immensely raises the social, economic, and political stakes. As we shall see
in the next section, in this context seeing obesity as a disease offers no
refuge from stigma or deviance but, instead, offers additional possibilities
for responsibilization, stigmatization, and discrimination. Below I provide
examples of the kinds of criticism directed at the food industry and at over-
weight individuals.
Parallel to what is still called Big Tobacco in the discourse on obesity
the food industry is often labeled Big Food. The 2012 series of articles in
the online journalPLoS Medicineinvestigating the role of Big Food pro-
vides a typical example (seehttp://www.ploscollections.org/article/browse/
issue/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fissue.pcol.v07.i17;jsessionid=07A6CCB
8246EFA022B242933EA8CF53D; accessed on January 3, 2013). The
first contribution asks: “Soda and Tobacco Industry Corporate Social
Responsibility Campaigns: How Do They Compare?” The assessment is
that instead of taking responsibility for the ill health effects of their pro-
ducts soda companies have increased advertising and lobbying efforts to
convince the public and policy makers of their “corporate social responsi-
bility” (CSR). Against this the final “summary point” is that...
[as] they did with tobacco,public health advocatesneed to counter industry CSR with
strongdenormalizationcampaigns to educate the public and policymakers about the
effects of soda CSR campaigns and the social illscausedby sugary beverages.^17
(Dorfman, Sheyne, Frieman, Wadud, & Gottlieb, 2012; italics added)Obviously, a leading medical journal commissions public health experts to
evaluate whether the level of CSR of the soda industry is commendable or
comparable to the icon of corporateirresponsibility: the tobacco industry.
Apparently the verdict is that irresponsibility abounds and that “public
health advocates” should denormalize the responsible image the soda
industry has been able to establish. These medical experts all but openly
label the food industry as deviant.
They would not be the first experts to do so. An extreme example is
offered by Carol Simontacchi“a certified clinical nutritionist”who
claims that the “Food Industry is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our
Children” ( 2000 ).More restrained but still highly critical and very influen-
tial on policy makers is Marion Nestle in herFood Politics: How the Food
Industry Influences Nutrition and Health(2002). Foreshadowing Dorfman’s
conclusion Nestle wrote inFood Politicsthat Big Food “marketeers will do
whatever they can to encourage even the youngest children to ask for
advertised products in hopes of enticing young people to become lifetime
consumers”(2002, p. 195).^18 Nestle is one of the two guest editors for the
PLoS series stating in their editorial: “To understand who is responsible for
Obesity as Disease and Deviance 129