Gain weight now, ask me how!

Don't Eat This Book By Morgan Spurlock Penguin Group US$29.95

Young U.S. moviemaker Morgan Spurlock got an Oscar nomination for his work in Super Size Me, a film in which he criticizes the disastrous health consequences that stem from the growing love of fast food in his home country.

Spurlock illustrates how fast-food chains and their fat-soaked menus have stretched across the world like an expanding empire. To prove that it is not possible for human beings to survive on fast food, and to show that the habit can be fatal, Spurlock unleashes what he dubs "McExperiment." In effect, he becomes his own guinea pig by eating exclusively at McDonald's while avoiding all exercise for a month. As the camera roils, Spurlock's health deteriorates daily. At the end of the experiment, he has gained more than 11 kilograms in just four weeks. His blood pressure shoots sky high, his sex drive all but disappears, liver problems appear and his moods become erratic.

The documentary, which was very successful worldwide, is now available in print: Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America. In it, Spurlock describes in greater detail his life with hamburgers and fries, with an extra helping of stats on the side. Ripe with industry facts and figures, the book is a fun read. It complements the movie with a smorgasbord of unsettling statistics and interviews, along with a smattering of humor and wit, a dish Spurlock serves up well. The author describes the epidemic of obesity in the United States and his own intimate affair with the multibillion-dollar fast-food industry, their cozy relations with government, and how healthy eating has come under attack from culture to culture across the world.

To research the book, Spurlock traveled through 20 U.S. cities, visiting schools, hospitals and the homes of everyday U.S. citizens. He interviewed former health secretaries, lawmakers, marketing specialists, mothers and their children as well as the fast-food addicts themselves. School menus come under the microscope, as do school physical-education programs, which sadly appear to be dwindling. A large number of U.S. high schools, for example, no longer require physical education classes, leaving many of their charges living sedentary lifestyles marked by poor health and low self-esteem.

Out of the classroom and back in corporate America, Spurlock investigates how fast-food companies run their huge marketing machines, as well as exactly how and with what cheap but tasty ingredients the companies have seduced the public to their counters since the fast-food business took off with the end of World War II.

Gorging. In the end, Spurlock's portrait is of a sedentary, consumer-driven society, one that is fascinated with its sports heroes while glued to the couch gorging on snacks of little or no nutritional value. Statistics have long shown the frightening correlation between fast-food consumption and widening waistlines. But Spurlock spares us from digesting raw numbers by describing--through his own wonderful prose as well as through the opinions and recommendations of experts--how to avoid becoming a victim of weight-related diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

Perhaps it's obvious to attack the dangers of high-fat and high-carbohydrate diets, something nearly everybody already knows about, but Spurlock does offer a new and unique warning about the dangers of the fast-food lifestyle. And he ends predicting the decline of the junk-food industry.