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Also by Gina Kolata:

Rethinking Thin, May 2007
Hardcover
Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic, January 2001
Trade Size (reprint)

Rethinking Thin
Gina Kolata

The New Science of Weight Loss--and the Myths and Realities of Dieting

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
May 2007
On Sale: May 1, 2007
272 pages
ISBN: 0374103984
EAN: 9780374103989
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction

In this eye-opening book, New York Times science writer Gina Kolata shows that our society’s obsession with dieting and weight loss is less about keeping trim and staying healthy than about money, power, trends, and impossible ideals. Rethinking Thin is at once an account of the place of diets in American society and a provocative critique of the weight-loss industry. Kolata’s account of four determined dieters’ progress through a study comparing the Atkins diet to a conventional lowcalorie one becomes a broad tale of science and society, of social mores and social sanctions, and of politics and power.

Rethinking Thin asks whether words like willpower are really applicable when it comes to eating and body weight. It dramatizes what it feels like to spend a lifetime struggling with one’s weight and fantasizing about finally, at long last, getting thin. It tells the little-known story of the science of obesity and the history of diets and dieting—scientific and social phenomena that made some people rich and thin and left others fat and miserable. And it offers commonsense answers to questions about weight, eating habits, and obesity—giving us a better understanding of the weight that is right for our bodies.

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