Nicolas Rasmussen, Fat in the Fifties: America’s First Obesity Crisis

Abstract

Nicolas Rasmussen, in Fat in the Fifties: America’s First Obesity Crisis, crafts a compelling narrative exploring a forgotten moment in USA history—the increased medical and public concern with body weight in the 1950s. Rasmussen suggests that while scholars have usefully investigated the more recent 1990s ‘obesity epidemic’, his book focuses on the 1950s fatness panic and walks readers through the social, political and cultural forces that led to the crisis. This book is well-written, impressively detailed in its historical source material, and logically organised such that each piece of the unfolding story—from the 1930s to the 1970s—is visible along the way. In Chapter One, the author explains that the field of public health grew during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, tackling issues involving sanitation, sewage, housing and bacteria in the water supply. Due to these successes, infectious diseases like tuberculosis and pneumonia that had been the leading cause of...