The 9-Inch Diet


Book Description

Far from the fads that populate the bestseller lists, THE 9-INCH DIET explores new diet territory. Both a focus on the psychology of why people eat the way they do and a tongue-in- cheek take on best dieting practice, this is the first diet book that sits as comfortably on the coffee table as it does the kitchen shelf. Advertising masterminds Bogusky and Porter have spent years manipulating the masses. Now they expose the conspiracy existent in marketing to keep the masses fat, whilst sharing their diet secret - eat from a smaller plate!




Why Diets Make Us Fat


Book Description

“If diets worked, we'd all be thin by now. Instead, we have enlisted hundreds of millions of people into a war we can't win." What’s the secret to losing weight? If you’re like most of us, you’ve tried cutting calories, sipping weird smoothies, avoiding fats, and swapping out sugar for Splenda. The real secret is that all of those things are likely to make you weigh more in a few years, not less. In fact, a good predictor of who will gain weight is who says they plan to lose some. Last year, 108 million Americans went on diets, to the applause of doctors, family, and friends. But long-term studies of dieters consistently find that they’re more likely to end up gaining weight in the next two to fifteen years than people who don’t diet. Neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt spent three decades in her own punishing cycle of starving and regaining before turning her scientific eye to the research on weight and health. What she found defies the conventional wisdom about dieting: ·Telling children that they’re overweight makes them more likely to gain weight over the next few years. Weight shaming has the same effect on adults. ·The calories you absorb from a slice of pizza depend on your genes and on your gut bac­teria. So does the number of calories you’re burning right now. ·Most people who lose a lot of weight suffer from obsessive thoughts, binge eating, depres­sion, and anxiety. They also burn less energy and find eating much more rewarding than it was before they lost weight. ·Fighting against your body’s set point—a cen­tral tenet of most diet plans—is exhausting, psychologically damaging, and ultimately counterproductive. If dieting makes us fat, what should we do instead to stay healthy and reduce the risks of diabetes, heart disease, and other obesity-related conditions? With clarity and candor, Aamodt makes a spirited case for abandoning diets in favor of behav­iors that will truly improve and extend our lives.




The Case Against Sugar


Book Description

From the best-selling author of Why We Get Fat, a groundbreaking, eye-opening exposé that makes the convincing case that sugar is the tobacco of the new millennium: backed by powerful lobbies, entrenched in our lives, and making us very sick. Among Americans, diabetes is more prevalent today than ever; obesity is at epidemic proportions; nearly 10% of children are thought to have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. And sugar is at the root of these, and other, critical society-wide, health-related problems. With his signature command of both science and straight talk, Gary Taubes delves into Americans' history with sugar: its uses as a preservative, as an additive in cigarettes, the contemporary overuse of high-fructose corn syrup. He explains what research has shown about our addiction to sweets. He clarifies the arguments against sugar, corrects misconceptions about the relationship between sugar and weight loss; and provides the perspective necessary to make informed decisions about sugar as individuals and as a society.




Death by Food Pyramid


Book Description

Warning: Shock and outrage will grip you as you dive into this one-of-a-kind exposé. Shoddy science, sketchy politics, and shady special interests have shaped American Dietary recommendations--and destroyed our nation's health--over recent decades. The phrase "death by food pyramid" isn't shock-value sensationalism, but the tragic consequence of following federal advice and corporate manipulation in pursuit of health. In Death by Food Pyramid, Denise Minger exposes the forces that overrode common sense and solid science to launch a pyramid phenomenon that bled far beyond US borders to taint the eating habits of the entire developed world. Minger explores how generations of flawed pyramids and plates endure as part of the national consciousness, and how the "one size fits all" diet mentality these icons convey pushes us deeper into the throes of obesity and disease. Regardless of whether you're an omnivore or vegan, research junkie or science-phobe, health novice or seasoned dieter, Death by Food Pyramid will reframe your understanding of nutrition science--and inspire you to take your health, and your future, into your own hands.







The Big Fat Surprise


Book Description

A New York Times bestseller Named one of The Economist’s Books of the Year 2014 Named one of The Wall Street Journal’s Top Ten Best Nonfiction Books of 2014 Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2014 Forbes’s Most Memorable Healthcare Book of 2014 In The Big Fat Surprise, investigative journalist Nina Teicholz reveals the unthinkable: that everything we thought we knew about dietary fat is wrong. She documents how the low-fat nutrition advice of the past sixty years has amounted to a vast uncontrolled experiment on the entire population, with disastrous consequences for our health. For decades, we have been told that the best possible diet involves cutting back on fat, especially saturated fat, and that if we are not getting healthier or thinner it must be because we are not trying hard enough. But what if the low-fat diet is itself the problem? What if the very foods we’ve been denying ourselves—the creamy cheeses, the sizzling steaks—are themselves the key to reversing the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease? In this captivating, vibrant, and convincing narrative, based on a nine-year-long investigation, Teicholz shows how the misinformation about saturated fats took hold in the scientific community and the public imagination, and how recent findings have overturned these beliefs. She explains why the Mediterranean Diet is not the healthiest, and how we might be replacing trans fats with something even worse. This startling history demonstrates how nutrition science has gotten it so wrong: how overzealous researchers, through a combination of ego, bias, and premature institutional consensus, have allowed dangerous misrepresentations to become dietary dogma. With eye-opening scientific rigor, The Big Fat Surprise upends the conventional wisdom about all fats with the groundbreaking claim that more, not less, dietary fat—including saturated fat—is what leads to better health and wellness. Science shows that we have been needlessly avoiding meat, cheese, whole milk, and eggs for decades and that we can now, guilt-free, welcome these delicious foods back into our lives.




A Big Fat Crisis


Book Description

Obesity is the public health crisis of the twenty-first century. Over 150 million Americans are overweight or obese, and across the globe an estimated 1.5 billion are affected. In A Big Fat Crisis, Dr. Deborah A. Cohen has created a major new work that will transform the conversation surrounding the modern weight crisis. Based on her own extensive research, as well as the latest insights from behavioral economics and cognitive science, Cohen reveals what drives the obesity epidemic and how we, as a nation, can overcome it. Cohen argues that the massive increase in obesity is the product of two forces. One is the immutable aspect of human nature, namely the fundamental limits of self-control and the unconscious ways we are hard-wired to eat. And second is the completely transformed modern food environment, including lower prices, larger portion sizes, and the outsized influence of food advertising. We live in a food swamp, where food is cheap, ubiquitous, and insidiously marketed. This, rather than the much-discussed "food deserts," is the source of the epidemic. The conventional wisdom is that overeating is the expression of individual weakness and a lack of self-control. But that would mean that people in this country had more willpower thirty years ago, when the rate of obesity was half of what it is today! The truth is that our capacity for self-control has not shrunk; instead, the changing conditions of our modern world have pushed our limits to such an extent that more and more of us are simply no longer up to the challenge. Ending this public health crisis will require solutions that transcend the advice found in diet books. Simply urging people to eat less sugar, salt, and fat has not worked. A Big Fat Crisis offers concrete recommendations and sweeping policy changes-including implementing smart and effective regulations and constructing a more balanced food environment-that represent nothing less than a blueprint for defeating the obesity epidemic once and for all.




How Not to Die


Book Description

From the physician behind the wildly popular NutritionFacts website, How Not to Die reveals the groundbreaking scientific evidence behind the only diet that can prevent and reverse many of the causes of disease-related death. The vast majority of premature deaths can be prevented through simple changes in diet and lifestyle. In How Not to Die, Dr. Michael Greger, the internationally-renowned nutrition expert, physician, and founder of NutritionFacts.org, examines the fifteen top causes of premature death in America-heart disease, various cancers, diabetes, Parkinson's, high blood pressure, and more-and explains how nutritional and lifestyle interventions can sometimes trump prescription pills and other pharmaceutical and surgical approaches, freeing us to live healthier lives. The simple truth is that most doctors are good at treating acute illnesses but bad at preventing chronic disease. The fifteen leading causes of death claim the lives of 1.6 million Americans annually. This doesn't have to be the case. By following Dr. Greger's advice, all of it backed up by strong scientific evidence, you will learn which foods to eat and which lifestyle changes to make to live longer. History of prostate cancer in your family? Put down that glass of milk and add flaxseed to your diet whenever you can. Have high blood pressure? Hibiscus tea can work better than a leading hypertensive drug-and without the side effects. Fighting off liver disease? Drinking coffee can reduce liver inflammation. Battling breast cancer? Consuming soy is associated with prolonged survival. Worried about heart disease (the number 1 killer in the United States)? Switch to a whole-food, plant-based diet, which has been repeatedly shown not just to prevent the disease but often stop it in its tracks. In addition to showing what to eat to help treat the top fifteen causes of death, How Not to Die includes Dr. Greger's Daily Dozen -a checklist of the twelve foods we should consume every day.Full of practical, actionable advice and surprising, cutting edge nutritional science, these doctor's orders are just what we need to live longer, healthier lives.




Pure, White, and Deadly


Book Description

More than 40 years before Gary Taubes published The Case Against Sugar, John Yudkin published his now-classic exposé on the dangers of sugar—reissued here with a new introduction by Robert H. Lustig, the bestselling author of Fat Chance. Scientist John Yudkin was the first to sound the alarm about the excess of sugar in the diet of modern Americans. His classic exposé, Pure, White, and Deadly, clearly and engagingly describes how sugar is damaging our bodies, why we eat so much of it, and what we can do to stop. He explores the ins and out of sugar, from the different types—is brown sugar really better than white?—to how it is hidden inside our everyday foods, and how it is harming our health. In 1972, Yudkin was mostly ignored by the health industry and media, but the events of the last forty years have proven him spectacularly right. Yudkin’s insights are even more important and relevant now, with today’s record levels of obesity, than when they were first published. Brought up-to-date by childhood obesity expert Dr. Robert H. Lustig, this emphatic treatise on the hidden dangers of sugar is essential reading for anyone concerned about their health, the health of their children, and the wellbeing of modern society.




The Information Diet


Book Description

This is a softcover version of the title released in 2011; there is no new material. The modern human animal spends upwards of 11 hours out of every 24 in a state of constant consumption. Not eating, but gorging on information ceaselessly spewed from the screens and speakers we hold dear. Just as we have grown morbidly obese on sugar, fat, and flour—so, too, have we become gluttons for texts, instant messages, emails, RSS feeds, downloads, videos, status updates, and tweets. We're all battling a storm of distractions, buffeted with notifications and tempted by tasty tidbits of information. And just as too much junk food can lead to obesity, too much junk information can lead to cluelessness. The Information Diet shows you how to thrive in this information glut—what to look for, what to avoid, and how to be selective. In the process, author Clay Johnson explains the role information has played throughout history, and why following his prescribed diet is essential for everyone who strives to be smart, productive, and sane. In The Information Diet, you will: Discover why eminent scholars are worried about our state of attention and general intelligence Examine how today’s media—Big Info—give us exactly what we want: content that confirms our beliefs Learn to take steps to develop data literacy, attention fitness, and a healthy sense of humor Become engaged in the economics of information by learning how to reward good information providers Just like a normal, healthy food diet, The Information Diet is not about consuming less—it’s about finding a healthy balance that works for you