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Sports, Fitness, Health and Nutrition
Reviews by Ms. Belben
Updated January 2007

Bissinger, H.G. Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and a Dream. ©1990 The beginning of football season makes this a perfect recommendation for the fall. Bissinger’s story has become a classic in sports literature for its account of the 1988 football season of Permian High School in Odessa, Texas—a town so obsessed with high school football that they spend a half million dollars to fly the team across the state for a non-league game.

Bissinger followed the Permian team that year as it approached and qualified for the state playoffs and nearly won the AAAAA state championship; now the story of that season has been made into a movie starring Billy Bob Thorton that will be released this spring, and it’s great time to revisit Bissinger’s book.

What makes Friday Night Lights unique is that it not only reports on one high school’s season, but that it makes startling (well, startling for some of us anyway) revelations about the role of high school sports, education, economics, race, and values in American society. Bissinger isn’t just telling us about Permian High School and Odessa, Texas, he’s telling is about high schools and communities everywhere in America. Not every community is as obsessed with football as Odessa, but in many places, academics take a back seat to athletics and the participants—coaches, player, parents, and teachers—find themselves in a moral quandary.

By detailing the townspeople and sports figures in Odessa, Bissinger forces readers to take a serious look at American values, and the way schools sometimes reinforce those values in unintended ways. He asks readers to consider carefully the messages that parents, teachers, and coaches convey about the importance of sports and education. Far too often, the amount of money and time spent on developing sports programs sends the message that athletics are more valuable than academics. In Odessa, as Bissinger points out, this discrepancy has been carried to an extreme.

Friday Night Lights remains one of my favorite books—it’s packed with action, drama, and suspense, and it offers so much material for reflection and debate. I encourage you, before watching the movie, to read (or re-read) this book.

Counting Coup by Larry Colton

Larry Colton spends a season living in Hardin, Montana, studying the girls' basketball team and Crow Indian tribe who are members. He focuses on the team's leading player, senior Sharon Laforge, whose talent seems to insure that she will escape the generational poverty and alcoholism that plague her family and other members of the tribe. As we learn, however, talent guarantees nothing. As the Hardin High Lady Bulldogs head for the state playoffs, Colton watches with increasing concern as Sharon battles with an alcoholic mother, a permissive aunt and grandmother, and becomes more and more involved with an emotionally distant, physically abusive boyfriend.

Colton's account of his season with the team and their families creates an indelible image of life on the reservation with its infighting and politics, tragedies and traditions. I found myself rooting for Sharon Laforge and hoping desperately that she would use her talents to escape what seemed like an inevitably bleak future. The cycle of poverty, abuse, and family control are powerful opponents however, and there is little hope that Laforge will lead a life much different than her elders. The story of the team's season, with its suspensfully written scenes of the basketball action and objective and insightful look at reservation life, will keep readers hooked to the page. between whites and tribal members. I understood much more thoroughly the cycle of abuse, poverty, and alcoholism after reading this book. I learned a great deal about dreams and about hope, too.

THE IMMORTAL CLASS: BIKE MESSENGERS AND THE CULT OF HUMAN POWER
by Travis Hugh Culley,a Chicago bike courier and (in his off hours) an incredibly gifted writer. The book focuses on the day to day life and dangers of bicycling couriers in a big city, but also draws attention to the experience of living outside the glass and steel cage of the automobile. His research into and details about the laws of the road as they apply to bikes (in Illinois, anyway) bring to light some of the injustices two-wheelers must contend with, and he describes some of the cyclists' efforts to approach the problems they face on car-dominated streets, such as the Critical Mass movement.

"Messengering," writes Culley, "is not an easy job. It can be filled with anguish and humiliation, it can offer hardship so much deeper than the minor frustrations of traffic and rude doormen. In my time on the street, I have been hunted by cars, and hit by them. I have been chased and have returned chase to many unruly antagonists. I've been doored, thrown, clobbered, threatened, and pinned between cars...Somehow, through the unique difficulties that the journey of every single day brings, the job gets done, and the board gets cleared, bringing with a feeling of victory that never tires..." Surviving these dangers, Culley writes, makes bike messengers "part of an immortal class of winged angels, hailed for speed and stregnth," and his lofty claim is borne true in the pages that follow, where he and couriers deliver as many as 50 packages an hour to buildings throughout Chicago, regardless of the weather, their health, the condition of the roads, or the moods and whims of automobile drivers. "We messengers fight through extreme fatigue, overstimulation, frostbite, and dehydration. With resilience and determination we are able to survive stunts and endure stresses that seem impossible to the casual observer. The pride taken in this feat makes us part of a unique world of young, colorful, soldiers who look death in the face and make a living evading her."

Besides touting the power of the courier, Culley examines the role of the bike and the car as partners on the road, and touts the achievements of the Critical Mass movement, of which he becomes a part. Bicyclists gather regularly to ride the streets of many American cities, reclaiming them, staging protests--some peaceful and some not--to draw attention to the cyclist as a legitimate user of streets and to encourage cities to consider the bike when planning roads, and to create awareness about the effects that cars, driving, and dependence on gasoline have on our psyche and community. As a cyclist, he claims, he experiences the world without the protective screen provided by the car--and participates more fully than drivers. "In the crowds and in the eyes of the motorists stacked four blocks thick in front of red lights on Congress, no one seemed to notice the world of recognize the impact they had on it. It was this overwhelming sense of disregard that I really began to fear." And this fear leads to increased involvement in biking culture, culminating with a huge memorial ride designed to honor a courier killed by a road-raging motorist. "As I see it," he writes, "there is no solution to the social or environmental problems of our age if we cannot give a new shape to our urban spaces that will make living without a car feasible for the average American family."

Readers will probably find his descriptions of the adventurous paths he weaves around the city each day delivering dozens of packages the most appealing feature of this book. Descriptions of injuries, brushes with the law, encounters with "suits," collisions with "peds," dehydration, co-workers who quit mid-shift, and secret tunnels under the city offer a glimpse into an unusual, but exciting career and lifestyle. The philosophical and political arguments about the impact of the car culture on society will make readers think and hopefully, will also make them reconsider their transportation habits.

“One of the most comforting experiences for anyone who considers himself weird in some ways is to find other people in the world who are, in the same way, weirder,” writes Warren St. John in Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: A Journey into the Heart of Fan Mania. A lifelong fan of the Alabama Crimson Tide and the legendary Bear Bryant, St. John sets out to live life for a season among fans who are even more passionate about the sport and the Tide than himself. What he finds makes for an enlightening and funny examination of modern sports and modern sports fans.

St. John describes how thousands of Alabama fans travel through the South every fall, rolling from home to stadium in giant RVs, parking overnight in lots with their peers, and organizing their lives around Alabama football. “It would be easy, perhaps, to dismiss such hardcore fans as freaks,” St. John writes, “except for the fact that the world is practically brimming over with them…you might want to stop and ask yourself why your hometown newspaper devotes an entire section to sports.” Contrary to popular belief, St. John explains, the typical sports fan isn’t a washed up, ex-athlete couch potato dolt. According to research, St. John says, sports fans are more likely to be athletes themselves, are more likely to finish college in a shorter time than non-fans—with a higher grade point average.

It’s hard, however, to read Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer without wondering just a little about the intelligence, or at least the psychology health, of the fans St. John tags along with. As they load up their expensive RVs, drive unenvironmentally across state lines (average gas mileage=four miles to the gallon) and spend their weekends in crowded parking lots, just to watch football games, you have to question their sanity just a teeny tiny bit. St. John attends the funeral of a man who gets buried in an Alabama Crimson Tide casket (NOT special ordered—the funeral parlor sells dozens in a year) and meets a man on a heart transplant list who attends Tide football games even though they are beyond the range he’s supposed to travel (if a heart becomes available, he knows he won’t make it to the hospital in time…he goes to the games anyway). “It’s what I always say,” the transplant hopeful says, “If I can’t go to Alabama football games, what’s the point in living?”

But, St. John says, despite the apparent wackiness—and frankly, the occasionally mind-bogglingly moronic choices—of die-hard fans, it may be that their behavior isn’t that cryptic. There is tradition, which bonds people. It’s not always the tradition of supporting a particular team or going to certain events, but it is certainly a motivating force that, as St. John points out, “provides consolation for our losses, and is the moral force behind our victories.” Sports contests are a reenactment of the ancient battles humans have always held: the struggle to find food, secure land, and win power over others.

There’s also the release that sports viewing allows: the opportunity to act, anonymously, within a mob, to release tension and aggression in (mostly) healthy ways. “We can’t paint our faces and scream like maniacs at our desks, in the classroom, or at the dinner table with our families, so to be able to do it in public feels…positively titillating.” There is a simplicity to sport that engages our passions and yet allows us to return to our lives unscathed. We join forces with people who, for a few hours at least, we know we can interact with and agree with about something. “In the ‘real world’ the game is a lot tougher. When you walk into a cocktail party or your office, it’s often hard to distinguish friend from foe. The person who’s nicest to you at work might be scheming for your job. A close friend may have designs on your mate. But when you drive down Bryant Drive during football season, it’s all so clear: red RV—friend; blue RV—foe.”

Reading Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer offers a unique perspective on sports, one that I hadn’t thought about too much, frankly. But this mix of humor, history, travel, sports action, and psychology really made me think about my own prejudices about sportsfandom. And while you’ll never find me choosing a football game over a heart transplant, I do have a new appreciation for the kind of passionate loyalty and dedication that St. John discovers.

Critser skillfully traces the enormous increase in obesity that has occurred in America over the past two decades. Sixty percent of adults in the U.S. are overweight and 20% are obese, according to statistics, and childhood obesity has doubled over the past twenty years. Chillingly, he quotes University of Colorado physiologist James O. Hill, who has said, “If obesity is left unchecked, all Americans will be overweight by 2050.”

Changes in lifestyle, child-rearing, physical education, exercise habits, and food-processing are the main culprits for increased obesity, Critser argues, and he supports these claims with numerous facts, quotes from experts, and well-reasoned arguments about the problems with food production, eating habits, and health in America.

Critser begins with an analysis of where fat comes from, identifying the introduction of palm oil and high fructose corn syrup (HFC) as major culprits in the declining quality of American food and increased obesity. In the early-mid 70s, palm oil began being used as a replacement for animal fat, and was (is) wrongly assumed to be healthy because it is plant-based. But palm oil, called “tree lard” by some—is more highly saturated in fat than hog lard, and a major contender for first place in the obesity-causing category. We’re fatter because in the last 20 years, this oil has begun appearing in fast food and packaged food because it is cheap and extends products’ shelf life. High fructose corn syrup, also wrongly thought not to be harmful because of its corn-based origins, is included in soda pop and many prepared foods. It is digested by the body differently than naturally-occurring sugars, wreaking havoc on metabolism and being stored as fat.

Admirably, Critser’s concerns with fat focus very little on appearance, in fact, it is rarely mentioned. Instead, his focus is on the health and financial consequences of overweight and obesity. Alarming increases in type 2 diabetes are the chief concern. Ordinarily a teen or adult onset illness, doctors are reporting huge numbers of children as young eight years old with the disease. In some parts of the country, the rate of increase of new cases among children has rised 45 percent. Numerous other obesity-related illnesses plague us, as well, including orthopedic problems, heart disease, high blood pressure, increased risk of certain cancers, and “pseudotumor cerebri” –brain tumors caused when excess weight presses on the heart and lungs, causing pressure on the vein from the brain to the heart.

I can’t possibly summarize the incredible wealth of information in this book, nor can I overemphasize its importance to all readers, but especially parents and educators. Critser soundly discusses the threats against our health that are made by fast foods, prepared foods, and the lack of exercise and common sense that permeate our society. Reading this book will make some people uncomfortable—but a little discomfort will be worth it if we’re healthier and make better life choices because of it.

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal.

Before your next visit to the local fast food joint, I suggest you read FAST FOOD NATION: THE DARK SIDE OF THE ALL-AMERICAN MEAL by Eric Schlosser. Schlosser spent three years studying the American fast food industry, its history, its impact on Americans’ health and the American economy, and its impact on the world.

Currently, Schlosser argues, Americans spend more than $110 billion annually on fast food purchases—more than they spend on higher education. The amount of money generated by fast food restaurants makes them a lucrative enterprise—and fast food executives and advertisers will go to extremes to promote their products and gain even more customers, particularly children. Ad campaigns are directed at young people and toys, “Happy Meals,” and in-school advertising are growing as fast food corporations aim to create lifelong customers.

Among other concerns Schlosser raises are the dangers of producing the main fast food product: ground beef. According to the author, the beef packing industry is the most dangerous job in America, and one of the worst paying. Additionally, eating beef can be dangerous due to the increasing amount of E. coli in the meat, the unsanitary conditions at beef packing plants, and the undertrained workers handling the beef in restaurants.

Chief among the concerns Schlosser raises is the impact on Americans’ health—and he cites studies that suggest a link between the increasing number of fast food restaurants and the increase in heart disease, obesity, and diabetes in our countries (all conditions which can be attributed to other factors, of course, but he points out that fast food is a major part of the problems caused by our “convenience culture."

In THE WEIGHT OF IT, Amy Wilensky recalls her younger sister’s lifelong battle with morbid obesity and her eventual decision to undergo gastric bypass surgery in order to lose weight and have the health and physique she’d always wanted. In documenting her sister’s life as an obese person and the changes she made as she lost weight, Amy Wilensky presents a thoughtful, moving memoir of her relationship with Alison and how the weight and its loss affected them.

“My story is this,” Wilensky writes, “In a matter or months my other half, the person on the planet to whom I am most closely tied, shed her old body as a snake sheds skin and emerged with a different one, leaving me reeling and desperate to find meaning in the change. It is an age old question, boiled down to nearly two hundred pounds of excess flesh: How and why do we become the people we are?” Her sister’s weight loss is tied to her own identity, she says, because, “If I’m certain of anything, it is this: your siblings are the only citizens from a country nobody else will ever visit.” In seeking to understand her sister—how she was, why she was that way, and how changing her body changed her in more profound ways—Amy Wilensky seeks to understand herself.

Wilensky explores this question as she attempts to figure out how she and Alison, who had the same, average-sized parents and were only a year apart, wound up with such different bodies. In Amy’s case, she matured into an average-sized woman with a normal appetite and no eating disorders. But Alison, who was less than a year younger, began binging frequently and secretly on large quantities of food as a teen by her late twenties, weighed over 300 pounds. She explores their childhood, examining the relationships they had with their parents (good) and their relationship with each other (generally good, but tinged with typical jealousies and disagreements). She also looks at the role genetics has in determining body weight. “If you grow up with obesity,” she says, “You don’t need the map of the human genome to know that there is a genetic component.” She recognizes that although her parents were not obese, Alison’s body was somehow beyond her control, and that she had, in all likelihood, inherited a genetic predisposition to binging. Nevertheless, Amy Wilensky admits she was surprised to visit the Museum of Natural History and see the genome for obesity marked on the wall-size display.

In THE WEIGHT OF IT, Wilensky skillfully and smoothly progresses through her and her sister’s lives together, weaving in memories of their childhood and their growing distance as Alison became larger and less like Amy. She examines the role of food in their family and lives, the rivalries between them for their parents’ attention, and the differences in their personalities and in ways their parents treated them. She also looks sensitively at the issues of being obese in a culture obsessed with being thin; as a firsthand observer and sister of someone overweight, she has insight that others lack about the problems of being larger than average. Besides the practical issues—Alison can’t sit in normal-sized chairs, for example, or find clothes that fit—there are other, more significant concerns that affect her and by association, Amy, too. Alison’s health is at risk, as is the health of all who are obese, and Amy worries for her; she also watches her sister endure the shunning and outright cruelty of those who don’t really see her as anything but a fat person. “Most of us take common decency for granted, assume that a greeting earns you one back by virtue of your membership in what we call humanity. But to be obese in our society at this point in history—regardless of the fact that you are in a growing majority—is to be so visible as to be invisible.”

Of the changes Alison went through in becoming thin, this is perhaps the most significant—that she thought less about what people thought of her. “The less you think about how other people see you, the more clearly you come to see yourself. If you can do that, we think you can do anything at all.” Wilensky writes of what she has learned about the world from her sister, and how she has learned from watching the world react to her sister as someone obese and someone average-sized. “In a way, I get to start over, too,” she writes of Alison’s new life. “For I have learned many things from my sister about how to live, including carving out a space for yourself, whatever its size and shape, and living as empathetically, emphatically, and largely as you can.”