Obesity and Social Inequalities : Public Health Campaigns and Their Implementation

In the context of a French “epidemic” of obesity, the question of social inequalities regarding the development of obesity and the implementation of nutritional recommendations coming from public health campaigns constitutes an important concern. Based on a statistical analysis of obesity prevalence (1), on a corpus of 85 semi-directive interviews (2), and on wide corpus of texts related to the French epidemic (3), this contribution will analyze the strong inequalities regarding obesity in France related to social classes, gender and generations, and it will examine the several factors explaining this social gap, in particular the integration of recommendation related to diet and body along the social scale and the way obesity is taken in account in public health campaigns. Emphasis will be placed on the ongoing existence of a strong social hierarchy in which well-to-do and low-income categories are at opposite ends of the scale, and the factors that determine the integration of dietary dictates are presented (economic factors ;  mental representations of diet and body ; the symbolic of sickness  and its relation to diet ; the collective mental representations and identities of each social class). The analysis also shows the social inequalities that exist in the development of norms and the complexity of the intermediate social groups, divided between submission to normative pressure regarding diet and corpulence, and a form of working class rejection.

 We will thus highlight that the French public health campaigns, claiming to be universal, seem destined to fail : in order to raise a strong mobilization when it comes to obesity, public health campaign have neglected social disparities . In consequence, they may have deepened social inequality further because they have ignored – at least until recently -  the social dimension of dietary consumption.