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1 1 • A CONTESTED FIELD June 22, 2011: ABC News (Carollo and Salahi 2011) reports on research findings out of the Harvard School of Public Health. To understand the relationship between lifestyle and weight, investigators examined three separate studies spanning a twenty-year period that included over 120,000 subjects . They found that weight gain was associated with several foods; at the top of the list of nutritional culprits were potato chips, processed meats, and sugarsweetened drinks. August 10, 2010: A Medical News Today (George 2010) headline reads, “Research Shows Sugary Drinks Do Not Cause Weight Gain.” The article reports on a study published in the journal Appetite that monitored the eating, drinking , and exercise habits of fifty-three overweight women. Subjects were placed in one of two groups and blindly given either a sugar-sweetened or an artificially sweetened drink to consume during the study period. Weigh-ins at the end of the four-week study period found no differences in weight gain among the two groups. The study’s primary investigator concludes, “Sugar in moderation plays a neutral role in the balanced diet, but an emotionally charged role in the psychology of food choice.” So by some accounts, sugar-sweetened drinks contribute to weight gain. By others, sugar-sweetened drinks do not. Examples of contradictory claims about weight and the fat body abound. Here are two more. December1,2010:TheAssociatedPress(Nano2010)reportsthatastudypublished in the New England Journal of Medicine involving approximately 1.5 million people found that adults who were overweight were 13 percent more likely to die during the study period compared to adults in the ideal weight range. The Associated Press quotes a senior author of the study: “Having a little meat on your bones—if that meat happens to be fat—is harmful, not beneficial.” February 2, 2010: The news agency Reuters (Joelving 2010) reports on an Australian study’s claim that being overweight can increase longevity. Published 2 Framing Fat in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, the study followed more than 9,000 adults aged seventy through seventy-five and found that overweight subjects were 13 percent less likely to die during a ten-year period. The conclusion: fat may serve a protective function in old age. So fat decreases longevity; fat extends longevity. These are only a few examples of how the mass media regularly bombard us with news about the fat body, including the latest scientific research. Some of this information is consistent at face value, but some of it—like these stories— does not seem to add up. Constructing Social Problems In many ways, we should expect multiple claims about the fat body—what it is, what it signifies, and how we should respond to it. Social scientists have long shown how social issues do not necessarily stem from an objective reality. Instead, multiple claims makers (e.g., social movement actors, institutions, and organizations) vie to define the meaning of social, including medical, phenomena (Best 1989; Blumer 1971; Kitsuse and Spector 1973; Schneider 1985; Spector and Kitsuse 1973). Widespread and popular sentiments about the fat body thus do not represent an unambiguous reality about fat but, rather, the ability of claims makers to shape cultural understandings in the public arena (Hilgartner and Bosk 1988). From this perspective, conflicting information, such as competing research findings about fat, becomes fodder for claims makers—fodder to be used in constructing a version of reality. Often the version of reality constructed by one claims maker is intended to challenge the versions of reality created by rival claims makers. As social scientists have pointed out, claims makers are diverse and often have competing interests and stakes in a broad variety of social behavior and phenomena. Some claims makers, such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (Reinarman 1988) or pro-life activists (Luker 1984), act in the capacity of moral entrepreneurs (Becker 1963; Monaghan, Hollands, and Pritchard 2010), crusading vehemently against some form of “deviant” behavior that they claim poses some perceived moral threat. Other claims makers, such as medical professionals and representatives of medical industries—from surgeons to pharmaceutical companies—push a medical response to some condition (Bury 1986; Conrad 1992; Conrad and Schneider 1980). The role of medical claims makers has been particularly evident over the last several decades owing in part to increased medicalization—the application and expansion of medicine and medical authority over increasing realms of human life (Conrad 1992; Zola 1972). Conditions such as erectile quality (Wienke 2005), dementia in the...

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