Posts Tagged ‘obesity

I have argued for several years that one reason for the popular obsession with obesity is its symbolic value (see my 2005 essay on “Why people hate fat Americans” on the left hand bar). Human fat is the most visible manifestation of a society which the growth sceptics see as plagued by over-consumption. That in […]

Monitoring the alleged sins of modern life It seems that fatties are not just damaging themselves but destroying the earth too. An article in the New York Times quotes recent research to this effect (Gina Kolata “For a world of woes, we blame cookie monsters” 29 October): “This latest contribution to the obesity debate comes […]

Almost a year ago I wrote a spiked essay called “Why people hate fat Americans” (see bar on left). It argued that that obesity was increasingly being used as a metaphor to attack “over-consumption” more generally. Now a new bestseller seems to have joined the fast-growing genre. Insatiable: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American […]