The Rhetoric Of Obesity Epidemic

Introduction

The rhetoric of the “obesity epidemic” invokes fear of an uncontrollable spread of disease overwhelming the population. Discussions involving the “obesity epidemic” are often associated with individualizing policy suggests or education efforts that condemn individuals for their body weight and inspire guilt or blame. Escaping the language pitfalls of the “obesity epidemic” is difficult. There are not words about weight that are not politically and socially charged. I have struggled with the lack of neutral language in writing this paper and talking about these issues. Academic literature critiquing the use of “epidemic” rejects the ties between health and moralism, the establishment and enforcement of body image norms by the government, and the inflamed “epidemic” rhetoric. In 2014, the City of Berkeley, CA passed a tax on sugar sweetened beverages with the stated intent of reducing obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay. During the campaign for the tax, which needed a majority of voters to approve it,

While recognized as a social problem, policies target individual choices. Natalie Boreo in “All the News That’s Fat to Print” describes how the obesity epidemic is a “post modern epidemic” where it is a social problem because everyone is at risk but also individual in that everyone is responsible for their own weight. It is a social problem that culminates in micro-level solutions (Boreo, 43). Obesity is accepted as a disease, but unlike other diseases, it “needs” public policies because of individual failure: ideally, “… bodies and people would regulate themselves behaviorally, but…some bodies that are so out of control, and such a threat to public health that they need to be surgically altered to facilitate the kind of controlled eating…” (Boero, 48). Dramatic intervention by governments is seen as necessary to contain this “public health