What's Wrong With Fat? (41 page)

142. Kersh and Morone, “The Politics of Obesity” ; Morone,
Hellfire Nation
; Dorothy
Roberts,
Killing the Black Body
(New York: Vintage, 1998).

143. “Fat Tax for Lean Times,”
New York Times
, April 3, 2005.

144. See also Boero, “All the News That’s Fat to Print.”

145. Hillel Schwartz,
Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies, and Fat
(London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1986), 25.

146. Wolf,
Is Breast Best?

147. Ritter, “Kids on Front Lines of Obesity War.”

148. Linda Blum,
At the Breast: Ideologies of Breastfeeding and Motherhood in the
Contemporary United States
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2000).

149. With the exception of biological cause and individual choice, all differences are
statistically significant at p<0.05, meaning there is a 95 percent probability that
these differences are not the product of sampling error.

150. Saguy and Almeling, “Fat in the Fire?”

151. Roberts,
Killing the Black Body
; Doris Witt,
Black Hunger: Food and the Politics of
U.S. Identity
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

152. Gersh Kuntzman, “American Beat: Food Fight,”
Newsweek
, December 9, 2002.

153. Wolf,
Is Breast Best?
; Roberts,
Killing the Black Body
.

154. Brian Braiker, “Beets, Not Burgers,”
Newsweek
, June 25, 2003.

155. Marc Santora, “Study Finds More Obesity and Less Exercising among New York
City’s Women Than Its Men,”
New York Times
, March 8, 2005.

156. Jennifer Grossman, “Vogue Vs. Health,”
National Review
, July 8, 2003.

157. Lynda Richardson, “Telling Children Not to Inhale Junk Food, Either,”
New York
Times
, July 24, 2003.

158. Denise Brodey, “Blacks Join the Eating-Disorder Mainstream,”
New York Times,
September 20, 2005.

159. Ibid.

160. Saguy and Almeling, “Fat in the Fire?”

161. Race and class are often conflated in news media discussions of obesity, by, for
instance, discussing “the poor and minorities” as a group or by using examples of
poor members of ethnic minorities to illustrate larger discussions of, say, “black”
or “Latino” culture.

162. Frances Frank Markus, “Why Baked Catfish Holds Lessons for Their Hearts,”
New York Times
, June 21, 1998.

163. Ibid.

164. Sylvia Noble Tesh,
Hidden Arguments: Political Ideology and Disease Prevention
Policy
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 45–46.

165. Ibid.

166. Michele Lamont,
Money, Morals and Manners: The Culture of the French and
American Upper-Middle Class
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) ; Alex
Inkeles, “Continuity and Change in the American National Character,” in
The
Third Century: America as a Post-Industrial Society
, ed. Seymour Martin Lipset
(Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1979), 390–453 ; Michele Lamont,
The
Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and
Immigration
(New York: Russell Sage Foundation; Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2000) ; Lamont and Thévenot,
Rethinking Comparative Cultural
Sociology
; Martin Gilens,
Why Americans Hate Welfare
(Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1999).

167. Henri Bergeron, “Les politiques de santé publique ou le souci tutélaire du
bien-être collectif” (unpublished manuscript, 2009).

168. Peter N. Stearns,
Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West
(New York:
New York University Press, 1997).

169. The remainder of this chapter draws from Saguy, Gruys, and Gong, “Social
Problem Construction and National Context.”

170. For more details on sampling and coding, see the methodological appendix.

171. Jean-Marc Biais, “Santé Publique: Pas de Diète au Sénat,”
L’Express
, July 19,
2004.

172. Martin Hirsch, “Tribune libre—Martin Hirsch,”
L’Express
, July 26, 2004.

173. Florence Amalou, “L’Industrie Alimentaire en Ordre Dispersé Face aux Dangers
de l’Obésité,”
Le Monde
, November 7, 2003.

174. Frank Dobbin,
Forging Industrial Policy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994) ; Bertraud Badie and Pierre Birnbaum,
Th
e Sociology of the State
, trans.
Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).

175. Claude Fischler and Estelle Masson,
Manger: Français, Européens et Américains
Face à l’Alimentation
(Paris: Odile Jacob, 2008).

176. Pollan,
In Defense of Food
; Fischler and Masson,
Manger
.

177. Barry Glassner,
Th
e Gospel of Food: Everything You Know about Food Is Wrong
(New
York: Ecco, 2007), 3
,
citing Leslie Brenner,
American Appetite
(New York:
HarperCollins, 1999).

CHAPTER 4

1. W. Lance Bennett,
News: The Politics of Illusion
(New York: Longman, 1983);
Robert Darnton, “Writing News and Telling Stories,”
Daedalus
104 (1975): 174–
94 ; Juanne N. Clarke and Michelle M. Everest, “Cancer in the Mass Print Media:
Fear, Uncertainty and the Medical Model,”
Social Science and Medicine
62 (2006):
2591–600.

2. Dorothy Nelkin,
Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology
(New
York: Freeman, 1987) ; Thomas F. Gieryn and Anne E. Figert, “Ingredients for a
Theory of Science in Society: O-Rings, Ice Water, C-Clamp, Richard Feynman,
and the Press,” In
Th
eories of Science in Society,
eds. Cozzens, Susan E. and Thomas
F. Gieryn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990): 67–97 ; Gaye Tuchman,
Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality
(New York: Free Press, 1978).

3. Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones,
Agendas and Instability in American
Politics
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

4. Michael Schudson,
The Sociology of the News
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
2003)
;
Richard Ericson et al.,
Negotiating Control: A Study of News Sources
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989) ; Herbert Gans,
Deciding What’s
News
(New York: Patheon, 1979).

5. The next three paragraphs draw upon Abigail C. Saguy and Kevin W. Riley,
“Weighing Both Sides: Morality, Mortality and Framing Contests over Obesity,”
Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law
30, no. 5 (2005): 869–921.

6. Robert J. Kuczmarski et al., “Increasing Prevalence of Overweight among US
Adults. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, 1960 to 1991,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
(
JAMA
) 272 (1994): 205–11.

7. Kuczmarski et al., “Increasing Prevalence of Overweight among US Adults,” 211.

8. Xavier F. Pi-Sunyer, “The Fattening of America,”
JAMA
272, no. 3 (1994) : 238,
quoted in Peter Pringle, “Washington Counts Cost of Fat America Getting Fatter,”
Th
e Independent,
July 19, 1994.

9. Pringle, “Washington Counts Cost of Fat America Getting Fatter” ; Susan Powter,
“Let’s Get in High Gear in Battle against Fat,”
Plain Dealer,
August 2, 1994.

10.
New York Times
, “Trimming the Nation’s Fat,” December 11, 1994.

11. Joel Achenbach, “Eat up, Lads, and Be Hearty,”
Washington Post,
December 30,
1994.

12. Melinda Beck, “An Epidemic of Obesity,”
Newsweek
, August 1, 1994, 62, cited in
Saguy and Riley, “Weighing Both Sides.”

13. Rogan Kersh and James Morone, “The Politics of Obesity: Seven Steps to
Government Action,”
Health Aff airs
21, no. 6 (2002): 144.

14. Ibid.

15. The other six triggers include
social disapproval
,
self-help organizations
(think
Overeaters Anonymous and Weight Watchers),
demon users
(in this case, this
would be people who are vilified for being fat),
demon industry
(e.g., the food
industry or fat food industry)
, a mass movement
(against obesity), and
interest
group action
(e.g., by the IOTF).

16. Nelkin,
Selling Science
; Maria E. Carlsson, “Cancer Patients Seeking Information
from Sources outside the Health Care System,”
Supportive Care in Cancer
8, no. 6
(2000): 453–57.

17. Glenn A. Gaesser, Big Fat Lies: The Truth about Your Weight and Your Health
(New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1996); Paul Campos, The Obesity Myth: Why
America’s Obsession with Weight Is Hazardous to Your Health (New York: Gotham
Books, 2004).

18. Ali H. Mokdad et al., “The Spread of the Obesity Epidemic in the United States,
1991–1998,”
JAMA
282, no. 16 (1999): 1519–22.

19. David B. Allison et al., “Annual Deaths Attributable to Obesity in the United
States,”
JAMA
282, no. 16 (1999): 1530–38.
A more recent study by CDC
researchers estimated the number of excess deaths among those with a BMI
greater than 30 (compared to those in the full “normal weight” category of 18.5 to
25) to be about 112,000. This study found that “overweight” (BMI 25–30)
saves
almost 90,000 lives each year and that
under
weight costs about 30,000 lives. K.
M. Flegal et al., “Excess Deaths Associated with Underweight, Overweight, and
Obesity,”
JAMA
293, no. 15 (2005): 1861–67.

20. Jeffrey P. Koplan and William H. Dietz, “Caloric Imbalance and Public Health,”
JAMA
282 (1999): 1579–81.

21. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman,
Th
e Social Construction of Reality
(Garden
City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1967).

22. Specific studies in the 2003 theme issue included a study of low-carbohydrate
diets; an article on the quality of life of children with an average BMI of 34.7; a
comparative study of self-help weight-loss programs and a structured commercial
program; the efficacy of the weight-loss drugs zonisamide in adults and
sibutramine in adolescents; and a study of the relationship between sedentary
behaviors and obesity and type 2 diabetes in women. One editorial reviewed avail
able weight-loss techniques and called for more research of the “obesity epidemic,”
while another editorial decried increasing rates of pediatric and adolescent obe
sity and called for behavioral modification, research into pharmacotherapy and
surgery, and prevention. There was a report on the effect of lifestyle changes on
systemic vascular inflammation and insulin resistance and a very technical study
of the safety and efficacy of injections of Recombinant Variant of Ciliary
Neurotrophic Factor (rhvCNTF) for weight loss.
Dena M. Bravata et al., “Efficacy and Safety of Low-Carbohydrate Diets: A
Systematic Review,”
JAMA
289, no. 14 (2003): 1837–50 ; Jeffrey B. Schwimmer,
Tasha M. Burwinkle, and James W. Varni, “Health-Related Quality of Life of
Severely Obese Children and Adolescents,”
JAMA
289, no. 14 (2003): 1813–19;
Stanley Heshka et al., “Weight Loss with Self-Help Compared with a Structured
Commercial Program: Arandomized Trial,”
JAMA
289, no. 14 (2003): 1792–98;
Kishore M. Gadde et al., “Zonisamide for Weight Loss in Obese Adults: A
Randomized Controlled Trial,”
JAMA
289, no. 14 (2003): 1820–25 ; Robert I.
Berkowitz et al., “Behavior Therapy and Sibutramine for the Treatment of
Adolescent Obesity: A Randomized Controlled Trial,”
JAMA
289, no. 14 (2003):
1805–12 ; Frank B. Hu et al., “Television Watching and Other Sedentary Behaviors
in Relation to Risk of Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Women,”
JAMA
289, no. 14 (2003): 1785–91 ; George A. Bray, “Low-Carbohydrate Diets and
Realities of Weight Loss,”
JAMA
289, no. 14 (2003): 1853–55 ; Katherine Esposito
et al., “Effect of Weight Loss and Lifestyle Changes on Vascular Inflammatory
Markers in Obese Women: A Randomized Trial,”
JAMA
289, no. 14 (2003): 1799–
804 ; Mark P. Ettinger et al., “Recombinant Variant of Ciliary Neurotrophic Factor
for Weight Loss in Obese Adults: A Randomized, Dose-Ranging Study,”
JAMA
289, no. 14 (2003): 1826–32.