Big Talk: Narrative Discourse Around Obesity in the Mississippi Delta (Ingrid G. Houck Series in Food and Foodways)

Popular and clinical discussions of obesity in the Mississippi Delta often highlight the region’s "unhealthy" food culture and lifestyle as explanations for what is considered a severe obesity epidemic.In Big Talk: Narrative Discourse Around Obesity in the Mississippi Delta, author Amy Ulmer examines how these narratives about obesity in the Delta obscure the region’s deep structural inequalities by framing poor health as the result of individual choices.Ulmer names this discourse "Delta obesity talk" and traces its circulation through media coverage, clinical literature, and public health campaigns targeting the Lower Mississippi River Delta. By centering such individual behaviors as diet, exercise, and lifestyle, these narratives redirect attention away from systemic issues and onto individual bodies.Ulmer demonstrates that Delta obesity talk regionalizes, moralizes, and racializes national obesity narratives by stressing personal responsibility, threatening escalating health care co