Weight of Obesity: Hunger and Global Health in Postwar Guatemala (California Studies in Food and Culture)

California Studies in Food and Culture #57

by Emily Yates-Doerr

A woman with hypertension refuses vegetables. A man with diabetes adds iron-fortified sugar to his coffee. As death rates from heart attacks, strokes, and diabetes in Latin America escalate, global health interventions increasingly emphasize nutrition, exercise, and weight loss―but much goes awry as ideas move from policy boardrooms and clinics into everyday life. Based on years of intensive fieldwork, The Weight of Obesity offers poignant stories of how obesity is lived and experienced by Guatemalans who have recently found their diets―and their bodies―radically transformed. Anthropologist Emily Yates-Doerr challenges the widespread view that health can be measured in calories and pounds, offering an innovative understanding of what it means to be healthy in postcolonial Latin America. Through vivid descriptions of how people reject global standards and embrace fatness as desirable, this book interferes with contemporary biomedicine, adding depth to how we theorize structural violence. It is essential reading for anyone who cares about the politics of healthy eating.

Genres: Food, Anthropology

247 pages, Paperback

First published September 22, 2015

Reviews

[Melanie Guardado · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for Health and Culture in the Americas

This was a perfectly mid book. While it offered very interesting looks into the way obesity is measured and quantified in Guatemala, I feel like the author never delved into any of the historical, social, and political contexts surrounding these institutions enough. Just when she was making a good observation, she moved on. I also barely learned anything about the actual food practices of the villages. Maybe this wasn’t her main focus, but if the book is based on weight and diets, I assumed there would be a larger emphasis on food.

[Case · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh shit. Actually very, very good! Uses metrification to describe a regime of nutrition and "obesity," in so far as these clear cut labels and diagnostic tools of thinness vs. and/or obesity are challenged by the lived social experiences of fatness for Guatemalans, mostly women but also their surrounding social ties and relationship, in Xela. The tools and advice used by the dominant global health paradigm cannot break down the lived everydays of Guatemalans into their metrified parts; the nutritionists diets, exercise regimens and prescriptions are always relational and negotiated.

Does take for granted that BMI is total BS. If you're looking for a book critiquing the category of obesity this isn't quite it - instead this book answers an ontological question by breaking down obesity into sets of practices and tools.

[Alyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book explores the "nutrition transition," where populations move rapidly from widespread hunger to high rates of obesity, often due to the influx of processed, globalized food supplies. In Guatemala, this transition is marked by stark disparities. It is a piercing, rich account of how global food interests and medical counseling transform acts of eating and care into sites of political struggle and social inequity.

[RYD · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author of this book is my older sister. She's a great writer and a deep thinker, and the perspective she offers here is impressive. As her relative, I'm all verklempt. 'Nuff said.

[Gwenyth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this one, a little bit disappointed. The topic is a really interesting and important one, just wasn't sold of Yates' exploration of it.