Colleagues from Deakin University (Australia) led the Qualitative Methods Journal Club in April 2023, where the subject was overeating, obesity, and the neuroscience of addiction. The group talk about notions of bingeing and craving, comparisons between ‘junk foods’ and drugs, and societal concerns about the body and the everyday practice of eating.
The article manages to home in on the detailed dynamics of addiction and obesity and then widens the aperture to address larger concerns relating to the…everyday practice of eating.
Dr Renae Fomiatti, Dr Kiran Pienaar, Dr Ashleigh Haw, and Dr Kyja Noack-Lundberg held a meeting of the Qualitative Methods Journal Club in April 2023, and discussed Suzanne Fraser’s article, “Junk: overeating and obesity and the neuroscience of addiction”, which was published in Addiction Research and Theory in 2013.
In their follow-up blog, the group summarise Fraser’s argument that addiction is being reframed through scientific interest in obesity.
“Analysing 40 articles across key journals in the fields of addiction and obesity, Fraser notes that the most substantial coverage of obesity as addiction emerges after 2000, reflecting the broader rise in the neuroscience of addiction.”
They also share their scepticism over “obesity as an explanatory concept for understanding food and eating”, and discuss how obesity science and addiction studies overlap through concerns about the body and individual agency.
Original article: Junk: Overeating and obesity and the neuroscience of addiction. By Suzanne Fraser. Published in Addiction Research and Theory (2013).
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