This is a refreshing departure from the usual book on obesity: nothing is said about lipoprotein aberrations (which in reality have nothing to do with obesity), and the metabolic or hypothalamic causes of obesity (which are rare) receive scant attention. Freed of the encumbrances of these two all too frequently included topics, this book proceeds in a series of chapters to present a more rational and perceptive view of this relatively common human malady than do most books on this topic.
A lot of attention is currently being paid to undernutrition, but surveys have repeatedly shown that overweight children outnumber underweight children in this country. Why is obesity so common in our culture? Sclafini's chapter gives a partial answer to this question. When rats are given "supermarket foods" (cookies, condensed sweetened milk, milk chocolate, bananas, peanut butter, salami, cheese, marshmallows) in addition to standard chow they put on weight, and