Weighing in
Subtitle: obesity, food justice, and the limits of capitalism
By: Julie Guthman
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Berkeley
Language: eng
Number of pages: 227
ISBN-13: 9780520266247; 9780520266254
Subjects: Social aspects; Obesity
Description: This book takes on the "obesity epidemic," challenging many widely held assumptions about its causes and consequences. The author examines fatness and its relationship to health outcomes to ask if our efforts to prevent "obesity" are sensible, efficacious, or ethical. She also focuses the lens of obesity on the broader food system to understand why we produce cheap, over-processed food, as well as why we eat it. She takes issue with the currently touted remedy to obesity, promoting food that is local, organic, and farm fresh. While such fare may be tastier and grown in more ecologically sustainable ways, this approach can also reinforce class and race inequalities and neglect other possible explanations for the rise in obesity, including environmental toxins. Arguing that ours is a political economy of bulimia, one that promotes consumption while also insisting upon thinness, she offers a complex analysis of our entire economic system.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.