Calories are the source of health problems affecting billions of people in today's globalized world, and although they are essential to human health and survival, these units of energy are a mystery to many of us. Few people understand what they are and how they work even though we now have a population in which 64 percent of adults and one third of our children are overweight.

Join experts Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim for a talk about their new book, “Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics” (in the series “California Studies in Food and Culture”) (University of California Press, April 18, 2012). Marion Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University and visiting professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell University. Malden Nesheim is professor emeritus of nutritional sciences at Cornell and provost emeritus. In their book, Nestle and Nesheim explain what calories are and how they work, both biologically and politically. They elucidate the political stakes and show how federal and corporate policies have come together to create an "eat more" environment. The book reviews the fundamental issues of dieting, weight gain, loss, and obesity, and arms readers with the necessary information to interpret food labels, evaluate diet claims, and understand evidence as presented in popular media. The authors offer some candid advice: Get organized. Eat less. Eat better. Move more. Get political.

A reception and book signing will follow. The "Chats in the Stacks" book talk is funded by the Mary A. Morrison Public Education Fund at Mann Library.