Losing It: False Hopes and Fat Profits in the Diet Industry

This probing social and cultural history of our preoccupation with weight blows the whistle on a multi-billion dollar industry that feeds on insecurityTaking the same revolutionary and ultimately inspiring approach as The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, Losing It examines and explodes our culture's obsession with slenderness and the huge establishment that exploits our fears of being fat.A reformed dieter and an ex-bulimic, Laura Fraser traces our fixation with thinness to the images that began appearing a hundred years ago in magazines like Ladies Home Journal and Cosmopolitan. Fraser chronicles the corresponding growth of a $50 billion a year industry that provides false hope in exchange for cash.In this meticulously researched journey through Dietland, Fraser gives the inside scoop on: -- Diet drugs, including the controversial phen/fen-- Diet gurus Richard Simmons, Susan Powter, and Dean Ornish-- Commercial weight loss centers, including Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers-- Weight-loss products like thigh creams and diet cookiesProvocative, political, and personal, this revealing book is a remarkable work of investigative journalism and an enthralling, compelling story with almost universal relevance.