This book examines the public controversies surrounding lifestyle risks in the consumer society. Comparing news coverage of the 'globesity' pandemic in Britain and the USA, it illustrates the way moral panic brought children's food marketing to the centre of the policy debates about consumer lifestyles.

Newly updated for the digital era, this classic textbook provides a comprehensive historical study of advertising and its function within contemporary society by tracing advertising's influence throughout different media and cultural periods, from early magazines through to social media. With several new chapters on the rise of the Internet, mobile, and social media, this fourth edition offers new insights into the role of Google, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube as both media and advertisi...

Groundbreaking analysis showing that greater economic equality-not greater wealth-is the mark of the most successful societies, and offering new ways to achieve it."Get your hands on this book."-Bill MoyersThis groundbreaking book, based on thirty years' research, demonstrates that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them-the well-off and the poor. The remarkable data the book lays out and the measures it uses...

Obese individuals are twice as likely to experience heart failure as non-obese people. More than eighty-five per cent of type 2 diabetes sufferers are overweight. And in the United States, obese and overweight individuals make up more than two-thirds of the adult population. Public health organizations and governments have traditionally tried to combat obesity through shame-inducing policies, which assure people that they can easily lose weight by eating right and exercising. This generic ...

Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women in PsychologyWinner of the 2010 Susan Koppelman Award for the Best Edited Volume in Women’s Studies from the Popular Culture AssociationWe have all seen the segments on television news shows: A fat person walking on the sidewalk, her face out of frame so she can't be identified, as some disconcerting findings about the "obesity epidemic" stalking the nation are read by a dise...

The Industrial Diet chronicles the long-term transformation of food from a natural resource into an edible commodity that far too often fails to nourish us. Anthony Winson reveals how a combination of technological changes, population growth, and political and economic factors helped constitute and transform mass dietary regimes from the nineteenth century to the present day, and he offers new evidence linking broad-based dietary changes with negative health effects. With its focus on ...

Child protection is one of the most high profile and challenging areas of social work, as well as one where children’s lives and family life are seen to be at stake. Vital as child protection work is, this book argues that there is a pressing need for change in the understanding and consequent organization of child protection in many English speaking countries.The authors present compelling evidence from around the globe demonstrating that systems across the Western world are faili...

For over half a century, food policy has mapped a path for progress based upon a belief that the right mix of investment, scientific input, and human skills could unleash a surge in productive capacity which would resolve humanity's food-related health and welfare problems. It assumed that more food would yield greater health and happiness by driving down prices, increasing availability, and feeding more mouths. In the 21st century, this policy mix is quietly becoming unstuck. In a world m...

Drawing on empirical research, clinical case material and vivid examples from modern culture, The Psychology of Overeating demonstrates that overeating must be understood as part of the wider cultural problem of consumption and materialism. Highlighting modern society's pathological need to consume, Kima Cargill explores how our limitless consumer culture offers an endless array of delicious food as well as easy money whilst obscuring the long-term effects of overconsumption....

This fully updated edition combines the latest research with real-life examples of social marketing campaigns the world over to help you learn how to apply the principles and methods of marketing to a broad range of social issues. The international case studies and applications show how social marketing campaigns are being used across the world to influence changes in behaviour, and reveal how those campaigns may differ according to their cultural context and subject matter. Every chapter ...

This is the first text to offer a comprehensive socio-cultural and historical analysis of the current fitness culture.Fitness today is not simply about health clubs and exercise classes, or measures of body mass index and cardiovascular endurance. Fit for Consumption conceptualizes fitness as a field within which individuals and institutions may negotiate - if not altogether reconcile - the competing and often conflicting social demands made on the individual body that cha...

Despite apocalyptic predictions from a vocal alliance of health professionals, politicians and social commentators that rising obesity levels would lead to a global health crisis, the crisis has not materialised. In this provocative follow up to his classic work of obesity scepticism, The Obesity Epidemic, Michael Gard argues that we have entered into a new, and perhaps terminal, phase of the obesity debate.Evidence suggests that obesity rates are levelling off in Western ...