A riveting history of the rise and fall of the obesity epidemic during
1950s and 1960s America.
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company identified obesity as the leading
cause of premature death in the United States in the 1930s, but it
wasn't until 1951 that the public health and medical communities finally
recognized it as "America's Number One Health Problem." The reason for
MetLife's interest? They wanted their policyholders to live longer and
continue paying their premiums. Early postwar America responded to the
obesity emergency, but by the end of the 1960s, the crisis waned and
official rates of true obesity were reduced-- despite the fact that
Americans were growing no thinner. What mid-century factors and forces
established obesity as a politically meaningful and culturally resonant
problem in the first place? And why did obesity fade from public--and
medical--consciousness only a decade later?
Based on archival records of health leaders as well as medical and
popular literature, Fat in the Fifties is the first book to
reconstruct the prewar origins, emergence, and surprising disappearance
of obesity as a major public health problem. Author Nicolas Rasmussen
explores the postwar shifts that drew attention to obesity, as well as
the varied approaches to its treatment: from thyroid hormones to
psychoanalysis and weight loss groups. Rasmussen argues that the US
government was driven by the new Cold War and the fear of atomic
annihilation to heightened anxieties about national fitness. Informed by
the latest psychiatric thinking--which diagnosed obesity as the result
of oral fixation, just like alcoholism--health professionals promoted a
form of weight loss group therapy modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous. The
intervention caught on like wildfire in 1950s suburbia. But the sense of
crisis passed quickly, partly due to cultural changes associated with
the later 1960s and partly due to scientific research, some of it
sponsored by the sugar industry, emphasizing particular dietary fats,
rather than calorie intake.
Through this riveting history of the rise and fall of the obesity
epidemic, readers gain an understanding of how the American public
health system--ambitious, strong, and second-to-none at the end of the
Second World War--was constrained a decade later to focus mainly on
nagging individuals to change their lifestyle choices. Fat in the
Fifties is required reading for public health practitioners and
researchers, physicians, historians of medicine, and anyone concerned
about weight and weight loss.
