Food, Fatness and Fitness

Food is one of the most common and intimate ways of expressing care, which is particularly evident in how adults relate to children. Feeding children is a biological act filled with cultural meanings and expectations, an expression of love and care. But do we, perhaps, care too much about children’s food? During my ethnographic research on the politics of children’s food in Poland, one of the participating fathers told me: “When I was at the food market the other day, I saw a mother with her 2-year-old child in a stroller, and that child was holding in her hand a huge Snickers bar and eating it. A 2-year-old child! It’s sometimes outrageous what people give their children to eat, how…

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As I was reading the Sunday newspaper, a colorful full-page advertisement caught my eye. At the bottom sat a juicy burger. Two buns encased a thick patty stacked over arugula and topped with fresh onion rings, tomatoes, and mayonnaise. Behind the burger sat the phrase “Beyond Meat, Serve Love.” Over everything hung a headline declaring “The Next Generation of Beyond Meat is Here and It’s Not Just Loved by Those Who Have Tasted It.” As a historian who has written about food politics in Germany, I’m always curious about food politics in other places. In this case, that other place is the United States. Caught by the color, two mentions of “love,” and, let’s admit it, that mouth-watering burger, I…

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In 2007, a few months before the launch of the iPhone, journalist Nancy Miller reflected on the ominous impact its predecessor, the iPod, was having on consumer behavior. As a handheld device, the iPod could store bulky album collections, allowing its owners to listen to music on the go. Miller also made a more ominous point, suggesting that Apple’s intentions were more far-reaching: the company was enticing consumers to watch television and movies, play games, and follow the latest fashion trends on the Internet-enabled device, freeing people from being stuck at home when it came to consuming content. To help readers visualize what this future portended, Miller used candies and snacks as examples. She presented the Mini Oreo, introduced by the multinational…

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This essay by Thomas Cousins originally appeared on Somatosphere on October 8, 2023. It is reposted with permission by the author and the editors. I start with the question, why was it necessary, from 2008, for Mondi South Africa to spend R50 million (USD 8 million) a year on a nutrition intervention for 10,000 timber plantation labourers in KwaZulu-Natal province? The simple answer, to improve labour productivity, belies the dark histories of colonial conquest and apartheid exploitation, on the one hand, and the developing science of fatigue, nutrition, and infectious disease over the 20th century. The question opens out to a critical look at the way in which these working bodies were understood to metabolise calories and other substances, and suggests a…

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A year ago, I first came across the term “Ozempic Face” in various social media posts and celebrity reporting. The Ozempic Face is, so the complaint, recognizable by sagging facial skin and other signs of ageing – effects of the weight loss caused by the intake of the drug. Semaglutide, sold under the brand name Ozempic, is a drug that lowers blood sugar levels and was initially meant to treat type 2 diabetes, but is now also used for weight loss. Ozempic particularly gained prominence in 2023, when more and more celebrities were rumored to have lost a conspicuous amount of weight in a short period of time – with resulting shortages in supply left people with diabetes struggling to get access. The Ozempic Face is a…

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Food, Fatness and Fitness

Critical Perspectives

The Politics of Children’s Food (and Mothers’ Feeding)

“Beyond Meat” Takes a Historian Back Then

A World of Snackers? Parallels between the Analog and the Digital Age: The Japanese Experience

Metabolism and Capacity: History and Labour in Post-apartheid South Africa

Ozempic and Fat Futurity