Document Type
Article
Abstract
Although most people in the United States no longer devote the majority of their time to food production, processing, and distribution, food remains a daily fixation. This Article explores three driving food fixations--abundance, thinness, and health--and situates each against an inverse fear--scarcity, fatness, and illness, respectively. Mapping these threats onto U.S. food policy, this Article examines, among other policy arenas, food waste policy, nutrition and health claim labeling law, and food additive regulations. Across food policy, these fixations feed what this Article calls the “politics of abundance.” This politics helps to insulate the food industry from deeper systemic reform aimed at mitigating the industry's human, environmental, and animal exploitation. Turning to the dichotomies of thinness/fatness and health/illness, this Article argues that abundance/scarcity narratives help shape these policy debates and limit the range of available policy. The laws of fatness and illness are thus abundance-promoting, even when abundance is itself a source of harm. The Article concludes by imagining food policy grounded instead in nourishment.
Recommended Citation
Margot J. Pollans, Abundance and Other Food Fixations, 96 U. Colo. L. Rev. 209 (2025), https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/lawfaculty/1286.
Included in
Agriculture Law Commons, Environmental Law Commons, Food and Drug Law Commons, Health Law and Policy Commons
