Briefly Noted: Downsize Me

"I don't like what you're proving here," Tom Naughton's doctor tells him toward the end of Fat Head, his sharp, funny rejoinder to Morgan Spurlock's 2004 fast food exposé Super Size Me. Naughton has just spent a month eating nothing but fast food, mostly at McDonald's, and emerged 12 pounds slimmer, with his cholesterol counts essentially unchanged.

Spurlock's month-long McDonald's diet, by contrast, left him with 25 extra pounds and alarming blood test results. Naughton did not skimp on the sausages, cheeseburgers, or fried chicken, but he eschewed sugary beverages, consumed about 2,000 calories a day (compared to Spurlock's 5,000), and started walking for exercise six days a week instead of three.

Naughton refutes the thesis that fast food per se, rather than people's choices, is responsible for the "obesity epidemic." He interviews several critics of the government-led War on Fat (including me) and highlights the weaknesses in the theory that saturated fat and cholesterol contribute to heart disease.