Over the past twenty-five years, our quest for thinness has morphed into a relentless obsession with weight and body image. In our culture, "fat" has become a four-letter word. Or, as Lance Armstrong said to the wife of a former teammate, "I called you crazy. I called you a bitch.But I never called you fat." How did we get to this place where the worst insult you can hurl at someone is "fat"? Where women and girls (and increasingly men and boys) will diet, purge, overeat, undereat, and berate themselves and others, all in the name of being thin?As a science journalist, Harriet Brown has explored this collective longing and fixation from an objective perspective as a mother, wife, and woman with "weight issues," she has struggled to understand it on a personal level.Now, in Body of Truth , Brown systematically unpacks what''s been offered as "truth" about weight and health.Starting with the four biggest lies, Brown shows how research has been manipulated how the medical profession is co