The Neoliberal Diet

This “remarkable, comprehensive” study of neoliberal agribusiness and the obesity epidemic “is critical reading for food studies scholars” (Contemporary Sociology).

Obesity rates are rising across the United States and beyond. While some claim that people simply eat too much “energy-dense” food while exercising too little, The Neoliberal Diet argues that the issue is larger than individual lifestyle choices. Since the 1980s, the shift toward neoliberal regulation has enabled agribusiness multinationals to thrive by selling a combination of meat and highly processed foods loaded with refined flour and sugars—a diet that originated in the United States. Drawing on extensive empirical data, Gerardo Otero identifies the socioeconomic and political forces that created this diet, which has been exported around the globe at the expense of people’s health.

Otero shows how state-level actions, particularly subsidies for big farms and agribusiness, have ensured the dominance of processed foods and made fresh foods inaccessible to many. Comparing agrifood performance across several nations, including the NAFTA region, and correlating food access to class inequality, he convincingly demonstrates the structural character of food production and the effect of inequality on individual food choices. Resolving the global obesity crisis, Otero concludes, lies not in blaming individuals but in creating state-level programs to reduce inequality and make healthier food accessible to all.