San Antonio College Library

Author examines the problem of being overweight, its root causes, medical consequences and challenges facing overweight children and their parents. Provides a plan for overcoming the obesity crisis and raising healthier children. Plan includes increasing physical activity and learning better eating habits and nutrition.

An experimental pathologist and molecular geneticist, Philip Wood uses gene-knockout technology to study the way mouse genes regulate the metabolism of fat-research that provides insights into the workings of fatty-acid metabolism in humans and what can happen when that metabolic balance goes awry. Based on the classes he regularly teaches to first- and second-year medical students, Wood's book reviews the individual and public health burden of obesity...

This book investigates the controversial claim by welfare critics that public assistance programs like the Food Stamp and National School Lunch programs contribute to obesity among the poor. The author synthesizes empirical evidence from an array of disciplines--anthropology, economics, epidemiology, marketing, medicine, nutrition science, psychology, public health, sociology, and urban planning--to test this claim and to test whether other causal...

"In the past decade, obesity has emerged as a major public health concern in the United States and abroad. At the federal, state, and local level, policy makers have begun drafting a range of policies to fight a war against fat, including body-mass index (BMI) report cards, 'snack taxes, ' and laws to control how fast food companies market to children. As an epidemic, obesity threatens to weaken the health, economy, and might of the most powerful...

Childhood obesity in the United States has tripled in a generation. But while debates continue over the content of school lunches and the dangers of fast food, we are just beginning to recognize the full extent of the long-term physical, psychological, and social problems that overweight children will endure throughout their lives. Most dramatically, children today have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, something never before seen in the...

Anthropologist Eric Bailey uses a cultural and holistic analysis of African American food preferences to show how black Americans generally perceive health, body image, food, dieting, physical fitness, and exercise. As is true of Americans overall, black Americans are becoming more overweight and obese than ever before. So, too, they are seeing the consequences: heart attacks, strokes, hypertension, and Type II diabetes at earlier and earlier ages....

"In Food Fight, Kelly D. Brownell, a world expert on obesity, nutrition, and eating disorders, reveals both the roots of the problem and what might be done. Along with coauthor Katherine Battle Horgen, he traces the subtle convergence of public indifference, corporate opportunism, and tradition that in a few short decades has transformed the American waistline and has created a tidal wave of disease. The authors offer an unflinching assessment of...

"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...