There comes a moment in every editor’s life when she just wants to scream, “Eat me!” at a precarious stack of galleys. This was my situation a few days ago as I was sorting through the diet and fitness titles. In all seriousness, I hardly need a gym membership given how many of these books I have to haul from the Bookroom to my desk, where I do my assigning. This round, I counted no fewer than 34, out of which I could assign only three.

To call this overkill is an understatement. I’m of the mind it’s an epidemic. Americans are addicted to the idea that there’s an alternative to weight loss beyond eating less and exercising. The publishing world feeds that delusion with an appealing goulash of gimmicks—see Jim Karas’s The Cadio-Free Diet (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, May), Joe Marion’s The Cheat To Lose Diet (Crown, May), and Ronald Glassman’s The Alpha Solution for Permanent Weight Loss: Harnass the Power of Your Subconscious Mind To Change Your Relationship with Food—Forever (April, Broadway).

Although it’s my job to bring some of these books to librarians’ attention, I take solace in the fact that there are voices of dissent out there. Just when I was about to lose it over another sugar-water diet, I came across Gina Kolata’s latest book, Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss—And the Myths and Realities of Dieting (May, Farrar).

Author of the notable Clone and the best-selling Flu, Kolata, the head science writer for the New York Times, now analyzes the first study to contrast the Atkins diet to a low-calorie diet and purports to answer questions of eating and self-control, genetics and weight, the sensation of hunger across individuals, and diet plateaus. To an editor like me, this book is a gunshot blast of fresh air. Of course, only the review will tell. Stay tuned.