Abstract
The current moral panic about fatness in the United Kingdom (as in many other countries) has resulted in the ongoing development of numerous initiatives implemented in an attempt to defuse the so-called ‘obesity time bomb’. As the quote above illustrates, concern about the potential future implications of existing bodyweight/mass is heightened in UK policy discourse when it is focused on children and young people and resultant policy initiatives have in the main aimed to control and regulate children’s (potentially) obese bodies over and above adults’ (see also HOC, 2004; DH, 2008). Building on the critique of the so-called ‘obesity epidemic’ developed in earlier chapters, here we question both the justifications for and the implications of the focus on children in UK anti-obesity policy.1 We do so with reference to recent work across the social sciences, which has questioned how socially constructed ideas about childhood mean that children are increasingly central to political attempts to predict and govern the future in ways which may have unintended consequences for children’s well-being in the here-and-now. We do so with reference to recent work across the social sciences, which has questioned how socially constructed ideas about childhood mean that children are increasingly central to political attempts to predict and govern the future in ways which may have unintended consequences for children’s well-being in the here-and-now. In particular, we draw on work which interrogates the anticipatory logics underpinning both dominant constructions of childhood within policy action which attempts to ameliorate future problems (Ruddick, 2006) and the political economies through which childhood is constructed as a period of investment for the future (Katz, 2008).
The growth of overweight and obesity in the population of our country — particularly amongst children — is a major concern. It is a health time bomb with the potential to explode over the next three decades … Unless this time bomb is defused the consequences for the population’s health, the costs to the NHS and losses to the economy will be disastrous.
(Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer, DH, 2002: 44)
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© 2011 Bethan Evans and Rachel Colls
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Evans, B., Colls, R. (2011). Doing More Good than Harm? The Absent Presence of Children’s Bodies in (Anti-)Obesity Policy. In: Rich, E., Monaghan, L.F., Aphramor, L. (eds) Debating Obesity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230304239_5
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