Planet Obesity: How we're eating ourselves and the planet to death
By (Author) Garry Egger
By (author) Boyd Swinburn
Allen & Unwin
Allen & Unwin
1st July 2010
Australia
General
Non Fiction
Cultural studies: food and society
Sustainability
362.196398
Paperback
144
Width 128mm, Height 198mm
140g
Obesity is an unintended but unavoidable consequence of economic progress. Obesity is not a disease but a signal. It should alert us to bigger structural problems in society. On the one hand, economic growth has over centuries led to a steadily improving standard of living, better levels of health and ever-increasing life spans. On the other hand, this very affluence is the reason that both our bodies and the planet have gone into a downward spiral, manifested by an ever growing epidemic of obesity in humans, and in a world clogged by greenhouse gasses and waste. Our bodies can no longer cope with the excess of over-consumption to which we are encouraged at every turn, and the planet is labouring under the effect of industrialisation and greenhouse gas emissions. A fundamental change in thinking is needed both for how we treat our bodies and for our approach to the planet. Each is the only one we have.
Professors Garry Egger and Boyd Swinburn have been at the forefront of health obesity study for over three decades and have published widely in the area. Garry Egger is the author of the best selling Gutbuster series.