The Hungry Gene The Inside Story of the Obesity Industry

Acclaimed science journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell reveals 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, through the early days of medicine, and into modernity. She takes readers to the front lines of the struggle -- from a children's food marketing convention, to the cutthroat race to find the obese gene, to a far-flung tropical island where a horrifying outbreak of obesity has helped unravel the disorder's genetic and evolutionary roots. Offering an unflinching insider's look into the radical and controversial surgical and pharmacological approaches used to combat what drug makers have dubbed the trillion-dollar disease, Shell takes aim at the collusion of industry and government that lies behind the crisis and shows conclusively that obesity is not a matter of gluttony or weak will, but of an increasingly obesegenic culture preying on vulnerable human biology. Gripping and provocative, The Hungry Gene is the unsettling saga of how the world got fat -- and what we can do about it. Book jacket.

An award-winning correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, Ellen Ruppel Shell writes for the Los Angeles Times, O magazine, Discover, The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, and other publications. She teaches science journalism and codirects the Knight Center for Science and Medical Journalism at Boston University