A review by dcd220
What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety by Cole Kazdin

3.0

This book brings to light the dismal state of eating disorder treatment and recovery. It does an excellent job of interweaving the author's personal ED story and professional or research in the area. However, I was disappointed that some key points about why BMI is trash and more influential factors on health weren't addressed. Regarding BMI, the mathematician who created the calculation intended for it to be used to study populations and explicitly stated that it should not be used on individuals. Clearly the medical community missed that point. He also only used white, European men to create the index. Additionally, in 1998 under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, the cutoff for the "overweight" category was lowered. Overnight around 29 million Americans suddenly were "overweight." It would have been nice to mention social determinants of health as bigger contributors to health disparities, since so much was put into breaking down the myth that weight plays such a large role.