The Covid-19 Pandemic, Gendered Labour, and Crisis: Lived Experiences of the Collapse of the Political Economy of Social Reproduction

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Obesity has soared to 'epidemic' levels in Britain over the last decade. The latest UK Governmentstatistics estimate that over a quarter of adults and one fifth of children are either obese or overweight(Baker, 2018). As the most serious, costly and widespread public health issue in British Society, obesityis a risk-factor for diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and osteoarthritis and is on track to overtakesmoking as the most prevalent cause of cancer (Cancer Research UK, 2018). Historically, obesity hasbeen a disease of affluent societies. However, rising obesity rates over the last two decades correlatespecifically with growing inequality, with high rates of obesity spatially clustered amongst deprivedpopulations. Impoverished children are twice as likely to be obese than their wealthier peers, and adultsliving in the most deprived areas of England are 46% more likely to be obese than adults living in theleast deprived areas (Baker, 2018: 9). Given this structural and spatial correlation, why is obesityrepresented by the media and public health campaigns as a consequence of individual lifestyle choicesrather than socio-economic factors such as money for and access to healthy food? Particularly, why isobesity represented as an individualised social pathology, a stigma, rather than a social problem ofinequality?