The Hundred Year Diet

“Susan Yager has given us a delightful breeze through a century of American dietary prescriptions, from Dr. Kellogg to Michael Pollan. What to do? We still haven’t figured out how to keep our food appetites to reasonable limits.” —Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University and author of What to Eat.

“By dissecting the aesthetic, moral and commercial basis of our obsessions with eating, The Hundred Year Diet illuminates the path to a healthier, and saner, food future.” —Brian Halweil, author of Eat Here and publisher of Edible Manhattan, Edible Brooklyn and Edible East End

“Worries over overeating, as Susan Yager interestingly reminds us in “The Hundred Year Diet,” preoccupied the public long before Americans en masse became so massive…Ms. Yager’s bite-sized chapters are easy and pleasant to digest as she takes us through America’s fat-fighting history, from its now comical-seeming beginnings through the wild pendulum swings of the late 20th century (when carbohydrates and fats alternated as public enemy No. 1) to the promise of the fat-substitute Olestra (with its regrettable intestinal consequences) and today’s gastric bypass surgery for the severely obese.” —Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Wall Street Journal


“A fascinating read.” —Abigail Zuger, M.D., The New York Times

“Far-reaching, well-researched survey of America’s fascination with diets.” —Peggy Brown, Newsday