Obesity now kills more people than famine does. It affects one person out of ten – three times more than in 1975 – and causes 4 million deaths a year. At that pace, 3.3 billion people will be overweight by 2030. Yet nothing seems to be able to stop its progression – all the less so in that this plague, which is now seen as a pandemic, no longer affects only developed nations, but the entire world.

How is obesity manufactured? What are its causes: genetic, environmental, dietary? What are its consequences on our health, knowing that it is a risk factor for myriad chronic diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer? What is responsible for it, who or what are the guilty parties? And isn’t it about time we challenged our industrial food model with its ultra-processed foods?

Those are some of the questions raised by Yves Leers in this book that aims to avoid speechifying in favor a sounding an alarm about unconcerned politicians, negligent industrials and imploding health-care systems.

Yves Leers sounds an alarm about pandemic that is spreading fast, but which neither public authorities, nor the food industry, nor the pharmaceutical sector is mobilizing for: obesity, which is the cause of over 4 million deaths a year.