San Antonio College Library

The author explains in detail the risks, rewards, myths, and realities of weight loss surgery, and describes how the procedure is done, recovery times, and insurance issues.

A physically sedentary lifestyle and obesity are two of the most prevalent risk factors for common chronic diseases in the Western world. These papers explore the evidence of the link between obesity and physical exercise, or the lack of it.

"Many people consider their weight to be a personal problem: when, then, does body weight become a social problem?" "The chapters in this volume offer several perspectives that can be used to understand the way society deals with fatness and thinness. The contributors consider historical foundations, medical models, gendered dimensions, institutional components, and collective perspectives. These different perspectives illustrate the multifaceted...

Fat. Such a little word evokes big responses. While "fat" describes the size and shape of bodies -- their appearance -- our negative reactions to corpulence also depend on something tangible and tactile. As this book argues, there is more to fat than meets the eye. Fat: A Cultural History of the Stuff of Life offers reflections on how fat has been perceived and imagined in the West since antiquity. Featuring fascinating historical accounts as well...

Draws on popular examples and sound science to explain our expanding waistlines and to discuss the consequences of being overweight for different demographic groups. Reviews the various studies of human and animal fat use and storage, including those that examine fat deposition and metabolism in men and women; chronicle cultural differences in food procurement, preparation, and consumption; and consider the influence of sedentary occupations and lifestyles....

This work is a powerful critique of dietary reform in the United States from the late nineteenth-century emergence of nutritional science through the contemporary alternative food movement and campaign against obesity. Here the author analyzes the discourses of dietary reform, including the writings of reformers, as well as the materials they created to bring their messages to the public. She shows that while the primary aim may be to improve health,...

An ethnography of the day-to-day struggles of women who participate in a weight-loss program. [from publisher's advertisement].

"This book looks at the interweaving of fact and fiction relating to obesity, tracing public concern from the mid-nineteenth century to the modern day. It looks critically at the source of our anxieties, covering issues such as childhood obesity, the production of food, media coverage of the subject, and the emergence of obesity in modern China. Written as a cultural history, the book is particularly concerned with the cultural meanings that have...

Locating the origins of the cultural denigration of fatness in the mid 19th century, Amy Erdman Farrell argues that the stigma associated with a fat body preceded any health concerns about a large body size. Farrell draws on a wide array of sources, including political cartoons, popular literature, postcards, advertisements, and physician's manuals to explore the link between our historic denigration of fatness and our contemporary concern over obesity....

"A century ago, a plump child was considered a healthy child. No longer. An overweight child is now known to be at risk for maladies ranging from asthma to cardiovascular disease, and obesity among American children has reached epidemic proportions. Childhood Obesity in America traces the changes in diagnosis and treatment, as well as popular understanding, of the most serious public health problem facing American children today. Excess weight was...