University of Toronto Press Obesity in Canada: Critical Perspectives

Medical professionals, social policy makers, and the media have all declared that Canada is in the grip of an obesity epidemic. Conceptualizing obesity as a biological condition, these experts insist that it needs to be "prevented" and "managed." Obesity in Canada takes a broader, critical perspective of our supposed epidemic. Examining obesity in its cultural and historical context, the book's contributors ask how we measure health and wellness, where our attitudes to obesity develop from, and what the consequences are of naming and targeting as "obese" those who body weights do not match our expectations. A broad survey of the issues surrounding the obesity panic in Canada, it is the first collection of fat studies and critical obesity studies from a distinctly Canadian perspective. Review "Obesity in Canada is a welcome, and much needed, addition to the study of the fat body as a cultural, social, political, historical, and representational artefact…[The editors] offer, as a whole, a powerful "interruption" into more usual ways of thinking about fat and obesity in Canada and elsewhere." -- Ann Braithwaite ― CBMH Vol 34:2: 2016 About the Author Deborah McPhail is an assistant professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences in the College of Medicine at the University of Manitoba. Wendy Mitchinson is a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the Department of History at the University of Waterloo.