Books like Salt Sugar Fat

01

The End of Overeating

David A. Kessler · Science

David Kessler, a former FDA commissioner and dean of two medical schools, wrote The End of Overeating as a scientific investigation into why so many people — including himself — find it nearly impossible to stop eating hyperpalatable food once they start.

A kindred science read.

02

In Defense of Food

Michael Pollan · Health

In Defense of Food opens with seven words that amount to a quiet provocation: Eat food.

A kindred science read.

03

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Michael Pollan · Health

The Omnivore's Dilemma is Michael Pollan's investigation into four food chains — industrial, industrial organic, local pastoral, and hunted-and-gathered — organized around the question of what we should eat.

A kindred science read.

04

Fast Food Nation

Eric Schlosser · Science

Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation is one of the most consequential pieces of American investigative journalism of the early twenty-first century.

Shares food industry and public health with Salt Sugar Fat.

05

How Not to Die

Michael Greger · Health

How Not to Die is Michael Greger's systematic argument that the fifteen leading causes of death in the United States are largely preventable through diet and lifestyle change.

A kindred science read.

06

The Case Against Sugar

Gary Taubes · Health

The Case Against Sugar is Gary Taubes's focused argument that sugar — sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup specifically — is the primary cause of the obesity and diabetes epidemics, and the likely driver of the cluster of diseases, from heart disease to Alzheimer's, that researchers now associate with insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.

Shares food industry and public health with Salt Sugar Fat.

07

Bad Science

Ben Goldacre · Science

Bad Science is Ben Goldacre's dissection of how scientific evidence gets misrepresented, distorted, and invented in the service of selling health products, generating media coverage, and protecting bad actors from accountability.

Both dig into public health.

08

Spillover

David Quammen · Science

Spillover is David Quammen's exhaustive investigation into zoonotic disease — illness that jumps from animals to humans — and the ecological and evolutionary logic behind why such spillover events happen.

Both dig into public health.

09

The Coming Plague

Laurie Garrett · Science

The Coming Plague, published in 1994, is Laurie Garrett's argument that the era of conquest over infectious disease declared in the 1960s was a dangerous illusion, and that the conditions for catastrophic new pandemics were already in place.

Both dig into public health.

10

The Molecule of More

Daniel Z. Lieberman & Michael E. Long · Science

The Molecule of More is psychiatrist Daniel Lieberman and writer Michael E.

Both dig into addiction.

11

Anatomy of an Epidemic

Robert Whitaker · Health

Anatomy of an Epidemic is Robert Whitaker's investigation into a paradox: as the use of psychiatric medication in the United States has increased dramatically over the past half-century, the number of people on disability due to mental illness has risen in parallel.

Both dig into public health.

12

Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

David Sheff · Memoir

Beautiful Boy is David Sheff's account of watching his son Nic become addicted to methamphetamine through his late teens and early twenties, and of the years Sheff spent trying to understand it, respond to it, and survive it as a parent.

Both dig into addiction.