The Insulin Factor: Can't Lose Weight? Can't Concentrate? Can't Resist Sugar? Could Syndrome X Be Your Problem Book

It was enlightening and thought-provoking to read this book, published about fifteen years ago, in the era of Covid and widespread home working. It’s pretty dispiriting how many of the book’s arguments and warnings might as well have been written weeks rather than years ago. Willing Slaves has certainly influenced the way I see my work and it’s place in my life. It’s clearly, lucidly argued and I think it’s particularly strong in its recognition of the importance of a “care ethic”. There’s something oddly uplifting in how the author describes and celebrates the simple domestic chores that ultimately lay the foundations for much of the rest of our lives. This is not to say it’s a perfect book - it’s probably about 50 pages too long and towards the end the polemic gets overheated. There are a few too many half-hearted concessions and a number of points where some tighter editing was needed. For instance, there are moments which come uncomfortably close to self-contradiction and I think a really good editor would have helped the author sidestep these moments or address them head on. Instead, there are a bits where the reader is left asking “didn’t you just say that was good?!”. Overall though, I’d recommend this book and say that it’s perhaps even more important now than it was was when it was written. It seems that responding to Covid will, in many of the worlds most prosperous countries, lead to new discussions about time, work and home and this book is an instructive guide to the debates which lie ahead.