Paper short abstract:

Fat cells influence metabolism, revealing that eaters' choices are affected by the materiality of foods. I examine the assumptions carried by health initiatives aiming to shape food choices with a focus on how social and environmental factors are understood to be enfolded in molecular processes.

Paper long abstract:

While the causes of obesity are contested, emphasis is often placed on the shift between energy intake and expenditure in societies where energy-dense foods are widely available and aggressively advertised. The "natural" body is understood to have developed mechanisms that motivate eaters to seek out energy-dense foods, a hardwiring which is maladaptive in today's plethoric environment. International public health initiatives aim to inform eaters about food choices, in a manner that sometimes assumes that information straightforwardly leads to changed behaviour. The French Program for Nutrition and Health has been criticised for adopting a restrictive model in aiming to curtail individual eaters' consumption.

This paper draws on research on French obesity treatment programs that depart from cognitive restriction models - with their attendant focus on nutritional calculations - focusing instead on commensality and the sensory aspects of eating. These programs consider that dieting ultimately fails to bring about weight-reduction and leads to overall weight-gain or disordered eating in the long-term. Pleasure and the social context of food consumption are understood to affect the material action of foods in the body. Recent findings show that fat cells have a memory and actively influence metabolism by secreting hormones, revealing that eaters are not the only active term, but that the choices they make are affected by the materiality of the foods they ingest. This paper examines the assumptions carried by different models for educating eaters concerning the role of social and environmental factors and examines how these are understood to be enfolded in molecular processes.