Commercial Returns at the Base of the Pyramid

Abstract

In the 1990s, epidemiologists noticed a trend in the United States that seemed also to apply to other affluent societies. Compared with the previous two decades, the population was getting heavier. Just what was causing this trend, which has seemed to stabilize in the first decade of the twenty-first century, provoked much speculation. Commentators opined that people were eating more, exercising less, or both, as they debated whether this, in turn, reflected a decline in moral fiber or predatory corporate food practices. These explanations would seem to predict universal weight gain across social classes and capitalist societies. And yet, as we know, trends in weight gain vary systematically by social class and by nation. The poor and ethnic minorities are more likely to fall in the obese weight category. And, as this new edited volume further shows, among affluent societies, rates of obesity are highest in nations with the smallest welfare states.