Resources

• Nutritional Information: Wondering how much fat, protein, fiber, or carbohydrates something has?
• Time for Dinner: Great resources for healthy recipes and creating weekly menus.
• Finding Your %: One size does not fit all. Learn how the foods you eat affect your biochemical individuality.
• Feed Your Head: Do you want to know more than the nutritional value of the food you are eating?

Food Politics
by Marion Nestle

Marion Nestle (Nutrition chair at New York University and editor of the 1988 Surgeon General Report) Food Politics shows in absorbingly details how the food industry--through lobbying, advertising, and the co-opting of experts--influences our dietary choices to our detriment.

Central to her argument is the American "paradox of plenty," the recognition that our food abundance (we've enough calories to meet every citizen's needs twice over) leads profit-fixated food producers to do everything possible to broaden their market portion, thus swaying us to eat more when we should do the opposite.

The result is compromised health: epidemic obesity to start, and increased vulnerability to heart and lung disease, cancer, and stroke--reversible if the constantly suppressed "eat less, move more" message that most nutritionists shout could be heard.

Fast Food Nation
by Eric Schlosser

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America's diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways.

Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. Quickly, however, he moves behind the counter with the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations.

Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavor company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns."

Fat Land : How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World
by Greg Critser

In this astonishing expose, journalist Greg Critser looks beyond the sensational headlines to reveal why nearly 60 percent of Americans are now overweight. Critser's sharp-eyed reportage and sharp-tongued analysis make for a disarmingly funny and truly alarming book.

Critser investigates the many factors of American life -- from supersize to Super Mario, from high-fructose corn syrup to the high cost of physical education in schools -- that have converged and conspired to make us some of the fattest people on the planet.

He also explains why pediatricians are treating conditions rarely before noticed in children, why Type 2 diabetes is on the rise, and how agribusiness has unwittingly altered the American diet.

Super Size Me - DVD

What would happen if you ate nothing but fast food for an entire month? Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock does just that and embarks on the most perilous journey of his life. The rules? For 30 days he can't eat or drink anything that isn't on McDonald's menu; he must wolf three squares a day; he must consume everything on the menu at least once and supersize his meal if asked.

Spurlock treks across the country interviewing a host of experts on fast food and an equal number of regular folk while chowing down at the Golden Arches.

Spurlock's grueling drive-through diet spirals him into a physical and emotional metamorphosis that will make you think twice about picking up another Big Mac.

Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America
by Morgan Spurlock

From Publishers Weekly

Fact-packed and funny, this offshoot of Spurlock's Oscar-nominated documentary Super Size Me serves both as a substitute for and addition to the movie. Spurlock spent a month not exercising and eating nothing but food from McDonald's, filming his declining health and ballooning size. It was a terrific premise for a movie; the book provides even more of its backstory and outtakes.

Spurlock describes America's obesity epidemic, its relation to the fast food industry, the industry's cozy relations to U.S. government agencies and how the problem is spreading worldwide. He details the long-term and often fatal (albeit well-known) health hazards of the high-fat, high-sugar, factory-farmed fast food diet combined with the sedentary lifestyle prevalent among Americans.

The statistics, while grim, aren't as compelling as Spurlock's often humorous descriptions of his own gradual disintegration into exhaustion, mood swings, liver deterioration and high blood pressure as his month progresses. Spurlock's wisecracks make the statistic-laden information easily digestible and possibly useful as a classroom text.

He includes inspiring examples of schools that provide healthy, local (even student-grown) food in their cafeterias, and offers lists of resources for parents and educators wanting to make changes in their own communities. Spurlock is surprisingly optimistic about the future, and his book is a powerful tool in his rip-roaring campaign to turn around America's love-hate relationship with fast food. Agent, Elyse Cheney Literary. (May 19)