The Skinny on Fat: A Look at Low-Fat Culture

Jane Heath teaches psychology at Ryerson University in Toronto.

The Skinny on Fat explores Western society’s complex and ambivalent
attitude toward food. In the book’s eight chapters, the author
attempts to describe, analyze, and suggest remedies for obesity and
eating disorders, diets for avoiding cancer and heart disease, low-fat
and low-carbohydrate regimens, pharmaceutical approaches to weight loss,
and the components of a healthy diet. Such information presented in a
clear, accessible, and research-based manner could certainly be an
addition to the voluminous literature on these topics. This book,
however, contains such a mass of information that it is hard to sort out
fact from opinion, nor is it well-documented enough to allow the reader
to make any judgment. One particularly disturbing error involves the
author’s misinterpretation of the concept of statistical significance,
which is not only misleading to the reader, but also calls into question
the author’s assessment of the research on which, one assumes, the
book is based.

Overall, this book leaves a disappointing impression. The overwhelming
amount of detailed information is presented rather disjointedly and is
sometimes not clear. Moreover, the reader is left with the uneasy
feeling that the issues have been so oversimplified that at times the
text may be inaccurate and misleading.