About Sugar Rush

This blog is part of a research project called Sugar Rush: Science, Obesity and the Social Life of Sugar. It is funded by the Leverhulme Trust (2017-18) and aims to explore the social life of sugar amidst contemporary panics around body size, health and consumption.

The project begins from the following question:

What are the social meanings and practices of sugar in the context of a 'war on obesity'? 

To conduct the research, I am building a contemporary archive of all things sugar including: policy documents, parliamentary statements, materials and declarations of professional medical associations, anti-obesity organisation materials and products, published scientific research, popular texts (dietary plans, autobiographical accounts, popular scientific tracts), documentary films, websites, media reports and any other sources that both reflect and produce the contemporary social meanings of, attachments to and repudiations of sugar.

The research begins from a position of suspicion towards the contemporary demonisation of the fat body, and my goal isn't to determine the 'truths' of the vociferous dietary debates that sugar finds itself in the centre of, or to offer up prescriptions of how people should or should not eat. Instead, I want to use sugar to think about a wide range of issues including: scientific knowledge production, validation and appropriation; contemporary panics around health and body size; the role of generation, gender, race and class in the production of embodied citizenship; and the politics of food and its lived inequalities.

This blog is a space for me to play with ideas as they emerge from the research, review key books and documentaries, ask critical questions, and hopefully, get feedback and initiate debate. All views are my own.

Thanks for visiting Sugar Rush. Enjoy!

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