Two billion people alive today are overweight or living with obesity. There is no sign that the obesity epidemic is slowing down or that medical science has an understanding of the problem. This book explains some brutal truths about the condition.Da... Read more

Two billion people alive today are overweight or living with obesity. There is no sign that the obesity epidemic is slowing down or that medical science has an understanding of the problem. This book explains some brutal truths about the condition.David F Marks, PhD, proposes a powerful new explanation of the obesity epidemic. The theory focuses on a universal feature of living beings, homeostasis, and the potential for its disruption, dyshomeostasis.Obesity is an unavoidable human response to contemporary conditions of living. 'Blaming and shaming' individual sufferers is oppressive and is a major part of the problem. Only by reversing this form of prejudice, and current living conditions that bring chronically stressful to hundreds of millions of people will the obesity epidemic have any solution.This book is not for the faint-hearted. It cuts through the 'shock-horror' narrative of obesity with brutal truths about the serious and intransigent nature of obesity. Once the causes of obesity are fully understood, the obesity epidemic can be stopped. This book takes a step towards that goal.David Marks presents a fresh, clear-eyed analysis of the complex causes of this epidemic: social, economic and psychological. He discusses the role of neoliberal capitalism in the promotion of poor, calorie rich food and animal products. The psychologist's discussion of a person's 'circle of discontent' which undermines homeostasis and then 'feeds' the spiral of unhealthy eating is fascinating and rings true. And he provides a refreshing solution including the adoption of veganism. The book is lucid and courageous and is the best analysis of a harrowing problem in the world, and a call to action, which I have read. (Ewan McDougall) Less