After the holiday feasting comes the remorse of conscience as you assess the damage from pigging out on rich foods. For most people the body is the first target of new year resolutions. Dieting in January has become a hardy perennial for December鈥檚 gluttons, and an increasing obsession all year round for many more. But as Ellen Ruppel Shell reveals in Fat Wars (Atlantic Books, 拢8.99), all this effort may come too late.
When it was published in hardback as The Hungry Gene: The science of fat and the future of thin, reviewer Roy Herbert found it an enthralling and convincing book (8 February 2003, p 53), as Ruppell Shell made it clear that 鈥渙besity, which threatens to become a major scourge on humanity in the near future, is not a mere matter of diet, but a combination of genetics and social forces that make us eat more鈥�.