Beyond calories and consumption, new book critiques obesity orthodoxies

Countering the so-called obesity crisis with local, organic, and seasonal food is a nice idea but one that is not likely to work, writes Julie Guthman, associate professor of community studies at UC Santa Cruz.

Guthman challenges many widely held assumptions about the “obesity epidemic” in her new book, Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism(University of California Press, 2011).  “I have nothing against “good food” – I eat it myself,” says Guthman, a self-confessed “foodie” whose father could be called a health-food nut in the 1950s and ’60s, “but the approach is based on assumptions about obesity’s causes and consequences that don’t hold up to scrutiny.”

For the full article, please go to: http://news.ucsc.edu/2011/10/guthman-weighing-in.html.

For more information about Professor Guthman’s work, please go to: http://foodandbody.ucsc.edu.