Description Metropolitan Life Insurance Company identified Obesity as the leading cause of premature death in the United States in the 1930s, but it wasn\'t until 1951 that the public health and medical communities finally recognized it as "America\'s Number One Health Problem." The reason for Met Life\'s interest? They wanted their policyholders to live longer and continue paying their premiums.
Through this riveting history of the rise.
But the sense of Crisis passed quickly, partly due to cultural changes associated with the later 1960s and partly due to scientific research, some of it sponsored by the sugar industry, emphasizing particular dietary fats, rather than calorie intake.
The intervention caught on like wildfire in 1950s suburbia.
Informed by the latest psychiatric thinking--which diagnosed Obesity as the result of oral fixation, just like alcoholism--health professionals promoted a form of weight loss group therapy modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous.
Rasmussen argues that the US government was driven by the new Cold War and the fear of atomic annihilation to heightened anxieties about national fitness.
Author Nicolas Rasmussen explores the postwar shifts that drew attention to obesity, as well as the varied approaches to its treatment: from thyroid hormones to psychoanalysis and weight loss groups.
What mid-century factors and forces established Obesity as a politically meaningful and culturally resonant problem in the First place? And why did Obesity fade from public--and medical--consciousness only a decade later? Based on archival records of health leaders as well as medical and popular literature, Fat in the Fifties is the First book to reconstruct the prewar origins, emergence, and surprising disappearance of Obesity as a major public health problem.
Early postwar America responded to the Obesity emergency, but by the end of the 1960s, the Crisis waned and official rates of true Obesity were reduced-- despite the fact that Americans were growing no thinner.
Description Metropolitan Life Insurance Company identified Obesity as the leading cause of premature death in the United States in the 1930s, but it wasn\'t until 1951 that the public health and medical communities finally recognized it as "America\'s Number One Health Problem." The reason for Met Life\'s interest? They wanted their policyholders to live longer and continue paying their premiums
