A compelling argument to question food industry–sponsored studies and focus on eating whole foods.
Fast highlights how world obesity is rising due to ultra-processed food consumption and industry strategies fueling this unhealthy eating in this nonfiction work.
The author, an entrepreneur and wellness coach, was in his mid-50s when, “for the first time in my life, I began to understand the challenges of weight loss” and “like the ardent researcher I am, I began investigating weight loss and obesity.” This book, organized in four parts, recaps his key findings. Part 1 sets up “The Problem,” with Fast providing World Health Organization data delineating “a rising obesity pandemic that spans the globe,” one that did not even exist until the mid-1970s. Part 2 identifies “The Culprit,” the creation of convenience food in the modern diet, “ultra-processed, nutrient-void garbage…so tasty we can’t stop eating it,” with the author describing how “Big Food” companies care only about profits, not health, and deploy a “playbook” (like the tobacco industry has) to fund favorable studies and push products globally. In Part 3, “The Cause,” Fast discusses legitimate studies that connect the consumption of ultra-processed food to weight gain; in Part 4, “The Cure,” he emphasizes that eating “real” or whole foods (along with regular movement/exercise) will aid weight loss/maintenance. “We urgently need to wake up from our ‘food’ induced trance,” writes Fast, serving up an effective wake-up call with this well-researched appeal. While Big Food’s dastardly tactics have, of course, been well covered elsewhere, the author offers an engaging, eye-opening tour through suspicious or misleading propaganda and scientifically valid findings. Best of all, his book provides support and vision regarding the “surprisingly simple way” that Fast himself lost 30 pounds and regained vitality and health: “So as long as I ate real food—eradicating malnutrition at the cellular level—I began to shed the excess fat and I never once felt hungry.”
A compelling argument to question food industry–sponsored studies and focus on eating whole foods.Pub Date: July 4, 2023
ISBN: 9780987919397
Page Count: 127
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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