Change The Way You Think About “Obesity”

Hey guys!

I mentioned in my video post from Green Mountain that I was reading a book called, “Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism,” by Julie Guthman. It’s fascinating how it really calls into question what we’ve taken for granted as truth.

Julie was kind enough to let me reprint a portion from her book, below, which I thought was valuable to share with all of you. The following is an alternative framework from which to view America’s obesity “epidemic”:

• The rise in obesity warrants explanation, but unexamined efforts to address it may do more harm than good
• The emphasis on size and risk factors may not be the best way think about pathology
• The medical costs attributed to obesity are empirically suspect, and the emphasis placed on these costs reflects a shirking of social responsibility for well-being
• Noncaloric pathways to obesity exist, as evidenced by new research on the role of environmental toxins and pharmaceuticals
• The built environment reflects existing social relationships and political-economic dynamics, including racial and class patterns in size, more than it creates them
• Low socioeconomic status can result from size as much as size can result from the behaviors associated with low socioeconomic status
• Food is cheap because of deep-rooted geopolitical and political-economic interests that have encouraged overproduction and failed to regulate food production for health, safety, and welfare concerns
• Eating behaviors are mediated by a more complex set of social factors than education and access; in any case, it is unlikely that the association of alternative food and thinness comes to be through individual diets of alternative food

A UC Press podcast here also discusses her book, and I’ve culled some tidbits for you below (paraphrasing Julie):

• The BMI is bad proxy for how much body fat people have.
•  Our focus on size obscures questions that might be more interesting. The medical consequences are much more complicated. Mortality and weight loss do NOT demonstrate that people in the “normal weight” category live any longer lives than those who do not. There is no question people have gotten bigger, but “bigness” itself is bad way to think about pathology.
• Obesity is a medicalized term that is used to deflate moral judgment (much like calling an alcohol-addict an “alcoholic” rather than a “dunk”), but obesity by itself is not necessarily a medical problem. The rhetoric of “obesity epidemic” connotes that it’s contagious, inexorable, urgent; and it provokes hysteria. (Side note: my favorite word for describing the feeling associated with use of “obesity epidemic” is paralysis)
• Julie notes that students in her Obesity Politics course were heavily invested in the argument that fatness is of personal responsibility; but what she found most disconcerting is that despite the class dialogue about how malleable “fatness” is and how “obesity” is a medicalization, Julie found that her students became much more anxious about their bodies — more body conscious in a rigid way – due to the class (which provided her with an ironic position). This is because anatomizing obesity can create this sense of a homogenized normalized body.
• Junk food is necessarily cheaper because it’s less regulated. Organic food producers are expecting a price difference. Much of what’s in our conventional food supply receives far less scrutiny than organic food and is subsidized.
• The real groundbreaking work is in considering the role of environmental toxins in obesity. We need more epidemiological studies about exposure to endocrine disruptors, especially as neonatal exposure might be behind the increase in babies of larger size.
• It’s always important to consider who stands to profit behind the medicalization (& hysteria) created about a particular “illness.” Given that people tend to see obesity as a personal problem, they tend to see it as having a public health cost. So, who’s making money off of it? Capitalism has produced obesity as a problem in all sorts of ways. We’re supposed to consume to keep the economy afloat – in so far as excess consumption leads to help the economy. But excess consumption leads to a state that is considered undesirable (I believe Julie calls this a “bulimic” economy in her book). So, there are, of course, solutions to commodify fatness: diet pills, diets, etc.

An interesting way to start re-framing the discussion, no? You can buy Julie’s book, “Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism (California Studies in Food and Culture)” via Amazon here.

<3,

The Cranky One

Tags: Julie Guthman, obesity politics, weighin in