A painfully eye-opening study of food and health.
A fact-filled, discouraging attack on the modern diet.
Van Tulleken, an infectious disease doctor and TV and radio commentator, rocks no boats by agreeing that our convenient, highly refined, additive-rich, chemically enhanced food is making us unhealthy. He has no kind words for “junk food,” but he also reveals the distressing details behind many of the organic, ultra-processed foods (UPFs) that tout their relative healthiness. “Almost every food that comes with a health claim on the packet is a UPF,” he writes. Unfortunately, as van Tulleken shows, denouncing unhealthy food (containing too much sugar, salt, fat, and calories and too little fiber) hasn’t worked. People in nations where calorie consumption has dropped, including in the U.S., continue to get fatter. The author defines unhealthy food not for its ingredients but for how it’s processed. Generally soft and energy-dense, UPFs are literally addictive. The author also devotes generous space to obesity, the world’s leading dietary disorder. Most writers of this genre give advice on dieting, but van Tulleken, sticking to the science, admits that diets’ success rates are close to zero. It’s proven (but widely disbelieved) that obesity is not the result of weak will power, gluttony, or indolence but rather a mixture of genetics and environment. UPFs are cheap, so being poor is a risk factor. Delving into immersion journalism, the author tests the effects of spending a month on a diet containing 80% UPFs. At the end, he gained 13 pounds, and his appetite grew, but the food became unpalatable. Realistic to the end, van Tulleken maintains that UPF manufacturers will never make better food because it’s designed to be consumed in the largest possible quantities. Healthy food, made to be consumed less, will never sell as well as food that’s consumed more. Everyone, including food industry professionals, agrees that only stronger government regulations will improve matters. Unfortunately, in most countries, especially the U.S., that’s unlikely to occur.
A painfully eye-opening study of food and health.Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9781324036722
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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