The theme of great hunger remains an underlying cause in the study of obesity and depression. INSATIABLE posits—using many authoritative sources—that the human soul loves beauty and desires it, seeking the appeasing fragrances of nature’s beauty (Younghusband, 1921), to quiet the turbulence, at least in the first step. The book’s unique exploration of monasteries and the silence that dwells in them offers a remarkably simple remedy to the reader’s hunger in a rather frenetic world.
U.S. society, since the 1970s, has had a high interest in weight loss as evidenced by the sale of millions of diet books, yet despite this, obesity trends continued to increase. Overall efficacy of caloric-restrictive diets varies between 1-3% when measured over 5 to 7 years after completing the diet. Weight loss diets have clearly failed Americans. Could it be that caloric restrictive diets are actually driving the growth of the obesity epidemic?
The book documents the historical origins of the obesity crisis going back as far as the 17th, and 18th centuries, when the cultural celebration of gluttony began among the aristocracies of Europe; it was a celebration of the senses and a lessening of the moral sting of gluttony by relativizing religious morals.
Explore how nutrition and spirituality conspire together to offer a long-lasting remedy and a complete understanding of the modern-day obesity crisis, and many of the US's epidemics and social upheavals.
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New Introductory Nutrition Textbook
CUSTOMER-1: INSATIABLE is an admirably ambitious book. It crosses not only the boundaries between different academic disciplines but also the more fundamental divide--now taken for granted by most modern Westerners--between a supposedly "neutral" medicine and public health on the one hand and a supposedly "biased" theology, spirituality, and morality on the other.
----- Dom Timothy Ferrell, Monastery of the Holy Cross, Chicago -----
CUSTOMER-2: This is a book that dives into the struggle between nutrition and man’s medical, psychological, and spiritual realities.
The book broadly reviews the obesity epidemic, but it also delves deeply into its origins, empowering the reader with a social, cultural, and spiritual understanding of the true origins of this epidemic. This beautifully written book is an up-close investigation into the deep-rooted causes of the high prevalence of chronic diseases now sweeping through American society. It's unique in that it flips the obesity epidemic on its ear. I could not put this 539-page wonder down once I picked it as it also has spiritual gems hidden within its pages. I highly recommend it."
-- J-G Vaille, Montreal, QC --
CUSTOMER-3: Just bought your book. It’s excellent, a superb synthesis of many sources of knowledge and a compelling fresh presentation on a very difficult and challenging topic. David C, Washington, DC
CUSTOMER-4:
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 6, 2022 on Amazon
This is probably one of the most important books I have read, ever. Full-stop. For those struggling with weight issues — and for those struggling to understand weight issues or how to support those seeking to overcome their weight issues, this book is a God-send. Bissonette places the locus of the Nation’s chronic obesity in two places. One is in the development and marketing of foodstuffs that create addiction and longing. The other is in the human heart that has hungers food can never fill. The author’s premise is that as one attends to those hungers, obesity can the more successfully be addressed. He writes as both scientist and Catholic believer, and a sense of the sacramentality of life and of food permeates the book. It’s not a fast read, and that, too, I suspect is by design. Fast food, fast consumption of information, fast decisions, fast actions: yes, there’s a place for all of that in life: but not all the time. Put another way, when efficiency becomes the overriding value, everything is off-center. The book will help you re-center your thinking about food by recent wring your thinking about life."
BOOK REVIEWER: Professor Bissonnette, with a view toward the myriad of questions at play, offers a tightly reasoned analysis in this large volume, which is packed with facts and footnotes. He presents thirteen chapters with a significant emphasis on obesity. And he does not fail, at the end of his book, to provide his proposal for a “radical shift” away from our contemporary situation to a much healthier reality.
As I examine Professor Bissonnette’s work, several critical concepts that undergird his research strike me.
1. God is gracious to His human creatures. Each of us has been created by God in imago Dei—the image of God. The human person is a body-soul composite. He desires that we accept His invitation to Everlasting Life, but He will not force us to accede to His plan. How He wishes that we make the best choices.
2. God wants for us to benefit from what He has left us to sustain our bodies. As mentioned above, there is no doubt that the Almighty has given us choice food. Now, we must select what is proper to sustain us well for the years ahead.
3. We have the possibility to make good choices. Despite the many temptations that surround us, choosing well is part of being a rational creature of God. We can use our reasoning faculty to determine what we must do and what we must avoid.
Professor Bissonnette dedicated an entire chapter, (chapter 11, which is fifty pages, including references) to “The Tragic Societal Loss of Beauty”. It is hard to argue with our author. Before our eyes, we have witnessed the overturning of what has been considered to be beautiful and replaced with the macabre and the distorted. “Beauty,” under the current umbrella, is what you think it to be—and that can change at a moment’s notice. No standards for “the beautiful” are any longer accepted by most.
This volume ends with Chapter Thirteen, “Making a Radical Shift.” Professor Bissonnette makes known his recipe for a new day. Attention to eating and drinking what is healthy, exercise, leisure, openness to the spiritual, and preparing for death are several realities mentioned.
The author has freely conveyed his thoughts as to where we are and where we should now head. I find this work to be useful—informative and edifying. And I think that other readers will concur.
. Mgsr Charles Mangan, Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, Maryland
