Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics

✍ Scribed by Marion Nestle; Malden Nesheim

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 299
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Calories—too few or too many—are the source of health problems affecting billions of people in today’s globalized world. Although calories are essential to human health and survival, they cannot be seen, smelled, or tasted. They are also hard to understand. In Why Calories Count, Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim explain in clear and accessible language what calories are and how they work, both biologically and politically. As they take readers through the issues that are fundamental to our understanding of diet and food, weight gain, loss, and obesity, Nestle and Nesheim sort through a great deal of the misinformation put forth by food manufacturers and diet program promoters. They elucidate the political stakes and show how federal and corporate policies have come together to create an "eat more" environment. Finally, having armed readers with the necessary information to interpret food labels, evaluate diet claims, and understand evidence as presented in popular media, the authors offer some candid advice: Get organized. Eat less. Eat better. Move more. Get political.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Introduction
Part One. Understanding Calories: It All Starts with the Science
Part Two. Why You Need Calories: Survival, Warmth, and Work
Part Three. Calorie Intake and Its Regulation
Part Four. Too Few Calories
Part Five. Too Many Calories
Part Six. The Politics of Calories: A Closer Look
Conclusion: How to Cope with the Calorie Environment
Appendix One. Selected Events in the History of Calories, 1614 – 1919
Appendix Two. The Respiratory Quotient (RQ)
Appendix Three. Frequently Asked Questions
Notes
List of Tables
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Index