Description
Book SynopsisA 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 publicand medicalconsciousness only a decade later? Based on archival records of health leaders as well as medical and popular literature, Fat in
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Chapter 1. Fat and the Public's Health before the Second World War
Chapter 2. Obesity Becomes a Mental Disorder
Chapter 3. The Postwar Heart Alarm
Chapter 4. Fighting Heart Disease One Calorie at a Time in Cold War Suburbia
Chapter 5. The New Epidemiology and Its Impact
Chapter 6. The Disappearance of Obesity as a Public Health Problem
Notes
Index
