Obesity Metaphors: How Beliefs about the Causes of Obesity Affect Support for Public Policy

Abstract

Context:Relatively little is known about the factors shaping public attitudes toward obesity as a policy concern. This study examines whether individuals' beliefs about the causes of obesity affect their support for policies aimed at stemming obesity rates. This article identifies a unique role of metaphor-based beliefs, as distinct from conventional political attitudes, in explaining support for obesity policies.Methods: This article used the Yale Rudd Center Public Opinion on Obesity Survey, a nationally representative web sample surveyed from the Knowledge Networks panel in 2006/07 (N = 1,009). The study examines how respondents' demographic and health characteristics, political attitudes, and agreement with seven obesity metaphors affect support for sixteen policies to reduce obesity rates. Findings:Including obesity metaphors in regression models helps explain public support for policies to curb obesity beyond levels attributable solely to demographic, health, and political characteristics. The metaphors that people use to understand rising obesity rates are strong predictors of support for public policy, and their influence varies across different types of policy interventions. Conclusions:Over the last five years, the United States has begun to grapple with the implications of dramatically escalating rates of obesity. Individuals use metaphors to better understand increasing rates of obesity, and obesity metaphors are independent and powerful predictors of support for public

Increasing public support for food-industry related, obesity prevention policies: The role of a taste-engineering frame and contextualized values

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Short horizons and obesity futures: Disjunctures between public health interventions and everyday temporalities

“…Obesity discourses are replete with time metaphors in which looking to the future and developing foresight is thought to mitigate risk. Obesity is repeatedly described as a 'time crunch' (Barry et al, 2009), a 'time bomb' and as a 'threat to the future' (Evans, 2010); a risk factor for future illnesses such as diabetes and coronary heart disease. Diprose (2008), building upon Beck's (1992) concept of 'risk society', suggests that this 'comportment towards the future' draws together both calculable and newer, incalculable modes into an intensified paradigm of preemption.…”

Foucault's progeny: Jamie Oliver and the art of governing obesity

“…Obesity is often characterised as a public health 'time bomb', an 'epidemic' in need of 'combat' (cf. Komesaroff and Thomas, 2007, p. 287;Barry et al, 2009). As Monaghan notes in his ethnographic work on men and obesity in the United Kingdom, it was the US Surgeon General Everett Koop who popularised the 'war on obesity' in 1997, which led in 2003 to obesity being referred to as 'the terror within, a threat that is every bit as real to America as weapons of mass destruction' (Monaghan, 2008, p. 1).…”