Sarah Boseley. 2014. The Shape We're In; How Junk Food and Diets Are Shortening Our Lives. London: Guardian Books. $11.99. pp. 320. Paperback. ISBN‐10: 1783350385.

• Author: Bonnie Stabile
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.149
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• Date: 01 September 2015

Book Review

Sarah Boseley. 2014. The Shape We’re In; How Junk Food and Diets Are Shortening Our

Lives. London: Guardian Books. $11.99. pp. 320. Paperback. ISBN-10: 1783350385.

Just like the food products and packaging it decries, The Shape We’re In; How

Junk Food and Diets Are Shortening Our Lives has an eye-catching cover featuring

iced donuts with colorful sprinkles. But the message Sarah Boseley, health editor

of the Guardian, is selling will be harder for the public and policymakers to

swallow. “Laissez-faire has had its day,” Boseley argues. National and global

actors must face the obesity crisis head on. This means acknowledging its causes

and imposing solutions to combat its attendant spread of chronic disease,

diminished quality of life, and strained health-care budgets. The book is a call to

action in the face of powerful opposition, primarily by those who prof‌it from

aggressive marketing and expanding sales of food products that collectively

contribute to undermining public health on global scale.

The Shape We’re In joins a robust literature sounding a similarly urgent call.

Notable in this genre are Marion Nestle’s Food Politics: How the Food Industry

Inf‌luences Nutrition and Health, and Robert Lustig’s Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth

About Sugar, both of which are referenced by Boseley. Nestle’s book, foundational

to understanding current food system outcomes and activism, is exhaustive and

extensively referenced. (Nestle is Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public

Health, at New York University.) Lustig, a medical doctor specializing in

pediatric endocrinology, considers both the toxicity of the food system and its

physiological impacts. Boseley, by contrast, brings a journalist’s accessible voice

to this public health examination and advocacy, weaving personal stories

throughout the text that make all the facts more easily digestible.

The f‌irst chapter of The Shape We’re In grabs the reader with a compelling, if

somewhat sensational, story of a Welsh teen who was so obese that rescue

workers summoned to her home in May 2012 had to demolish an exterior wall to

extricate her. She had become so large that she could no longer f‌it into any of her

clothes or stand, and her organs were failing. The intent of relating this tale,

Boseley tells us, is to underscore that this attention-getting story actually does not

typify the problem of obesity. In fact, it might desensitize us, as we deduce that

World Medical & Health Policy, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2015

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