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Any weight-related book, whether one that considers issues from a medical or sociological perspective, or one that provides advice on how to eat well or lose weight, whose opening pages feature such as controversial statements as: ''fat people are basically insecure, unhappy people trapped inside very unattractive bodies'', or ''Islamic people however are at an advantage as they do Ramadan and they are not overweight'', ''there is hope for overweight and obese people, but I don’t see a way back for the clinically aid [sic] morbidly obese'' or my personal favourite: ''as women’s hands are smooth and soft in many cases, females would be useful behind soldiers to be there as assistants to men quickly reloading magazines of bullets speedily'', any such book needs to provide an awful lot of valuable content in the pages that follow to have a chance of redeeming itself.

It surprised me that only some of the recipes provided any nutrition information, usually limited to calorie content and low/medium/high fat and fibre indicators. It seems a serious omission for a weight-concerned book that recommends calorie counting for weight loss. What's more concerning, though, is that the recipes that do provide nutrition data get it wrong. I normally don't fact check numbers, but a recipe for carrot soup with 500 calories per serving caught my eye. It was a simple recipe, so a very basic count quickly demonstrated that the calorie content was overestimated by more than 100%: the soup had under 250 calories per serving, and that is with extremely generous assumptions of how large a ''large carrot'' or ''large onion'' is. Surprised by this, I checked a couple more and again, found significant errors. Energy content of creamy potato gratin recipe was overestimated by more than 50%, and even a three-ingredient creamy courgette soup recipe got it wrong by 65%, this time underestimating it.

It might be that the author used unreliable sources, or might be nothing more than sloppy editing of the text, but a nutritionist-author should make some effort to get these things right. Three out of three incorrect calorie counts are not acceptable, especially in combination with the glaring conversion errors.

In addition to over-enthusiastic promotion of supplements, McNally's book contains a bizarrely cultish section devoted to Avon Cosmetic's facial products, including the suggestion that their application from as early as your 20's will prevent ageing. There is no sense or reason to this, and the choice of that particular middling American brand is not justified in any way: it could be Nivea Crème, it could be home-made organic oils and exotic absolutes preparations, it could be Crème de La Mer or Guerlain's Orchidee Imperiale, but either way a sudden side trip about a particular cosmetic brand is odd.

The rest of the volume is a mish-mash of scientific and pseudo-scientific data regarding nutrition and bizarre, not to say at times seemingly deranged ranting on evils of obesity, and on wider social issues.

All in all, the book's poor structure, lack of table of contents and index, poor if any copy-editing and a dubious set of moral and social beliefs about obesity and fat people are not redeemed by what's largely common-sense advice on weight loss. The recipes in the second half make a perfectly reasonable practical collection, but are pretty standard and lack consistent nutrition data or background information and are not chosen with any obvious underlying rationale. Where nutrition data is provided, it appears to be frequently wrong. I cannot recommend ''Cracking the Obesity Crisis'', either as a practical aid to weight loss and healthy living or as an informative book on nutrition.

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