A sobering, well-informed analysis of widespread deceit.
A hard look at health and diet scams.
Harrison, a dietician, journalist, and author of Anti-Diet, mounts a persuasive critique of the multitrillion-dollar wellness industry. Distinguishing between wellness and well-being, the author faults the wellness industry for selling the idea that individual choice—“the things you do,” rather than genetics or social determinants—is central to attaining and maintaining health. “And doing those things,” Harrison notes, “typically requires a fair amount of economic privilege.” Emphasizing the overlap between wellness and diet culture, the author shows how restrictive diets, juice cleanses, and intuitive fasting have incited eating disorders. “For many people,” Harrison asserts, “wellness culture’s views on food are a gateway into a belief system where every product is a potential threat, every lifestyle choice a matter of life and death.” Wellness culture denigrates conventional medicine, portraying doctors, in league with big pharma, as more interested in financial gain than healing. In contrast to medical diagnoses, wellness practitioners have invented ailments such as adrenal fatigue, leaky gut syndrome, and chronic candida, for which they offer a host of useless supplements and expensive treatments. Harrison sees a strong link between the claims of much alternative medicine and conspiracy theorists: Both believe “nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected.” Both spread misinformation and disinformation—about the perils of vaccination, for example—through social media. Harrison urges tech companies to stop this insidious spread and calls on Congress to repeal a 1994 law that barred the FDA from testing or approving herbal and dietary supplements. Most empathically, she urges us to think critically about the wellness industry’s claims. “Wellness culture is a trap,” she writes, “keeping us stuck in a narrow view of what it means to be well and exposing us to much that is harmful—weight stigma, scams, conspiracy theories, damaging approaches to mental health, false diagnoses.”
A sobering, well-informed analysis of widespread deceit.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780316315609
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
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
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