Food for thought in an expanding nation

Before you super-size that burger and fries, purchase a case of discounted soda at Costco or fill the kids’ lunches with prepackaged snacks, read this: Americans have become the fattest people on the planet.

About 20% of us are so overweight that our lives will likely be cut short by excess fat, writes Pasadena journalist Greg Critser in his informative and readable book, “Fat Land.” Critser cites experts in the fields of obesity, epidemiology, nutrition and public health as he looks into the reasons behind this fattening of America: If current eating and exercising patterns are left unchecked, almost all Americans will be overweight by 2050, according to one expert he consults. According to this same expert, a physiologist Critser calls “the dean of obesity studies,” becoming obese is now the “normal response to the American environment.”

How is it that we Americans, perhaps the most health-conscious people in the history of the world, have come to preside over the deadly fattening of ourselves and of our youth? Much has changed in our eating and exercising patterns in just the last 30 years, Critser explains, and he examines the variations in enlightening detail.

The main modification has been that, since the 1970s, the retail cost of food in general has decreased, as a result of Nixon administration agricultural policies, according to Critser. Thus even poorer Americans can afford greater quantities of food.

The 1971 development by Japanese food scientists of a sweetener substantially less expensive than sugar -- high-fructose corn syrup -- is one crucial reason for this price decrease. Today, the sweetener is found in most soft drinks, bakery goods and in foods requiring long shelf life, such as vending-machine fare and frozen foods.

When this sweetener was approved, its behavior in the human body -- called “metabolic shunting,” in which the sweetener bypasses the regular breakdown process in digestion to arrive almost completely intact in the liver -- was not fully explored. We know now, Critser explains, that high “fructose consumption ... may have led to increased rates of obesity, not merely through increased calories, but through a variety of complex chemical reactions it stimulates in the human body.” It seems the body uses high-fructose corn syrup as a building block of triglycerides, bombarding the bloodstream with fatty acids. In other words, the overuse of fructose is “skewing the national metabolism toward fat storage.”

Critser also explores the use of tropical oils, especially palm oil, which became prevalent in the 1970s because of their lower cost and relaxed trade restrictions. (Palm oil is a more highly saturated fat than hog lard.) He also bemoans the advent of ever-enlarging portions at fast-food outlets. Likewise, he shows us what we already know: As a nation, we spend more time in front of the TV or gaming system (rather than exercising) than ever before.

Beyond detailing these facts, Critser makes a compelling case for two under-explored elements of this national health crisis. One, that fat is a class issue. “In late-20th-century America, it was the poor, the underserved, and the underrepresented who were most at risk from excess fat.” This is the result, in part, of the availability of inexpensive yet nutritionally poor and high-fat food choices, coupled with the lack of safe spaces for physical activity. Mothers in economically strapped regions don’t let their children out to play, believing their neighborhoods unsafe, he explains, and public schools require less physical activity than ever. “Poverty. Class. Income. Over and over, these emerged as the key determinants of obesity and weight-related disease.”

The other significant factor, Critser suggests, is the increasing permissiveness of American society. Gluttony used to be considered one of the seven deadly sins, but the stigma associated with overeating has all but disappeared in favor of the virtue found in getting more bang for your food dollar. “(B)y millennium’s end,” he tells us, “most Americans were not fit. They were exercising less, eating more -- and thanks to the permissive culture ... not feeling very bad about it, thank you very much.”

This laissez-faire attitude is rapidly running up the healthcare tab shared by all Americans, including treatment for the exploding rate of Type 2 diabetes. (Once known as adult-onset diabetes, the disease is occurring now at a frightening pace among children.)

Yet most Americans, Critser reports, remain in deep denial about the seriousness of the problem. According to one sociologist, “We are in a stage with obesity like we were with smoking in the 1950s and 1960s.”

Critser also rails against the Atkins and other popular diets, but, to his credit, he does not just detail the issue and make everyone feel bad about it; he gives options for change, profiling school districts and organizations that are beginning to refuse lucrative contracts from soft drink companies and telling how his own awakening to his expanding waistline changed his life. Just perusing the book, and seeing the problem presented in such an articulate and lucid manner, can’t help but make more informed food consumers out of readers.

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Fat Land

How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World

Greg Critser

Houghton Mifflin: 232 pp., $24