"This book looks at the interweaving of fact and fiction relating to obesity, tracing public concern from the mid-nineteenth century to the modern day. It looks critically at the source of our anxieties, covering issues such as childhood obesity, the production of food, media coverage of the subject, and the emergence of obesity in modern China. Written as a cultural history, the book is particularly concerned with the cultural meanings that have been attached to obesity over time and explores the implications of these meanings for wider society. The history of these debates is the history of fat in culture, from nineteenth-century opera to our global dieting obsession. Fat: A Cultural History of Obesity is a vivid and absorbing cultural guide to one of the most important topics in modern society."--BOOK JACKET.