BlogHer Book Club Review: Why Women Need Fat

I wanted to love "Why Women Need Fat" by William D. Lassek M.D. and Steven J.C. Gaulin, PH.D., I really did. When the email came out about reviewing this book I jumped at the chance, mainly because I love reading all things related to nutrition. For me though, this book disappointed me.

The book is broken down into three parts; Why and how we got fatter, why women need fat and how to achieve your healthy natural weight. A lot of the information in the first two sections are not surprising and really nothing new, to me at least. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that when the label on the food you are eating has more ingredients you cannot pronounce than you can pronounce, it's not healthy. I did, however, find some of their findings quite surprising and slightly disturbing.

One of the most disturbing claims I read was that high fructose corn syrup is ok, and not a reason why we are getting fatter. Um....I'm not a doctor, I don't even pretend to be one on tv, but I'm not buying that. Maybe by itself and in extremely low doses it's fine, but when it's in almost every product on the market, I think that is the problem. Now, we can start a debate on this, but let's just get back to the book.

The book has such potential to really educate women about eating healthy and making sure that you have smart fats in your diet (high in omega-3's and low in omega-6's), but I feel like it ventures off that path too many times and almost encourages the reader to be overweight. No, really. I was floored when I was reading and it said it's better to be overweight because you will be less likely to break a hip when you're older since your bones will be stronger from carrying the weight. A discussion about natural foods and eating the right amount of fat (and not processed fats) would have made this book amazing. I worry that women are going to read this and not get the right message out of it.

I'm interested to see what the other reviewers have to say over at BlogHer, be sure to join us and join in on the discussion.

Disclosure: This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own