Editor: John Cawley
Publisher: Oxford University Press – 894 pages
Book Review by: Paiso Jamakar
The obesity statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are staggering: One of every three children in the United States is overweight or obese.
Obesity among those aged 12-19 quadrupled to 21 percent in 2012 from just five percent in 1980! And for younger kids, aged 6 to 11, it was nearly as worse: 18 percent were obese from just seven percent in 1980.
Is it any surprise that obese kids in the 1980s have became obese adults now? So the health situation of adults today is just as bad if not worse than that of kids, CDC stats show. The percent of adults who are obese today? It is an astonishing 34.9 percent!
Obesity is closely related to the following severe health problems, as you will not be surprised to learn on http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data:
- Cancer
- Heart disease
- Stroke
- Type 2 diabetes
The total medical cost of treating obese people and their related health conditions was about $147 billion in 2008. This is an outdated number by the CDC, but this cost will balloon to $344 billion by 2018, according to a recent United Health Foundation study.
Obesity leads to the onset of many serious diseases, especially two of the biggest killers in the U.S.: heart disease and stroke. The cost of triple bypass surgery and other procedures is prohibitive. Stroke not only kills, but leaves those it spares with long-term and costly physical rehabilitation costs to regain the ability to move limbs.
This book of 47 chapters deals with numerous aspects of this widespread problem. The content, written by 84 contributors, is organized around five Parts, namely:
- Disciplinary Perspectives on Obesity
- Data and Methods
- The Causes and Correlates of Diet, Physical Activity and Obesity
- The Consequences of Obesity
- Social Science Insights into Prevention, Treatment and Policy
It provides summaries of findings as well as insights gained from obesity research in several social sciences, namely: anthropology, economics, government, psychology, public affairs, and sociology. The book documents not only the medical costs of treating the obese but also sheds light on some of the social problems they face such as: bias, depression, discrimination, low self-esteem, and social stigma.
As obesity has skyrocketed, so has literature on it. In 1998 there were only around 20 periodicals that had articles with these words in them: ‘obese,’ ‘obesity’ and overweight. A decade later in 2008, about 1200 articles were found! One reason for this growth is that obesity is a multidisciplinary problem. So you can read about it not only in medical journals but also in a large variety of print media on many aspects of life.
This is one of the most authoritative books on research findings related to obesity. The large number of specialists on the many aspects of this problem and the high quality of their contributions certainly makes this a very valuable resource.
Primary credit of course goes to John Cawley who put it all together to create this outstanding, one-of-a-kind volume that provides a broad perspective and multi-disciplinary approach to this modern-day scourge of obesity.
John Cawley is a Professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management, and the Department of Economics, at Cornell University, where he co-directs the Institute on Health Economics, Health Behaviors and Disparities.
He has served on expert panels and advisory committees regarding obesity for the Institute of Medicine, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other government agencies. John is also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Programs on Health Economics and Health Care and on the editorial boards of the journals Health Economics and Economics & Human Biology.
