The Hundred Year Diet

I was hoping for a fun romp through the crazy fad diets of the last several hundred years. This exists for the first couple of chapters, but it really quite short on each diet. Nevertheless, this part is pretty interesting and a good discussion of dieting culture: “most Americans truly had no clue how to eat anymore”

And then, a rant about obesity in America, with no reference to the fact that it could be related to that one, extremely insightful quote. Or to the fact that yoyo dieting leaves most people heavier than they started, which Yager even discusses, but does not in anyway connect to her hundred page rant about obesity. (By the way, in case you're living on the moon, obesity is a problem in America, and this is somehow thought to be novel enough to be worth several chapters.)

And then I got even more frustrated as the last three chapters where Yager is completely credulous about organic food and says crazy stuff like organic food is inherently healthier, eating organic will make Americans more conscious about their food choices and that modern Americans don't diet anymore and that the obesity problem is going to be solved as Americans choose to eat organic. Seriously, talk about living on the moon, or at least in her non-food desert, upper middle class, Whole Foods-going bubble.

And then she hit a nerve when she tied in the hemolytic uremic syndrome outbreak of 2009 into “Americans not being aware enough of food” and being too willing to buy “cheap food.” I personally took care of several patients during the outbreak and to blame their illness on their (smart, caring, insightful and upper-middle class) parents who apparently are at fault for buying hamburger meat really rankled.