and provision of healthy school lunches), and make healthy food more available (a problem for a very large number of people in America.) They also have lots of good suggestions for political activism.What "Food Fight" does not include is strategies for individuals and families to protect themselves and live healthier lives. That's not what the book is about - it's about the politics of food, and how we can change the environment so that healthy living becomes easier. The writing style is clear, although not especially entertaining. But there is some humor, such as a subheading on the huge size of restaurant portions: "Nelson, party of four: your muffin is ready." Food Fight is a political manifesto by a crusader who has already been attacked repeatedly by the food industry. He makes a strong case, one I will use in my upcoming book, "The Politics of Diabetes." I encourage readers to support Dr. Brownell and Horgen's cause.David Spero RN, author of The Art of Getting Well: Maximizing Health When You Have a Chronic Illness (Hunter House 2002) www.DavidSperoRN.com

After reading Kelly Brownell's factual, rational and well-balanced book about the food industry and the American obesity crisis, I came away with the realization that basically the food industry is determined to turn all of us into foie gras. As Brownell, Director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, and co-author Katherine Horgen methodically demonstrate, the now global epidemic of obesity is anything but a lonely individual battle against overeating. Instead, we are victims of a host of factors that tip the scales dramatically against all of us: supersizing, saturation advertising from infancy on, aggressive lobbying, fast food and sugar-laden soft drinks in schools, the high cost and difficulty of finding healthy foods, plus all the factors that keep us sitting passively rather than exercising. It's a public health problem of enormous size, and as Brownell and Horgen consistently point out, it requires a political and environmental solution.While the authors back up their argument with authoritative research, statistics and analysis, I was most struck by some of the details they reported: baby bottles with soft-drink logos, Ronald McDonald's 100% recognition rate among American children, the 70% of eight-year-olds who rate fast foods as healthier than home cooking, the fact that feeding a family with healthy food costs 50% more than with junk food, that many "servings" are up to seven times larger than those the USDA statistics on fat, carbohydrates and calories are based on, and, as has been widely reported, the projection that the current generation of overfed, under-exercised, diabetes-and-heart-disease-prone children may be the first in recent history to live shorter lives than their parents and grandparents.We Americans are used to tackling challenges and problems individually. In many cases, that's a great quality. But when an entire generation is being supersized, with enormous impacts on health and well-being, we need a different approach. Brownell and Horgen spend the last third of the book developing a coherent, thoughtful and much-needed societal approach to the obesity epidemic.If you want to understand why this public-health epidemic has burgeoned now, and what we as a society can do about it, _Food Fight_ is the place to start.Robert Adler, Ph.D., author of _Medical Firsts: From Hippocrates to the Human Genome (John Wiley & Sons, March 2004).

It's interesting to read the comment left by a reviewer telling author Kelly Brownell to "grow up." I am not sure this person even read the book, because it's in fact the author that is urging us to wake up.Brownell gives an astute analysis of how the food industry targets CHILDREN. In detail, Brownell discusses what has happened to make obesity so prevalent in America, and why today's kids are so fat: giant portion sizes, sodas and candy in schools, multi-million dollar cross-marketing campaigns pushing junk foods rather than healthy foods, phased-out physical education programs, computers, movies, tvs and drive-throughs that keep us sedentary. His main question is: Why is America exploiting its kids? We don't want our children to smoke cigarettes, drink, or take drugs -- we want our kids to be educated and successful -- but if they want a Big Mac with Large Fries for dinner and a Big Gulp to wash it back, or Pop Tarts and a Pepsi for lunch, that's okay? His point is it's irresponsible and until we can get people to wise up to the manipulations of the Big Food companies, our kids are going to get fat. Parents have limited control over what their kids eat at school, the commercials they see and what they choose to eat, and for the most part kids make bad choices because they are getting reinforced messages from advertising. The appeal of a pop star peddling a cheeseburger can be very seductive, as can a cereal aisle filled with products that are movie tie-ins. These kids will suffer the same way smokers suffered before the truth about nicotine came out.There's more. Brownell explores how this fat trap can be reversed through education, limited commercial exposure to kids, removal of soft drinks in public schools, renewed phys ed programs,incentives to eat healthier, reasonable portion sizes, and celebrate these changes when they are made. Not so long ago tv shows told kids to eat apples and oranges instead of ice cream and twinkies, and schools awarded kids who passed the President's Fitness Test. It's time for change.

I am the mother of three small children and I loved this book! Any parent who has gone to the grocery store with a preschooler knows the challenge of simply getting down the cereal aisle or past the candy counter without a fight. This book systematically examines all of the environmental forces that influence how we eat, and how our children are fed. What I liked most about this book were the suggestions of how we can try to make changes in our own communities -- we don't have to sit by and let our children be the targets of advertisers. I felt inspired by this book to get involved with my local school and make it a healthier place for our chidren.