Fat Chance

Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease

By: Robert H. Lustig

Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross

Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's 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.

©2012 Robert H. Lustig (P)2012 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"No scientist has done more in the last 50 years to alert Americans to the potential dangers of sugar in the diet than Dr. Robert Lustig.” (Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat)

“Our eating habits are killing us. In this timely and important book, Dr. Robert Lustig presents the scientific evidence for the toxicity of sugar and the disastrous effects of modern industrial food on the hormones that control hunger, satiety, and weight. He gives recommendations for a personal solution to the problem we face and also suggests a public policy solution. Fat Chance is the best book I've read on the relationship between diet and health and the clearest explanation of epidemic obesity in our society.”–Andrew Weil, MD, author of Spontaneous Happiness and You Can’t Afford to Get Sick)

“Fat Chance is THE manifesto for our time. It reveals the real reasons we why we are a fat nation and how to cure the obesity epidemic. It gets right to the root of the problem, which is not gluttony and sloth, as the food industry, government and your neighbor would have you believe. It is because we are drowning in a sea of sugar which poisons our metabolism, shrinks our brains, and threatens our national security and global competitiveness. Every American, politician, teacher, and business leader must read this book. Our nation's future depends on it.” (Mark Hyman, MD, author of The Blood Sugar Solution)

Wish I knew this information when I was young!

Such life-changing and valuable information. I’m ready to listen to it again. Wish our education system would address these topics with our students.

Fascinating Information, helped me lose 10 pounds.

Excelent book!!!

Provides a better understand of food and sugar's impact on the body. Anyone having difficulty losing weight, or having health issues should read this book.

Most important issue of our generation!!!

Very Informative

Great detail about this problem and ways that many people can find some understanding about this problem.

Informative and Excellent

The information presented in this book was concise and laid out well. The information was not altogether new but presented in such a way that the reader will not help but look at their own diet and sugar intake in quite the same way. The book has a lot of focus on children, which is good, but also has a great deal of good information for adults as well.

Very informative. Change the way you eat now!

What did you love best about Fat Chance?

Excellent insight to what is one of the causes to the obesity epidemic across the world.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Fat Chance?

A calorie is not just a calorie

What does Jonathan Todd Ross bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Well delivered comiedic relief that was written by the author

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

A calorie is not just a calorie

Any additional comments?

Listen to this book

Still Relevant

Great listen. Would have been a great read! I chose to listen and take long walks. Loved it.

This book saved my life!

The title of this review says it all! The truth of food is in these pages listen to the book once, then listen to the book again, then listen to it with someone you care about.

interesting and real read

a bit long on the biology side, but a very good read, a change in the way we look at processed food, suger and affects it has on our lives

Informative

The author dives into the complexities of digestive processing but manages to still convey the information well enough for a layperson to understand.

Great piece of work

I feel this work is spot-on.

The revelation about sugar was highly useful. The food system is a great big ball of mess.