A wonderful and informative account of what fats are for, 16 Jul 2008
This is one of my favourite popular science books, because it has a little bit more "oomph!" to its factual content than many others. It covers not just what fats are, but what they are for, partly based on the author's own studies of wild animals who are naturally obese as part of their life cycle (such as many Arctic animals). Along the way you'll learn all sorts of fascinating snippets like why polar bears don't get heart disease despite their all-blubber diet, why ravens peck out the eyes of dead animals, and how different types of dietary fat can affect auto-immune diseases. Caroline Pond is also most certainly NOT a fan of the Aquatic Ape theory of human evolution, and spends a chapter detailing the role of fat in our evolution, and where the Aquatic Ape supporters have got it wrong.
A rare example in scientific writing for the amateur, 30 Jul 2004
This book is a joy for me. I have read it cover to cover, despite not being a fat fanatic, because its style held my gaze long after my own initial interest in the subject would have waned. It is rare to find a book that is both well referenced and accessible to the educated layperson. Often books on such subjects are prone to either being entirely aimed at the specialist with full technical detail that would leave the rest of us nonplussed; or so woolly and unsubstantiated that they descend into the realm of wishy-washy generalisations.
The Fats of Life makes neither error - the style is fresh and entertaining, covering diverse areas of the natural sciences, but it also gives the reader full visibility of the original research papers and scientific development that lead to the author's conclusions. I would admit that there are areas where I did not share the author's passion for the nuts and bolts of organic chemistry, but I can see that these sections provide a solid basis for other parts of the book.
Very educational - often funny and a great starting point if you wish to delve further into this fascinating domain of modern research.
A fascinating account of the importance of fat., 01 Nov 1999
Fat generally has a very bad press because many of us in the developed world simply have too much of it. Excess body fat has been linked to many serious clinical problems, such as heart disease and diabetes. But why do we have fat? This book tells the story of fat in the 'real world': what its functions are in plants and animals, and why we can so easily accumulate large amounts of it on our hips. There is plenty of material to interest the person wanting to know about fat for health reasons, but this book is much more than a manual on diets. It is full of facts and fascinating anecdotes from the author's long experience of research into fat in wild and domestic animals, and is written at a level accessible to the interested amateur. It can certainly be read from cover to cover by the fat fanatic, but is probably best dipped into by the casual reader. It's all you ever wanted to know about the roles of fat!
