Resisting biopedagogies of obesity in a problem population: understandings of healthy eating and healthy weight in a Newfoundland and Labrador community

Abstract

High rates of obesity in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada’s eastern-most province, have helped to position Newfoundlanders as a ‘problem population’ within discourses of the Canadian obesity ‘epidemic.’ As such, biopedagogies of obesity have been deployed by public health offices in the province, through which Newfoundlanders are imagined as unhealthy eaters who are unknowledgeable about healthy eating, a narrative which aligns with older classist stereotypes about Newfoundland as ubiquitously poor, its population uneducated, backward, and naïve. A qualitative study with 28 participants (and a total of 54 interviews) from St. John’s, the urban center of Newfoundland and Labrador, however, not only revealed a group of people quite knowledgeable about and invested in biopedagogies of healthy eating and healthy weights as propagated by public health discourse, but who also resisted them through alternative understanding of healthy foodways. Results of this study therefore contribute to critical obesity scholarship, as they interrupt assumptions that position populations with high obesity rates as unknowing and uncaring about healthy eating and body weight, demonstrate the ways in which a population might resist biopedagogies of obesity, and highlight the need for research disrupting universalist stereotypes about ‘problem populations’ and their health behaviors.

Keywords:

• obesity
• healthy eating
• biopedagogies
• Canada
• healthy policy

Acknowledgements

Research for this study was undertaken with funds from the Institute for Social and Economic Research, Memorial University, and the Smallwood Foundation. Thank you to my postdoctoral supervisor, Dr Natalie Beausoleil, for her guidance and insight. Thank you also to the anonymous reviewers, associate aditor, and editor for their invaluable comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. Racialized, classed, and gendered populations are unfairly targeted in obesity discourse, evident in the fact that dominant populations with high levels of obesity, such as higher income Canadian men (Godley & McLaren 2010), are not organized as ‘problem populations.’ Thus, the organization of marginalized populations as ‘problem populations’ in obesity discourse can be considered inflections of racism, sexism and classism.

2. Many participants in the St. John’s area often spoke in what is known in Canada as a ‘Newfoundland accent.’ To respect the culture and background of participants, I have left the dialect as-is within my account of participants’ words, along with other expressions of the region, such as ending sentences ending with the word ‘girl’ or words ending in ‘s’ (i.e. I wants it).