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Book reviews - Fighting Globesity: A practical guide to personal health and global sustainability

Phillip and Jackie Mills, MD.
Random House New Zealand, $34.99

I was sceptical about the value of reading this book given the apparently tenuous link between personal fitness and global sustainability. However, if climate change guru Tim Flannery was willing to put his endorsement on the cover I decided it couldn’t be that bad.

The first third of the book is about keeping fit. Or, perhaps more accurately, about getting fit. The target audience – middle-aged, post-family, suburban housewives who may have let things go a bit over the last decade. The authors tread a delicate line between encouraging exercise, team sports, goal setting and cross training, and recommending their own gym membership and training programmes. In fact, page references to “Les Mills classes and programmes” appear almost as often as “global warming” in the index. Nevertheless, I found this first section to be full of sensible ideas about “getting back on the horse” and getting fit again. Gym or no gym.

The second part of the book is about eating your way to better health. There are tips on how much to eat, what kinds of food are good and bad for you and a very interesting section on food and micronutrients as natural medicine. This section of the book also creates an interest in the global food system and presents a more persuasive link between personal health and global sustainability than the first part of the book.

The final third of the book completes the story, with chapters on climate, energy, waste and water. I found these sections to be informative, clearly written and well researched, although I was irritated by the book’s constant claims about what “research shows” without giving any actual references.

The last chapter includes a large number of suggestions for making changes to our lives, our businesses and our cities. Although by no means a weighty tome, if you want some straightforward advice on how to improve your health and wellbeing, increase your understanding of sustainability and take some steps towards making planet Earth a better place, then this book is for you. You may even end up becoming a gym-bunny!

Reviewed by Spencer Clubb