OBESITY...

Fast highlights how world obesity is rising due to ultra-processed food consumption and industry strategies fueling this unhealthy eating in this nonfiction work.

The author, an entrepreneur and wellness coach, was in his mid-50s when, “for the first time in my life, I began to understand the challenges of weight loss” and “like the ardent researcher I am, I began investigating weight loss and obesity.” This book, organized in four parts, recaps his key findings. Part 1 sets up “The Problem,” with Fast providing World Health Organization data delineating “a rising obesity pandemic that spans the globe,” one that did not even exist until the mid-1970s. Part 2 identifies “The Culprit,” the creation of convenience food in the modern diet, “ultra-processed, nutrient-void garbage…so tasty we can’t stop eating it,” with the author describing how “Big Food” companies care only about profits, not health, and deploy a “playbook” (like the tobacco industry has) to fund favorable studies and push products globally. In Part 3, “The Cause,” Fast discusses legitimate studies that connect the consumption of ultra-processed food to weight gain; in Part 4, “The Cure,” he emphasizes that eating “real” or whole foods (along with regular movement/exercise) will aid weight loss/maintenance. “We urgently need to wake up from our ‘food’ induced trance,” writes Fast, serving up an effective wake-up call with this well-researched appeal. While Big Food’s dastardly tactics have, of course, been well covered elsewhere, the author offers an engaging, eye-opening tour through suspicious or misleading propaganda and scientifically valid findings. Best of all, his book provides support and vision regarding the “surprisingly simple way” that Fast himself lost 30 pounds and regained vitality and health: “So as long as I ate real food—eradicating malnutrition at the cellular level—I began to shed the excess fat and I never once felt hungry.”

A compelling argument to question food industry–sponsored studies and focus on eating whole foods.