Weighing in : obesity, food justice, and the limits of capitalism

Bibliographic Information

Weighing in : obesity, food justice, and the limits of capitalism

Julie Guthman

(California studies in food and culture, 32)

University of California Press, c2011

  • : pbk

Available at  / 12 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

"Weighing In" takes on the 'obesity epidemic,' challenging many widely held assumptions about its causes and consequences. Julie Guthman 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. Guthman 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 - Guthman offers a complex analysis of our entire economic system.

by "Nielsen BookData"

Related Books: 1-1 of 1

Details

Page Top