ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the main themes characterizing media treatment of obesity in the first decade of the epidemic and which have continued to define media coverage of obesity through the last decade. It considers about the social, cultural, and economic interests and anxieties that undergird and perpetuate the US obsession with obesity. The chapter discusses potential new avenues of scholarship on obesity in the media, particularly as media become more interactive and less tied to traditional forms of print and television dissemination. It also discusses obesity as a threat to the fiscal and physical health of the United States. The chapter looks at how the purported negative health effects of obesity are presented as both scientific fact and also as common sense. It also looks at how, especially in the last 10 years, obesity has come to be presented in the media as primarily an affliction of the poor, minorities, and children.
