The Washington Post / BOOKS | |
Jonathan Yardley LOSING IT: America’s Obsession with Weight And the Industry That Feeds on It By Laura Fraser Dutton, 328pp, $24.95 |
1 | LAURA FRASER is here | $500 a year per dieter. Despite | among relatively serious and | |||||||
to say, to thee and me: | our efforts, we are still gaining | responsible people who know | ||||||||
Lighten up! Obsessing | weight: In the past decade, the | that diets simply do not work - at | ||||||||
about weight, she says, is | average American adult has put | least not diets as the interconnected | ||||||||
pointless, counter-productive and | on eight pounds.” | interests of commercial | ||||||||
self-destructive. That she is | 5 | The ideal of thinness, as Fraser | clubs and food products define | |||||||
absolutely right makes it not a | and many others have pointed | them - she finds a prevailing | ||||||||
bit easier to believe her, for her | out, is relatively recent. The | assumption that, as one reformed | ||||||||
message runs contrary to every- | Victorians celebrated the well- | dieter put it, “dieting doesn’t | ||||||||
thing else our culture would have | padded physique, and the robber | work, but we don’t want to | ||||||||
us believe. | barons measured their success at | discourage people from doing it.” | ||||||||
2 | On the question of weight as | their waistlines. But around the | 8 | This is hypocritical indeed, but | ||||||
on so many other matters, | turn of the century, an | it is a clumsy way of saying that | ||||||||
America is terminally weird. On | evolutionary chain began that | even if the stereotypical | ||||||||
the one hand it insists that only | ran from the plump Lillian | American “diet” is a fraud, the | ||||||||
thin is genuinely beautiful, a | Russell to the athletic Gibson | question of weight is far from | ||||||||
message reinforced by mass | Girl to the boyish flapper to the | unimportant. What Fraser calls | ||||||||
media that fawn over pencil-thin | “ubiquitous ideal” of Barbie, with | “the new paradigm about weight” | ||||||||
female models and impossibly | “proportions beyond the reach of | - it “encourages people to stop | ||||||||
trim male movie stars and | ordinary women.” For all | dieting, to develop lifelong | ||||||||
athletes as well as by a food | Americans, but for women most | healthy eating and exercise | ||||||||
industry that has turned “local” | especially, thinness became at | habits instead, and to accept | ||||||||
and “fat free” into cash cows.Yet | once mandatory and elusive. | whatever weight they end up | ||||||||
on the other hand the dominant | 6 | The industry that soon settled | with” - is admirable, but one | |||||||
ingredients of the American diet | down to cater to and profit from | need only look at the human | ||||||||
are high in calories and fat, and | this enduring contradiction is all | evidence all around us to | ||||||||
the weight of the average | too well-known to most of us, but | understand that it is a paradigm | ||||||||
American bulks ever larger year | Fraser provides an illuminating | still in search of a following. | ||||||||
after year. On the one hand we | tour. She presents a parade of | 9 | Still, the essential drift of | |||||||
talk incessantly about weight and | diet doctors and gurus, from Jack | Fraser’s reportage and her | ||||||||
spend staggering amounts of | LaLanne to Herman Tarnower to | argument is on target. Dieting as | ||||||||
money trying to get rid of it, yet | Dean Ornish to Susan Powter; | most Americans practice it does | ||||||||
on the other hand we are | she explores the underworld of | them far more harm than good. | ||||||||
probably the fattest nation on | diet fraud, with its “long history... | Yo-yo weight shifts are generally | ||||||||
earth. Go figure. | full of colorful American | believed in responsible quarters | ||||||||
3 | Fraser is less interested in | character types: confidence men, | to put the body at greater risk | |||||||
figuring than in reporting. She is | hucksters, shady doctors and fly- | than steady if moderate overweight, | ||||||||
better on the whats than on the | by-night entrepreneurs”; she | and many of the food | ||||||||
whys, but that is a forgivable | examines the corporate interests | products low in fat and calories | ||||||||
shortcoming in what is otherwise | that roll out diet and fat-free | are poor eating and inadequate | ||||||||
a sound and informative tour | food or food “products”; she visits | nutrition. | ||||||||
through the darkest recesses of | (and enrolls in) some of the | 10 | In what is generally a sensible | |||||||
what she calls Dietland, the basic | more notable commercial diet | and balanced presentation, Fraser | ||||||||
character of which she defines at | groups, Weight Watchers and | skips too quickly over one | ||||||||
the outset: | Jenny Craig among them; and | important element. However | ||||||||
4 | “Nearly half of all American | she explores the scientific, | fraudulent and exploitative many | |||||||
women, and a quarter of all men, | academic and industrial world of | inhabitants of Dietland may be, | ||||||||
diet... Most diets, several studies | “bariatric physicians” and “obesity | most of them could not have got | ||||||||
have shown, don’t work for at | research.” | where they are without the eager | ||||||||
least nine out of ten people, who | 7 | It is hardly a pretty picture. | cooperation of the press. Most of | |||||||
will just regain the weight. | The sum of all this labor is a | these media people know as little | ||||||||
(People who lose weight on their | system determined upon “proving | about nutrition and biology as | ||||||||
own and aren’t counted in | that everyone is at an increased | the rest of us, but this does not | ||||||||
medical studies seem to do | risk of dying early if they aren’t | prevent them from acting as | ||||||||
slightly better at keeping the | super-thin, frightening people | messengers of false hope and | ||||||||
pounds off.) Still, we keep trying, | into going on starvation diets to | inner panic. The media worship | ||||||||
and collectively we spend an | reach an improbable weight, and | thinness and shamelessly promote | ||||||||
estimated $34 to $50 billion a | ignoring reams of studies that | impossible means of achieving it. | ||||||||
year on dieting - that’s about the | demonstrate there are much | In Dietland, they are as much at | ||||||||
gross national product of Ireland | more sophisticated ways of | fault as anyone else. | ||||||||
- which comes down to roughly | looking at health risks.” Even | |||||||||
‘The Washington Post’, | ||||||||||
January 19, 1997 |