Fighting Fat: The Role of ‘Field Experts’ in Mediating Science and Biological Citizenship

Abstract

Diet, fitness, and healthy living have become popular topics of media coverage and public health campaigns. Stories about the health hazards of fat draw heavily on scientific knowledge, the expertise of scientists and medical doctors, and increasingly on new field experts such as nutrition consultants and personal health trainers. A case study of an anti-fat campaign—the Fat Rebellion—run by Finland's biggest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, shows that field experts have become important mediators of scientific expertise. Nutrition therapists, personal fitness trainers, lifestyle coaches, and other field experts were the most cited actors in the campaign. The field experts promoted dietary foods, guidance, measurement technologies, and health training. The field experts in the Fat Rebellion also acted as mediators of biological citizenship: participants of the campaign were encouraged to take a greater responsibility for their health and vitality. Compared to scientific experts, field experts did not appear so much as sources of scientific information, but instead as authorised users of that information and specialists of employing commercial health technologies. They give advice and encourage citizens to record their weight and offer detailed prescriptions of healthy lifestyles. This combination of theoretical and practical knowledge as well as their daily or weekly face-to-face relationship with people in quest of healthy lifestyles makes them powerful mediators of biological citizenship.

Key Words:

• health
• media
• experts
• biological citizenship
• obesity

Notes

1 The same agency category could appear more than once in the same article.

2 By campaign articles we refer to articles published under the campaign logo.

3 By lifestyle coaches we refer not only to professionals of individual health promotion, but to a whole range of service providers operating in the individual domain, such as style and colour consultants, living skills consultants, and workplace coaches. All offer help and support with everyday problems that people have traditionally resolved themselves, or with the help of family members.