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Published by: Grove Press
Release Date: September 15, 2003
Pages: 304
ISBN13: 9780871138569

 
Overview

America today faces a gathering health crisis of epic proportions. The crisis is obesity and the diseases linked to it–hypertension, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. While politicians and public officials declare war against fat, and multinational drug companies race to find a cure, the problem only worsens, with experts estimating that fully half of Americans will become obese–and the vast majority of us overweight–within the next quarter century.

In a rare blend of erudition and entertainment, acclaimed science journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell reveals for the first time the secret history and subtle politics behind the explosion of obesity in the United States, and the world. Shell traces the epidemic’s legacy to the Ice Age, its rise through the Industrial Revolution and the early days of medicine and into modernity. She takes readers to the front lines of the struggle to come to grips with this baffling plague–from a modest laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, where superobese mice were first bred, to Rockefeller University in New York City to witness the cutthroat–and heartbreaking–race to clone the obese gene, to the far-flung tropical islands of Micronesia, where a horrifying outbreak of obesity among native islanders has helped scientists tease out the disorder’s genetic and evolutionary roots.

The Hungry Gene offers an unflinching insider’s look into the radical and controversial pharmacological and surgical techniques used to combat what drug makers have dubbed the trillion-dollar disease, exposing the collusion between scientists and industry that for so long muddied the waters of obesity research and endangered untold thousands of unwitting victims. With vivid portraits of the scientists involved, Shell illustrates the breakthrough that proved conclusively that obesity is not a matter of gluttony or weak will but of vulnerable genes preyed upon by a hostile environment. Ultimately, she takes aim at the increasingly obesity-enabling culture that lies behind the crisis, telling the hard truths of what must be done to turn the tide on this frightening pandemic. Weaving cutting-edge science, psychology, and anthropology with history, Shell builds a compelling narrative culminating in a thought- provoking–and radical–call to arms. Gripping and provocative, The Hungry Gene is the unsettling saga of how the world got fat–and what we can do about it.

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Praise

“Compelling. . . . Journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell takes us into the wide world of obesity, seeking answers to how we got here and how we can get back to thin again.”
—Gregory Mott, The Washington Post

“The Hungry Gene draws parallels between Big Tobacco and Big Food that are all the more chilling because obesity is expected to overtake tobacco as the number one public health risk factor in the United States within the next decade or two.”
—Jan Gardner, The Boston Globe

“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.”
—James Fallows, national editor, The Atlantic Monthly

“Shell takes a provocative look at the history, politics, science and culture of obesity. . . . She is as adept at explaining the physiology of fat as she is at chronicling the desperation of the obese.”
—The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Ellen Ruppel Shell’s The Hungry Gene is important, richly informative, and written with flair.”
—Alan P. Lightman, author of Einstein’s Dreams

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

“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.”
—John Horgan, author of The End of Science

“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. Beautifully written and scrupulously researched, The Hungry Gene is for everyone who has worried–or wondered–about their weight.”
—Jon Weiner, Pulitzer Prize­winning author of The Beak of the Finch

“Shell’s book explores obesity both nationally and globally. She looks at it through the lens of history, science, economics and politics while interweaving its effects on individuals, cultures and countries. Most importantly, she addresses the nature-or-nurture question. It’s both, says Shell. And it’s complicated.”
—Patricia Guthrie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Shell promotes the theory that the “obesity pandemic” is a result of vulnerable genes in a fat-enabling culture. . . . The book goes beyond the earnest zeal, science and history of Fast Food Nation . . . to study the psychology and anthropology of fat as well. Once you’ve taken in the research from Micronesia to Maine and heard from the stomach-stapled, you may think the author’s call for junk-food TV advertising is a good one. . . . It’s also [a] relief to see a book hit the shelves this month that takes the issue far beyond the realm of ‘miracle” diet guides that don’t work.”
—Leslie Yazel, The Austin American-Statesman

“Shell devotes much of her book to science’s quest for the genetic mechanisms governing human appetite, to which she adds informative bulletins from other fields of fat science. . . . She unleashes an all-out assault on consumer culture: as she sees it, an unholy trinity of television, cars, and fast food, all conspiring to ensure that we expend as little energy and consume as much bad food as possible.”
–Joseph Hooper, Elle

“Shell’s specialty is scientists, and her book is largely a story about them. Her characters run the gamut from geneticists to nutritionists studying indigenous people of Micronesia, where a traditional diet of fish and breadfruit has been replaced by, of all things, Spam. The sum of all their tales isn’t particularly heartening for those who may be carrying around a few extra pounds.”
—Stephanie Mencimer, The Washington Monthly

“The Hungry Gene takes us on a fascinating worldwide inquiry into the biological and social roots of the obesity epidemic. Shell is a gifted writer and observer with a fine mastery of her subject, and her book is chock full of wonderful characterizations, rich ironies, and horrifying facts.”
—Daniel Akst, The Wilson Quarterly

“It is remarkable that a book as excellent as The Hungry Gene can be contained in such a slender volume. . . . [Shell] examines the history of obesity and suggests what can be done to control it. . . . As Shell points out, the obesity pandemic didn’t begin the day McDonald’s started selling fries.”
–Brad Evernson, National Post

“She looks at the issues surrounding our collective expansion. . . . Shell’s disturbing look at obesity might just be the diet inspiration you need.”
—Anne Stephenson, The Arizona Republic

“Obesity is quickly surpassing tobacco as the top threat to public health. . . . Shell investigates how western-style commerce and culture have led to the fattening of people around the world and how scientists are isolating genetic, prenatal, and environmental factors that influence a person’s body weight.”
–Science News

“[A] well-written book. . . . [Shell] does an excellent job of showing the reality of the problem of obesity in America and most of the rest of the world. . . . [Shell] writes in a very readable style and explains the technical science in a way anyone can understand.”
—Nola Theiss, Islander

“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, and in The Hungry Gene she combines that ability with incisive science reporting to tell a story that–finally–makes some sense of our struggles with obesity.”
—Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize­winning author of Sex and the Brain

“After reading The Hungry Gene, you will never read another diet article, watch another diet pill commercial, or listen to another lecture from your doctor without rolling your eyes. It’s a superb and groundbreaking work of sci-ence journalism that takes us on an entertaining–and sometimes frightening–journey through the world of fat, highlighted by Ellen Ruppel Shell’s enthralling writing.”
—Dick Teresi, author of The God Particle

“Shell gives everyone, thin and heavy alike, reason to hope that obesity won’t become the cancer of the 21st century.”
—Charles Mann, author of Noah’s Choice

“[A] penetrating look at how and why an increasing number of people in developed nations are obese and what can be done about it. . . . Readers interested in health and science will enjoy this fascinating book.”
—Vanessa Bush, Booklist

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Excerpt

One: A Weariness of Eating

If you examine a man who suffers from his stomach. All his limbs are heavy. You find his stomach is dragging. It goes and comes under your fingers. Then you shall say concerning him: this is a weariness of eating.  –The Egyptian Book of the Stomach

The first time I set eyes on Nancy Wright, she is flat on her back and cruciate. She is vaguely pretty, her eyes frightened but oddly beguiling. Her thick hair is loose and wavy, auburn with a sly touch of gray at the temples. You can see what some men see in her, and also, perhaps, why two husbands have come and gone. Even as she lies splayed and sedated on a gurney in Operating Room 17 at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, you can sense that Nancy Wright is possessed of an immutable will.

Nancy once told me that she’d started out life large and kept on going. She didn’t mean it as a joke.