Haslam, D.W. & Haslam, F. (2009) Fat, Gluttony And Sloth: Obesity In Literature, Art And Medicine. Liverpool University Press

Historical symbol of wealth and fertility, stigma of the modern West, and currently the world’s second-leading cause of preventable death: despite advances in hygiene, science, and public health, obesity and its corpulent imagery are inescapable reminders of a global epidemic and its manifold incarnations. For the first time, the number of overweight people in the world has overtaken the number of those malnourished and in Fat, Gluttony, and Sloth, the current crisis is put in historical perspective. The authors examine the changing meaning of “fat” in the public consciousness—reconsidering art, literature, and the history of medicine alongside circus freaks, pharmacology, and present-day trends in food and fashion—all in an effort to glean knowledge from examining our heavy past.

Dixon J & Broom DH (2007) The 7 deadly sins of obesity. How the modern world is making us fat. Sydney: UNSW Press.

In the thirteenth century, Saint Thomas Aquinas identified the seven major sins. These sins, particularly sloth and greed, are now frequently invoked to explain obesity.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Obesity argues that the skyrocketing increase in the rate of obesity in Australia (as has also occurred in many Western countries) is not due to morally suspect individuals. Instead it points to a modern society that lacks the virtues necessary for people to adopt and maintain healthy behaviours.

The book details seven contemporary sins that contribute to the obesity and overweight epidemic:
1. An obsession with consumption
2. Time pressures
3. Parenting demands
4. Obsessions with technology
5. A reliance on cars
6. The marketing of unhealthy products, and
7. Competing sources of advice.
The authors then suggest ways of challenging these sins.

Delpeuch F, Maire B, Monnier E, Holdsworth M (2009) Globesity: A planet out of control? London: Earthscan.

Obesity represents one of the major global health challenges of the 21st century.

Its occurrence has now reached epidemic proportions, not only in industrialized nations, but increasingly in less developed countries too.

Written by world-leading specialists in public health nutrition, Globesity cuts straight to the underlying nature and causes of this devastating trend. It shows that the causes of obesity are primarily socio-economic and the result of a distorted agricultural and food production and supply system. To address this problem, we must learn how to better manage the physical, social and economic environment rather than simply focusing on individual lifestyle choices.

The authors draw startling parallels between the obesity crisis and climate change, both of which are characterized by the over-consumption of increasingly scarce resources and require radical, urgent and sustainable solutions. The authors argue that if we are to deal with the twin crises of our climate and our waistlines, action must be taken now.

Drawing on a wide range of sources and disciplines, including anthropology, economics, sociology, epidemiology, medicine and nutrition, Globesity provides a vital treatment of the issues for general readers, health professionals, policy-makers and students alike.

Forth CE & Carden-Coyne A (eds) (2005) Cultures of the Abdomen: Diet, Digestion, and Fat in the Modern World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

We live in a world obsessed with abdomens. Whether we call it the belly, tummy, or stomach, we take this area of the body for granted as an object of our gaze, the subject of our obsessions, and the location of deeply felt desires. Diet, nutrition, and exercise all play critical roles in the development of our body images and thus our sense of self, not least because how we are made to feel about bodies (both our own and those of others) is often grounded in dietary and lifestyle choices. Cultures of the Abdomen traces the history of social, cultural, and medical ideas about the stomach and related organs since the seventeenth century, and demonstrates that a focused study of the abdomen is necessary for understanding the deep historical meanings that underscore our contemporary obsessions with hunger, diet, fat, indigestion, and excretion. It locates that history from dietary ideals in early modern Europe to the vexing issue of American fat in the twenty-first century, surveying along the way developments in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia.

Lambert H & McDonald M (eds) (2009) Social Bodies. New York: Berghan Books.

A proliferation of press headlines, social science texts and “ethical” concerns about the social implications of recent developments in human genetics and biomedicine have created a sense that, at least in European and American contexts, both the way we treat the human body and our attitudes towards it have changed.

This volume asks what really happens to social relations in the face of new types of transaction – such as organ donation, forensic identification and other new medical and reproductive technologies - that involve the use of corporeal material. Drawing on comparative insights into how human biological material is treated, it aims to consider how far human bodies and their components are themselves inherently “social.”

The case studies – ranging from animal-human transformations in Amazonia to forensic reconstruction in post-conflict Serbia and the treatment of Native American specimens in English museums – all underline that, without social relations, there are no bodies but only “human remains.” The volume gives us new and striking ethnographic insights into bodies as sociality, as well as a potentially powerful analytical reconsideration of notions of embodiment. It makes a novel contribution, too, to “science and society” debates.

Longhurst R (2001) Bodies: exploring fluid boundaries. London: Routledge.

Exploring bodiy boundaries and fluids can prompt new understandings of power, knowledge and social relationships between people and places.

Geography has recently seen something of a 'body craze'. The politics that surround bodies and spaces are increasingly being held up to scrutiny. Despite this, the 'leaky', 'messy' zones between the inside and outside of bodies and their resulting spatial relationships, remain largely unexamined in the discipline.

This book revolves around three case studies - pregnant bodies in public places, men's bodies in domestic toilets and bathrooms, managers' bodies in Central Business Districts. These bodies share an abject materiality. The pregnant body threatens to expel matter from inside. It is often constructed as 'ugly' and as 'matter out of place' in the public sphere. Geographers have ignored men's bodies in domestic toilets and bathrooms boundaries are broken and then made solid again.Women and men managers in Central Business Districts are increasingly expected to have firm and flexible bodies. Highly tailored, dark coloured business suits provide straight lines and starched creases that give the appearence of a body which is impervious to leakage or penetration.

The case studies illustrate that bodies and spaces are socially constructed and yet have an undeniable materiality and fluidity. Ignoring the everyday materiality of bodies that 'leak' and 'seep' is not a harmless ommission, rather it contains a political imperative that helps keep masculinism intact.

Braziel JE & LeBesco K (eds) (2001) Bodies out of bounds: Fatness and transgression. Berkley: University of California Press.

Since World War II, when the diet and fitness industries promoted mass obsession with weight and body shape, fat has been a dirty word. In the United States, fat is seen as repulsive, funny, ugly, unclean, obscene, and above all as something to lose. Bodies Out of Bounds challenges these dominant perceptions by examining social representations of the fat body. The contributors to this collection show that what counts as fat and how it is valued are far from universal; the variety of meanings attributed to body size in other times and places demonstrates that perceptions of corpulence are infused with cultural, historical, political, and economic biases. The exceptionally rich and engaging essays collected in this volume question discursive constructions of fatness while analyzing the politics and power of corpulence and addressing the absence of fat people in media representations of the body.

Nutzenadel A & Trentmann F (eds) (2008) Food and Globalization: Consumption, Markets and Politics in the Modern World. Oxford: Berg.

Food has a special significance in the expanding field of global history. Food markets were the first to become globally integrated, linking distant cultures of the world, and in no other area have the interactions between global exchange and local cultural practices been as pronounced as in changing food cultures.

In this wide-ranging and fascinating book, the authors provide an historical overview of the relationship between food and globalization in the modern world. Together, the chapters of this book provide a fresh perspective on both global history and food studies. As such, this book will be of interest to a wide range of students and scholars of history, food studies, sociology, anthropology and globalization.

Offer A (2006) The Challenge of Affluence. Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain since 1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Since the 1940s Americans and Britons have come to enjoy an era of rising material abundance. Yet this has been accompanied by a range of social and personal disorders, including family breakdown, addiction, mental instability, crime, obesity, inequality, economic insecurity, and declining trust. Avner Offer argues that well-being has lagged behind affluence in these societies, because they present an environment in which consistent choices are difficult to achieve over different time ranges and in which the capacity for personal and social commitment is undermined by the flow of novelty. His approach draws on economics and social science, makes use of the latest cognitive research, and provides a detailed and reasoned critique of modern consumer society, especially the assumption that freedom of choice necessarily maximizes individual and social well-being. The book falls into three parts. Part one analyses the ways in which economic resources map on to human welfare, why choice is so intractable, and how commitment to people and institutions is sustained. It argues that choice is constrained by prior obligation and reciprocity. The second section then applies these conceptual arguments to comparative empirical studies of advertising, of eating and obesity, and of the production and acquisition of appliances and automobiles. Finally, in part three, Offer investigates social and personal relations in the USA and Britain, including inter-personal regard, the rewards and reversals of status, the social and psychological costs of inequality, and the challenges posed to heterosexual love and to parenthood by the rise of affluence.

Ulijaszek SJ (1995) Human energetics in biological anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Many aspects of human activity involve energy transfer of some type. Human Energetics in Biological Anthropology examines some of the ways in which measurements of energy intake, expenditure and balance have been used to study human populations by biological anthropologists and human biologists. The book provides an integration of human adaptation and adaptability approaches, placing these issues in an ecological context by considering traditional subsistence economies in the developing world. This is the first volume to present such an integrated approach, and will be useful in the teaching of biological anthropology, human population biology, nutritional anthropology, and third world nutrition at senior undergraduate and graduate student level.

Ulijaszek SJ, Johnston FE, Preece MA (eds) (1998) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Growth and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Growth and Development is a comprehensive but accessible account of the current understanding of the factors affecting human growth and development. Over 120 internationally renowned experts have contributed to the book, covering topics such as fetal and post-natal growth, the relative impact of genetic and environmental factors, behavioural development, growth abnormalities, the human lifespan and the prospects for future generations. Extensively illustrated with photographs, graphs and diagrams, it offers a great breadth of topic coverage, providing insights into the subject for those not familiar with the areas as well as being essential reading for all students and professionals interested in growth and development, child health and nutrition.