Eric Oliver starts the acknowledgments of his new book, Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America's Obesity Epidemic, with a distinctive first sentence: "This was not the book I intended to write."

Like most Americans, Oliver says he, too, believed there was a real obesity epidemic worthy of the constant hand-wringing and dire warnings of everyone from health officials to the diet industry.

He says he was like the rest of us - until he started doing some research. The conclusion of the University of Chicago political scientist: The people with the most to gain from our constant obsession over our weight are the weight-loss industry and diet doctors.

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