Sugar Rush

Science, Politics and the Demonisation of Fatness

Karen Throsby

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English

Manchester University Press
01 July 2023

Society & Social Sciences; Food & society; Sociology

Series: Inscriptions

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the crusade against sugar rose to prominence as an urgent societal problem about which something needed to be done. Sugar was transformed into the common enemy in a revived 'war on obesity' levelled at 'unhealthy' foods and the people who enjoy them. Are the evils of sugar based on purely scientific fact, or are other forces at play?

Sugar rush explores the social life of sugar in its rise to infamy. The book reveals how competing understandings of the 'problem' of sugar are smoothed over through appeals to science and the demonisation of fatness, with politics and popular culture preying on our anxieties about what we eat. Drawing on journalism, government policy, public health campaigns, self-help books, autobiographies and documentaries, the book argues that this rush to blame sugar is a phenomenon of its time, finding fertile ground in the era of austerity and its attendant inequalities.

Inviting readers to resist the comforting certainties of the attack on sugar, Sugar rush shows how this actually represents a politics of despair, entrenching rather than disrupting the inequality-riddled status quo.

By: Karen Throsby
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 138mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 390g
ISBN: 9781526151551
ISBN 10: 1526151553
Series: Inscriptions
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 01 July 2023
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction 1 What’s wrong with sugar? 2 Hanging together 3 Hidden 4 Giving up sugar 5 Entertaining sugar 6 Taxing sugar 7 Sweetening austerity 8 The (in)visible inequalities of sugar Conclusion Index -- .

Karen Throsby has been researching issues of gender, technology, bodies and health for over 20 years, including work on reproductive technologies, weight loss surgery and endurance sport. She is the author of Immersion: Marathon Swimming, Identity and Embodiment (2016) and When IVF Fails: Feminist, Infertility and the Negotiation of Normality (2004). She is currently Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Leeds.

Reviews for Sugar Rush: Science, Politics and the Demonisation of Fatness

‘Challenging and in the best traditions of critical social science, Karen Throsby unsettles popular misconstructions of the evils of sugar by situating recent controversies in their broader socio-cultural context.’ Dr. Alan Warde, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester -- .