Sarah Varney (1)

Disappointing. The author undertook interviews and qualitative data collection yet the judgmental tone she takes about obesity in many passages makes me question how authentic her qualitative work really was. Were her research subjects as easily able to tell her negative, blaming views of obesity as I was? If so, how honest were they with her?

There's good info in here (I hope), but occasional judgmental diction and comments turned me off, particularly the way that she described overweight children. It's not like eight-year-olds are really at fault for being overweight.

I also suspect there's something of a cherrypicking problem here with the studies presented. For instance, toward the end of the book, she gives numerous stories of people who underwent bariatric surgery and cites a couple studies about impacts on psychosocial outcomes. However, all the studies top out at two years of follow up and she ignores longer-term studies indicating a sizable percentage of people who undergo the surgery do eventually return to their original size. What are the ramifications of that?

It's like Sarah Varney wants to be a sociologist but does not have the training or ability to do it right. Some interesting material here, but it falls far short of the standards we should have around this type of work.… (meer)