Allison James, Anne Trine Kjørholt and Vebjørg Tingstad, eds., Children, Food and Identity in Everyday Life. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 208 pp. $US 85.00 hardcover (978-0-230-57599-8).
Both childhood and food are the objects of considerable anxiety in the contemporary public sphere; these anxieties have been interwoven and accentuated by concerns about rising rates of childhood obesity. Public health attention has thus turned to issues such as the school food environment, children’s exposure to marketing, and children’s access to fast food. Implicit in public health debates about childhood obesity are assumptions about the nature of childhood and children’s agency (or lack thereof); the relationship between the child and the family, and the child and society; ideas of risk and responsibility; and the ways in which notions of health are implicated in contemporary constructions of identity … Read more
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