The Obesity Epidemic

Increasing obesity levels are currently big news but do we think carefully enough about what this trend actually means? Everybody - including doctors, parents, teachers, sports clubs, businesses and governments - has a role to play in the 'war on obesity'. But is talk of an obesity 'crisis' justified? Is it the product of measured scientific reasoning or age-old 'habits of mind'? Why is it happening now? And are there potential risks associated with talking about obesity as an 'epidemic'?



The Obesity Epidemic proposes that obesity science and the popular media present a complex mix of ambiguous knowledge, familiar (yet unstated) moral agendas and ideological assumptions.

1. Science and Fatness 2. The War on Obesity 3. The Ghost of a Machine 4. 'Modernity's Scourge': A brief history of obesity science 5. Fat or Fiction: Weighing in the 'obesity epidemic' 6. The search for a cause 7. Obesity Science for the People 8. Feminism and the 'obesity epidemic' 9. Interrogating expert knowledge: risk and the ethics of body weight 10. Beyond Body Weight