ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the entanglement of food and care in primary care consultations. Interactions around food, weight and eating that take place during health care consultations can bring up complex emotions. Consultations on food and weight take place in the familiar context of obesity as a major public health crisis, with both the academic and professional literature, as well as the mass media, full of alarm on the impact of the 'obesity epidemic' and the cost especially to publicly-funded health services. Two exploratory frameworks are particularly valuable to contextualize the qualitative literature around consultations on weight. One very clearly is the existence of weight stigma and the 'spoiled identity' of obesity. The other is the embodied experience of being overweight, which is closely linked to emotions and relationships around food. Primary care is different from other health encounters, such as with dieticians, in that there is the potential for an ongoing discussion around weight with the same doctor or nurse.
