November's Book

Fat Chance
Beating the Odds Against
Sugar, Processed Food,
Obesity, and Disease
by Robert H. Lustig MD

Nov. 21 (3rd Thurs)
8pm at Lieschen's

Note from Lieschen:
My book also has a radio interview on NPR if you want to move mine to Nov and people won't have time to read it.  

Click here to go to the NPR radio interview

Summary:
Robert Lustig’s 90-minute YouTube video “Sugar: The Bitter Truth”, has been viewed more than two million times. Now, in this much anticipated book, he documents the science and the politics that has led to the pandemic of chronic disease over the last 30 years.

In the late 1970s when the government mandated we get the fat out of our food, the food industry responded by pouring more sugar in. The result has been a perfect storm, disastrously altering our biochemistry and driving our eating habits out of our control.

To help us lose weight and recover our health, Lustig presents personal strategies to readjust the key hormones that regulate hunger, reward, and stress; and societal strategies to improve the health of the next generation. Compelling, controversial, and completely based in science, Fat Chance debunks the widely held notion to prove “a calorie is NOT a calorie”, and takes that science to its logical conclusion to improve health worldwide. 

Summary from www.goodreads.com

 Click here to visit the library website and reserve your copy.

Robert Lustig’s 90-minute YouTube video “Sugar: The Bitter Truth”

October's Selection

The Weight of the Nation

HBO Documentary
Produced by Sheila Nevins & John Hoffman

Oct. 18th (3rd Thurs.)
8pm at Lieschen's home

We are trying something different this month.  Instead of reading a book, we will view a documentary and discuss it. Please plan on viewing the documentary prior to attending book club. 

A message from Lieschen:

A few months ago HBO did a special called "The Weight of the Nation", which comments on the current state of the obesity epidemic. The series contains 4 one-hour segments, available for free streaming on HBO's website. 

If watching the whole series is too much of a time commitment, Part 1 "Consequences" and Part 3 "Children in Crisis" are the two that deal most with childhood obesity, though I do recommend the entire series. I have a list of discussion questions.

I would only mean for this to be informative and positive. I don't mean to focus on our own weight, politics or anything like that. I was hoping for a discussion of how we can help our children be healthy into young adulthood and beyond.

 Here's a look at the trailer...

Click here to go to the HBO website
and begin watching today

August's Book

The Omnivore's Dilemma:
a natural hisory of four meals
by Michael Pollan


Aug. 12th
8pm at Emily's

The library has *tons* of copies, but you'll want to reserve a copy because it's a popular book with most of the copies out right now. Here's the summary from the library:

Summary:
What should we have for dinner? When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods might shorten your life. Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from a national eating disorder. As the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous landscape, what's at stake becomes not only our own and our children's health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth. Pollan follows each of the food chains--industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves--from the source to the final meal, always emphasizing our coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. The surprising answers Pollan offers have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us.--From publisher description.