Julie Guthman: Weighing in: obesity, food justice, and the limits of capitalism: University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2011, 227 pp, ISBN 978-0-520-26625-4

Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism by Julie Guthman is reviewed. Guthman's Weighing In is a much-needed critical analysis of the dominant discourse surrounding the so-called obesity epidemic. By examining nutritional, medical, political, and capitalist contributions to what has essentially become a non-debate, Guthman explains how the public came to speciously conceptualize obesity as a product of inadequate nutritional education, poor personal choice, and lack of will power. Further, Guthman demonstrates how this conceptualization precludes the discovery of the actual causes of obesity. Guthman compellingly argues that society is operating with a dangerously over-simplified view of the problem, one which is riddled with so many unquestioned assumptions about the causes of obesity that it is inherently biased, self-serving, and counterproductive.