Sugar rush: Science, politics and the demonisation of fatness

by Karen Throsby

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the crusade against sugar rose to prominence as an urgent societal problem about which something needed to be done. Sugar was transformed into the common enemy in a revived ‘war on obesity’ levelled at ‘unhealthy’ foods and the people who enjoy them. Are the evils of sugar based on purely scientific fact, or are other forces at play?

Sugar rush explores the social life of sugar in its rise to infamy. The book reveals how competing understandings of the ‘problem’ of sugar are smoothed over through appeals to science and the demonization of fatness, with politics and popular culture preying on our anxieties about what we eat. Drawing on journalism, government policy, public health campaigns, self-help books, autobiographies and documentaries, the book argues that this rush to blame sugar is a phenomenon of its time, finding fertile ground in the era of austerity and its attendant inequalities.

Inviting readers to resist the comforting certainties of the attack on sugar, Sugar rush shows how this actually represents a politics of despair, entrenching rather than disrupting the inequality-riddled status quo.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, History, Sociology, Food, Health

304 pages, Paperback

Published June 20, 2023

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could give this book 6 stars, I would! It is so incisive, thoroughly documented, and eloquently written. It's the only analysis I know of that includes POLITICS, reading the allegedly apolitical discourses on food choice, nutrition, and health in the context of AUSTERITY that scapegoats, shames, and blames non-elite members of society so as to obscure and distract from the deprivations and harms imposed on them by policy-makers, politicians, and media. It's as good as "How the Other Half Eats," and a great companion to that book.

[A M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so brilliant, well-cited and playful! I laughed out loud throughout, which you kind of have to do with nutrition because otherwise you'll cry. Provides historical context for sugar hysteria and goes through the current talking points and research. She's uninvested in telling us if sugar is "good" or "bad", but wants us to consider why we are obsessing about this and if that's really the problem (I'll tell you what, maybe it's not).

[Tara Criscuolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 stars. This was a very good book!

[Mia Hepplewhite · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting book I think a lot of people should read, provides an excellent critique for nutritionism