Medical professionals, social policy makers, and the media have all declared that Canada is in the grip of an obesity epidemic. Conceptualizing obesity as a biological condition, these experts insist that it needs to be “prevented” and “managed.”

Obesity in Canada takes a broader, critical perspective of our supposed epidemic. Examining obesity in its cultural and historical context, the book’s contributors ask how we measure health and wellness, where our attitudes to obesity develop from, and what the consequences are of naming and targeting those whose body weights do not match our expectations as “obese.” A broad survey of the issues surrounding the obesity panic in Canada, it is the first collection of fat studies and critical obesity studies from a distinctly Canadian perspective.

Jenny Ellison is the Curator of Sport and Leisure at the Canadian Museum of History.

Deborah McPhail is an assistant professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences in the College of Medicine at the University of Manitoba.

Wendy Mitchinson is a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the Department of History at the University of Waterloo.