Modern Forager

Last night, I finally finished The Fattening of America by Eric Finkelstein and Laurie Zuckerman. It was basically about how the economy is geared to making people fat, the detriments of obesity on the nation, and the benefits to the economy of obesity. Finkelstein uses his Uncle Al and Cousin Carl as exemplars of a typical obesity-promoting lifestyle. Uncle Al is a lawyer, climbing the ladder at his firm, making money hand-over-fist, but working long hours, eating restaurant foods constantly, and getting little exercise other than a weekly round or two of golf. Cousin Carl is living paycheck to paycheck, eats poorly due to lack of money, and also gains too much weight.

Throughout the book, he uses economics to show how both Uncle Al and Cousin Carl are maximizing utility as they have determined utility to fit their lives. For Uncle Al, having a high-powered career is more important than being healthy and therefore, it is expensive for him to maintain a healthful diet and exercise regimen. To engage in exercise and fix his own meals would take too much time away from the law firm. Cousin Carl has similar problems with needing to work to be able to support himself and having little money to spend on high quality foods.

There was only one tidbit that jumped out at me in the book of major interest. Did you know that the lower income brackets are not the most overweight? According to the data from studies he used, it’s actually the middle class that has the highest rate of obesity across all races and genders, with the rich and the poor having about equal probability of being obese. There are quite large differences between the races and genders though, as black women are more likely to be obese than white women at pretty much any income level and all women are more likely to be obese than men.

It all basically boils down to technological advances making it more expensive to be thin than to be fat. Unhealthful foods made of cheap are cheaper than produce, grass-fed meats and poultry. Our jobs are rarely physical, so we have to pay both time and money to go to a gym. It’s easier to hit McDonald’s for a quick meal after an exhausting, stressful day of work than it is to go home and cook up a proper meal of meat and vegetables. And then there are all of the businesses that benefit from our ever-expanding waistlines: diet plans, gyms, over-sized casket and wheelchair makers, pharmaceuticals, and the list continues. The weight loss industry is nearly $50 billion per year and showing no signs of slowing.

Finkelstein devotes a chapter or two to discussing the benefits to employers of a more fit workforce and some of the programs that companies are instituting to help their employees stay in shape. From weight rooms to cash incentives to maintain a certain weight or hit certain exercise targets, employers have put many different kinds of programs in place to try to make it less costly in economic terms for their employees. Unfortunately, there’s no solid proof showing that they work.

Finally, he ended with some practical advice on how to lose weight. I was dreading that chapter, figuring it was going to be the same politically correct garbage of “eat less fat, watch your calories, etc.” But he didn’t go there. It was more high-level stuff like “Avoid food in pretty packages,” “avoid added sugar,” that kind of thing. Pretty decent information, but it’s the same information we’ve been hearing for years that is obviously not getting through to people. Perhaps a different way of putting the message together is in order.

I thought he placed too much emphasis on genetics, which most of us understand are not a road map to your life, but become expressed only when the proper environment for their expression exists. Remember that phenotype is what your body does with your genotype and is truly what you are. He also didn’t really separate the differences between weight and health, irritating the heck out of me when he said he waits for the day that he can drink sweet tea and eat cookies without worries about gaining weight. Of course, one can be at a “normal” weight and still be quite unhealthy.

My final rating of this book is a 6 out of 10. It’s well-written and well-researched, but it doesn’t bring much to the party that most of us here don’t already understand. It took me several weeks longer to get through the book than it should have just because it wasn’t all that enthralling and most of the stuff, I already understood.

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Tags: book review, Eric Finkelstein, obesity