The Hungry Gene: The Science of Fat and the Future of Thin

by Ellen Ruppel Shell

Overview

Americans spend $33 billion annually on diet and exercise programs, yet we are fatter than ever — and it's killing us. According to a recent Surgeon General's report, more than 60 percent of Americans are overweight, including a growing number of children, all of whom face such increased, potentially life-threatening health risks as hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease. The Hungry Gene takes an unflinching look at the spreading obesity pandemic, guiding readers through the ongoing quest to unravel the genetic and behavioral basis of one of the most vexing scientific mysteries of our time. Acclaimed science journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell goes to the front lines of the struggle against fat — from the quiet facility in Maine where the first superobese mice were bred more than thirty years ago, to Rockefeller University in New York where scientists worked around the clock to isolate the gene that causes obesity. Along the way Shell looks at how medicine is dealing with the fat crisis with radical and controversial surgical techniques, what the incidence of mordant obesity among native islanders in Micronesia tells us about its evolutionary roots, and how drug companies are racing to create a pill to cure this "Trillion Dollar Disease." She also takes aim at the increasingly obesity-enabling culture that lies behind the crisis — from the expanding suburban sprawl that has fostered America's car-centered sedentary lifestyle to the fast-food marketers who prey on the jammed schedules of today's two-income families. Weaving science, history, and personal stories, the narrative builds to a powerful conclusion that reveals how we can beat the obesity pandemic before it beatsus. Gripping and provocative, The Hungry Gene is the unsettling saga of how the world got fat — and what we can do about it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780871138569
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	09/01/2002
Pages:	294
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.52(h) x 1.19(d)

What People are Saying About This

Deborah Blum

This is the kind of book that you take everywhere, because you don't want to leave it, and then read out loud to friends and family and even casual acquaintances because it's so smart and so engaging. Ellen Ruppel Shell is a wonderful writer.
— Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sex and the Brain

John Weiner

In The Hungry Gene, Ellen Ruppel Shell gives us a clear, inviting, and entertaining look at this fascinating subject, and at the sociopolitical underpinnings to the mysterious-and frightening-obesity pandemic.-
— Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Beak of the Finch

John Horgan

Finally someone has done justice to what may be the most medically, socially, and commercially significant enterprise in all of science. An indefatigable reporter with a novelist's sense of character and drama, Ellen Ruppel Shell has poured all her considerable talent into this engrossing book.
— author of The End of Science

Dick Teresi

"A superb and groundbreaking work of science journalism that takes us on an entertaining-and sometimes frightening-journey through the world of fat, highlighted by Ellen Ruppel Shell's enthralling writing.
— author of The God Particle

Charles Mann

Ellen Ruppel Shell details-for the first time anywhere-the lethal intersection of genetics, economics, and culture behind the obesity epidemic. By explaining what science knows about why we gain weight - and what science doesn't know-she gives everyone, thin and heavy alike, reason to hope that obesity won't become the cancer of the 21st century.
— author of Noah's Choice

Alan P. Lightman

Ellen Ruppel Shell's The Hungry Gene is important, richly informative, and written with flair.
— author of Einstein's Dreams

Eric Schlosser

In The Hungry Gene, one of America's finest science writers tackles one of our most urgent public health issues.
— author of Fast Food Nation

Editorial Reviews

Each year, Americans spend $33 billion on diet and exercise programs, and each year we get fatter. Science journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell waded into the front lines of the fat wars to discover what advanced weapons scientists are developing to knock off our bulbous midriffs. Citing research on the incidence of obesity among the islanders of Micronesia, she shows how our own obesity-enabling culture is leading us down the road to life-threatening illnesses.

The Hungry Gene is a fair-minded, clear, and fascinating book about a highly emotional issue: why so many people are becoming so fat. After reading this book I have a much better sense of what science knows about the issue, what is unknown, what is a matter of individual destiny, and what is the result of food-industry strategies. An authoritative introduction to the next big public-health threat.
— National Editor, The Atlantic Monthly

James Fallows

A revealing look at research into the causes of obesity, the drastic measures being taken by some to combat fat, and the tactics of those who profit from it.

Science writer Shell (Journalism/Boston Univ.; A Child's Place, 1992) opens her account with a gripping scene of a 274-point woman undergoing gastric bypass surgery, a procedure opted for by some 40,000 Americans in the year 2000 alone. With more than 9,000,000 Americans "morbidly obese" (that is, more than 100 pounds overweight), there are strong incentives for finding the key to the fat problem. Following the search for the obesity gene, Shell vividly portrays some of the scientists involved. She shows how the drive for prestige, patents and profit affects scientific research and reports on the disturbing connections between obesity researchers and the diet, food, and pharmaceutical industries. She then demonstrates how biology and environment interact in shaping behavior (and therefore bodies) by shifting her focus to Micronesia, where Westernization of the native island people's diet has produced an astonishing increase in obesity rates, along with diabetes and other health problems. Noting that childhood obesity is most prevalent in countries where advertising on children's television is least regulated, Shell argues that public policy should encourage healthful eating, and she enumerates a few courses of action to that end. Likening "Big Food" to "Big Tobacco" as a manipulator of public opinion, she faults the industry's sponsorship of the American Dietetic Association and other influential nutrition groups. Similarly, she calls for separation of the US Department of Agriculture's food-promotion function from its nutrition-advisory function.

No quick-weight-loss ops here, but a compelling depiction of the complexity and size of the plague of obesity

Kirkus Reviews