Received: 7 November 2016 Revised: 7 August 2017 Accepted: 15 November 2017

DOI: 10.1111/phc3.12482

ARTICLE

Food Ethics II: Consumption and obesity

Anne Barnhill1 | Tyler Doggett2

1
Johns Hopkins University
2
Abstract
University of Vermont
This article surveys recent work on some issues in the ethics of food
Correspondence
Tyler Doggett, University of Vermont, consumption. It is a companion to our piece on food justice and the
Philosophy Department, 70 S. Williams St, ethics of food production.
Burlington, VT 05405, USA.
Email: tyler.doggett@uvm.edu

1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N

What we eat plays an important role in our identities: We keep kosher or we are vegans or steak enthusiasts or
locavores. We are on paleo‐diets or cleanses. We watch our weights.
What we eat is constrained and enhanced by government policy: The government might prevent us from buying a
Big Gulp or nudge us to buy tomatoes.
What we eat is related in all sorts of ways to how that food is produced. Our eating a tomato might be a way of
benefitting from the slave labor that produced it. Our eating a Big Mac might express our support for the confinement
of cattle or help to produce more confinement in the future.
This essay is about some ethical issues surrounding food consumption. It is a companion to and should be read with
our essay, ‘Food Ethics I: Food Production and Food Justice’, an essay about the ethics of different forms of plant and ani-
mal agriculture and some broader critiques of the food system lodged by food justice and food sovereignty advocates.
Section 2 of this essay surveys arguments about the wrongfulness of individuals' eating various things. Section 3
surveys work on the ethics of food policies meant to cause healthier eating, including work on the ethics of paternal-
ism and libertarian paternalism. Section 4 briefly surveys work critical of ‘obesity epidemic’ discourse and work about
body image, dieting, and obesity.

2 | I N D I V I D U A L S' C O N S U M P TI O N

Some foods are wrongfully produced. They might be wrongfully produced because of wrongful treatment of animals
or workers or the environment. They might be wrongfully produced because they issue from wrongful agricultural
policies. ‘Food Ethics I’, this piece's companion, covers whether and why certain modes of production are wrong. At
any rate, some foods are wrongfully produced. Is it wrong to consume—to buy or eat—such foods? If so, why?1
Starting in Singer (1975) and continuing in many places since, Peter Singer has defended a productivist idea,
according to which consumption of wrongfully produced goods is wrong because it produces, via the market, more
wrongful production. The idea issues an argument that, in outline, is
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2018 The Author(s) Philosophy Compass © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Philosophy Compass. 2018;e12482. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/phc3 1 of 9

https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12482
2 of 9 BARNHILL AND DOGGETT

CONSUMING produces PRODUCTION.

PRODUCTION is wrong.
It is wrong to produce wrongdoing. Hence,
CONSUMING is wrong.

Or never mind actual production. Simplifying some, Singer (1980) argues

CONSUMING is reasonably expected to produce PRODUCTION.

PRODUCTION is wrong.
It is wrong to do something that is reasonably expected to produce
wrongdoing. Hence,
CONSUMING is wrong.

(The arguments that follow might be put in terms of expectation, too. But we ignore that from here on.)
Note that both of these arguments are most plausible with regard to buying. It is buying the wrongfully produced
good that produces more wrongdoing. Eating slave‐picked tomatoes produces more production only by producing
more buying.
The arguments hinge on an empirical claim about (expected) production and a moral claim about the wrongfulness
of producing wrongdoing. As discussed in DeGrazia (2009) and Warfield (2015), the moral claim has far‐reaching
implications. You pay rent. Your landlord uses the rent to buy slave‐picked tomatoes. If buying slave‐picked tomatoes
is wrong because it produces more slave labor, is it wrong to pay rent in this rent case?
Budolfson (2015) and Nefsky (forthcoming) note that we might deny the empirical claim and, instead, accept that
because the food system is so enormous, fed by so many consumers, and so stuffed with money, for most food we con-
sume, our eating or buying has no effect on production. Whether or not this is a good account of how food consumption
typically works, it is an account of a possible system. Consider this modification of a case in McPherson (2015):

Arlo runs Chef in Shackles, a restaurant at which the chef is known to be enslaved. It's a vanity project, and
Arlo will run the restaurant regardless of how many people come. In fact, Arlo just burns the money that
comes in. The enslaved chef is superb; the food is delicious.

The productivist idea does not imply that it is wrong to buy food from or eat at Chef in Shackles. If either is wrong,
a different idea explains its wrongness.
Barry and Wiens (2016) sketch an extractivist idea according to which consumption of wrongful goods is wrong
because it is a benefitting from wrongdoing. This idea can explain why it is wrong to eat at Chef in Shackles. In outline,
the extractivist argument is

CONSUMING extracts benefit from PRODUCTION.

PRODUCTION is wrong.
It is wrong to extract benefit from wrongdoing. Hence,
CONSUMING is wrong.

Unlike the productivist argument, this one is more plausible with regard to eating than buying. It's the eating,
typically, that produces the benefit and not the buying. Unlike the productivist idea, the extractivist idea does not
seem to have any trouble explaining what is wrong with eating in the Chef in Shackles case. Unlike the productivist
idea, it doesn't seem to imply that paying your landlord in the rent case is wrong—paying a landlord is not benefitting
from wrongdoing.
Like the productivist idea, the extractivist idea hinges on an empirical claim about consumer benefits and a moral
claim about the ethics of so benefitting.
Imagine you go to Chef in Shackles, have a truly repulsive meal, and become violently ill afterwards. Have you
benefitted from wrongdoing? If not, the extractivist idea cannot explain what is wrong with eating at the restaurant.
BARNHILL AND DOGGETT 3 of 9

Consider a modification of a case, the terror–love case, proximately from Barry and Wiens (2016) but ultimately
from Garrett Cullity:

A terrorist bomb grievously injures Bob and Cece. They attend a support group for victims, fall in love, and
live happily ever after, leaving them significantly better off than they were before the attack.

Bob and Cece seem to benefit from wrongdoing but seem not to be doing anything wrong by being together.
A participatory idea has no trouble with the terror–love case. According to it, consuming, say, slave‐picked straw-
berries is wrong because it cooperates with or participates in or, in Hursthouse's (2011) phrase, is party to wrongdo-
ing. In outline, the participatory argument goes

CONSUMING is participating in PRODUCTION.

PRODUCTION is wrong.
It is wrong to participate in the production of wrongdoing. Hence,
CONSUMING is wrong.

Unlike the productivist or extractivist ideas, the participatory idea seems equally plausible with regard to buying
and eating. Each is plausibly a form of participating in wrongdoing. Unlike the productivist idea, it has no trouble
explaining why it is wrong to patronize Chef in Shackles and does not imply it is wrong to pay rent to slave‐picked‐
tomato‐eaters. Unlike the extractivist idea, its view of the Chef in Shackles case does not depend on whether getting
food poisoning is a way of extracting benefit. Unlike the extractivist idea, it does not imply that, in the terror–love
case, Bob and Cece do wrong in benefitting from wrongdoing—after all, their failing in love is not a way of participat-
ing in wrongdoing.
Yet, it is not entirely clear what it is to participate in wrongdoing or be party to it or to cooperate with it. When
Darryl refuses to buy slave‐picked tomatoes but does no political work with regard to slavery, is he party to the wrong
of slavery? Does he participate in it or cooperate with slave‐owners? When an antislavery activist buys corn at the
grocery store and the store then buys slave‐picked tomatoes with the money, is the activist participating in that
wrong? Cooperating with it?
As a matter of contingent fact, buying corn in an American grocery store exhibits no objectionable attitude
towards slaves even if that money goes to a slave owner. By contrast, some food consumption might well exhibit
an objectionable attitude. As Adams (2002) notes, it might be that consuming certain foods insults or otherwise
disrespects creatures involved in that food's production. As Lawford‐Smith (2015) notes, it might be that refusing
to consume certain foods exhibits opposition to their production and a willingness to mobilize against them. These
are both exhibitionist ideas about consumption. In outline, one exhibitionist argument is

CONSUMING exhibits a certain attitude towards PRODUCTION.

PRODUCTION is wrong.
It is wrong to exhibit that attitude towards wrongdoing. Hence,
CONSUMING is wrong.

Like the participatory idea, the exhibitionist idea here explains the wrong of eating and buying various goods. Like
the participatory idea, it has no trouble with the Chef in Shackles, rent, or terror–love cases. It does hinge on an empir-
ical claim about exhibition and then a moral claim about the permissibility of that exhibition. One might well wonder
about both. One might well wonder why buying slave‐picked tomatoes exhibits support for that enterprise but paying
rent to someone who will buy those tomatoes does not or wonder whether eating those tomatoes in secret exhibits
support and whether such an exhibition is wrong.
The productivist, extractivist, participatory, and exhibitionist ideas are not mutually exclusive. McPherson (2015)
combines insights from the second and third, arguing it is wrong to consume wrongfully produced goods when and
because it is wrong to aim to benefit from wrongdoing by cooperating with—participating in—a wrongdoer's plan.
He holds that buying industrially produced burgers is wrong because (a) those burgers were wrongfully produced,
4 of 9 BARNHILL AND DOGGETT

(b) the wrongdoers who produced them have a plan to get you to buy them, and (c) when you buy them, you aim to
get something out of those burgers. Compare with Julia Driver (2015) who writes

[E]ating [wrongfully produced] meat is supporting the industry in a situation where there were plenty of
other, better, options open to her. What makes [the eater] complicit is that she is a participant. What
makes that participation morally problematic…is that the eating of meat displays a willingness to
cooperate with the producers of a product that is produced via huge amounts of pain and suffering. (79;
all emphases mine).

This incorporates productivist, participatory, and exhibitionist ideas.

McPherson and Driver hold it is wrong to consume wrongfully produced goods and try to explain its wrongness. The
productivist, extractivist, participatory, and exhibitionist ideas do, too. Yet, it could be that there is nothing to explain.
Frey (1983) argues that even if certain modes of production are wrong, consuming their products might well be
permissible. Political action might be required, but, Frey argues, this does not include consumer action.
Scruton (2006a) and Lomasky (2013) argue that eating and buying animals actually makes for a great cultural good.
Even if we accept that the production of those animals is wrong and accept that consuming contributes to it, it could be
that the great good of consumption justifies doing so. Yet, this seems to leave open that all sorts of awful practices might
be permissible because they are essential parts of great cultural goods. It threatens to permit too much. By contrast, the
anti‐consumption views canvassed above threaten to forbid too much. If the wrongness of producing and wrongness of
consuming are connected, what else is connected? If buying slave‐picked tomatoes is wrong because it exhibits the
wrong attitude towards slaves, is it permissible to be friends with people who buy those tomatoes—or does this, too,
evince the wrong attitude towards slaves? If killing animals for food is wrong, is it permissible merely to abstain from
consuming them or must one do more work to stop their killing? May one pay taxes that subsidize that killing? The impli-
cations of various arguments against consuming animals and animal products might be far‐reaching. As Gruen and Jones
(2015) note, the lifestyle that some such arguments point to might not be enactable by creatures like us. They focus on
veganism, but the same might be true of other consumption practices—locavorism, no‐GMOs, and so forth.
We started this section with a question about how to get from premises about production to conclusions about
consumption. The issue we are raising here is whether if the argument gets as far as conclusions about consumption
then it gets—much?—farther.

3 | P O L I C I E S A N D OT H E R E FF O RT S T O CH A N G E WH A T P E O P L E E A T

The previous section concerned the ethics of individuals' buying certain things and ingesting them. A distinct topic is
the ethics of efforts to change what individuals buy and eat, so that they choose food that is healthier, more environ-
mentally sustainable, better on animal welfare grounds, better for farm laborers, and so forth (see Garnett,
Mathewson, Angelides, & Borthwick, 2015, for discussion of efforts to make eating healthier and more sustainable.)
Ethical conversation about such efforts sounds many notes: justice‐ and equity‐based arguments for and against such
efforts, concerns that efforts to change what individuals eat can be stigmatizing or inappropriately pin responsibility
on individuals, and concerns with the effectiveness of such efforts, among other issues (Barnhill, forthcoming). This
section focuses, in particular, on the ethics of healthy eating and obesity prevention efforts and on ethical concerns
related to choice, autonomy, and paternalism.2
Recent decades have seen sharp increases in the number of people who are overweight and obese worldwide,
prompting a range of efforts by governments and other actors (employers, health insurers, universities, food retailers,
nonprofits, community groups, etc.) to promote healthy eating and prevent obesity. Some of these efforts have
generated ethical critique, both from the public and from normative ethicists, bioethicists, and other scholars.
One set of ethical concerns with healthy eating and obesity efforts focus on choice, autonomy, and paternalism.
Recommended obesity policies typically include increased regulation of the food industry, including reformulating
BARNHILL AND DOGGETT 5 of 9

products (to exclude trans fat or limit sodium, for example), taxing or banning products, and placing restrictions on
food marketing. These regulations are sometimes framed as protecting consumers from a food industry that both
imperils their health and undermines their autonomy by misleading, manipulating, or exploiting them (Barnhill, King,
Kass, & Faden, 2014; Moss, 2013; Roberto et al., 2015).
These efforts to regulate the food marketplace and promote healthier eating trigger long‐standing philosophical
objections to paternalistic measures—that is, measures that interfere with individuals' choices or actions in order to
increase those individuals' welfare. In the context of obesity efforts, scholars have considered, and disputed, John Stu-
art Mill's objections to government paternalism, for example, Mill's claim that the individual is better‐placed than the
government to promote his or her own good. Increasing evidence from behavioral economics that humans are prone
to cognitive biases and have “bounded rationality” call into question whether humans can consistently make welfare‐
enhancing choices, including food choices (Conly, 2013; Sunstein, 2014; Thaler & Sunstein, 2008).
Philosophers have raised other objections to paternalistic actions and policies, for instance that they fail to
respect individual autonomy, are degrading, are demeaning, or fail to treat people as equals (Conly, 2013, Chapter 1).
Some theorists argue that paternalistic interference with behavior is acceptable only if the behavior is nonvoluntary or
uninformed, whereas others argue that paternalistic interference with voluntary and informed behavior can be
acceptable, for example, if the behavior is irrational and harmful. In the context of obesity prevention efforts, Conly
(2013) has argued that paternalistic policies that prevent irrational eating can be ethically justifiable, even though they
restrict the individual's liberty to buy and eat what she wants–for example, limits on portion sizes in restaurants. Such
policies show respect for the person, Conly argues, by helping her to achieve her long‐term ends of staying healthy
and living a long life.
Some argue that unfettered choice is not necessary for autonomy or self‐determination. Being able to determine
the shape of our lives in fact requires some level of health. Choice‐limiting public health policies may promote long‐
term autonomy or self‐determination, when they prevent people from engaging in behavior that will cause poor
health. And not all choices are equally important, and restricting some food choices can be consistent with leading
autonomous or self‐determining lives. Faden and Powers (2011, p. 602) argue that restricting some choices—for
example, reproductive choices—interferes with people leading self‐determining lives but restricting other choices—
for example, restricting the liberty to consume high sodium foods—does not.
Thaler and Sunstein (2008) proposed libertarian paternalism, efforts to change people's behavior without blocking
any choices or attaching significant costs to any choices, as an alternative to choice‐limiting paternalism. A paradigm
example is promoting healthier eating by putting healthy food first in a cafeteria line, since people are more likely to
take the food that comes first. Libertarian paternalism faces some of the objections lodged against choice‐limiting
paternalistic policies. For example, critics argue that nudges by the government won't succeed in making people better
off, since the government is not well‐placed to know what's good for us (Sunstein, 2014, Chapter 3). Nudging people
into healthy eating raises liberal neutrality concerns, just as banning unhealthy choices does: When the government
nudges us into healthier eating, is this because it is assuming that improved health has more value than whatever peo-
ple get from unhealthy eating, and does this assumption violate liberal neutrality, the demand that governments
remain neutral in certain ways between competing conceptions of the good (Sunstein, 2014, pp. 159–161)? Nudging
has also been criticized as being overly controlling or manipulative, or as failing to respect autonomy, and as demean-
ing or disrespectful, because it does not treat people as rational agents capable of making good decisions for them-
selves (Hausman & Welch, 2010; Saghai, 2013; Waldron, 2014).
Another concern with obesity prevention and healthy eating efforts is whether they are effective enough to even
be worth pursuing. For example, Williams (2015) points to the mixed and disappointing evidence about community‐
level obesity prevention efforts and suggests that the public policy focus should not be on wider implementation of
community‐level efforts, but instead on public policies that address broader social and economic factors that influence
health and policies that accomplish multiple goals at once. For example, anti‐poverty efforts, or policies that increase
access to public transportation or preventive health care, will address some root causes of obesity while also making
people's lives better in other ways.
6 of 9 BARNHILL AND DOGGETT

Efforts to promote more ethical eating will not trigger objections to paternalism, insofar as they do not aim primarily
to make the individual eater better off but rather to make his or her behavior more ethical. But these efforts could still face
other objections, for example, that they are too ineffective to be worth pursuing, are regressive, or are manipulative.

4 | O B E S I T Y A N D C U L T U R A L I D E O L O G I E S O F E A T I NG , F A T , A N D B O D Y
SHAPE

Along with work on the ethics of obesity prevention efforts, there is recent work taking a more critical attitude
towards the so‐called ‘obesity epidemic’ and towards public discourse about it. This critical work is one example of
interesting work on cultural ideologies and meanings surrounding food and eating.3
One concern is that obesity prevention efforts and the conversation around them—for example, specific messaging
campaigns meant to evoke guilt, shame, scorn, and other negative emotions—may exacerbate the stigmatization of and
discrimination towards overweight and obese people (Abu‐Odeh, 2014). Messaging campaigns that evoke disgust raise
particular concerns because of disgust's unique potential to dehumanize its targets (Kelly & Morar, forthcoming). Impor-
tant issues underlying this discussion are what is stigma, exactly, and when is it inappropriate to intentionally or uninten-
tionally stigmatize behaviors (e.g., drinking soda), health statuses (e.g., being overweight), or people (Courtwright, 2013)?
A recurrent theme in critical work is that obesity needs to be seen not (just) as the result of individual choices, but
as a response to a food environment pervaded with processed foods that are high in sugar, fat, sodium, and calories,
that are cheap, that are aggressively marketed as desirable, that are designed to be hard to resist, and that do in fact
undermine our self‐regulatory capacities (Barnhill et al., 2014). Other theorists explain obesity not just as a result of
immediate food environments, but also as caused by broad and deep social forces—poverty and social inequality
(Dixon, forthcoming), technological and lifestyle change, and even neoliberalism, the political economic system
emphasizing free markets, minimal regulation of industry, and a minimal welfare state. Relatedly, obesity discourse
and our intense concern with changing the behavior of obese individuals are seen as distracting attention from
broader social problems and distracting attention from other, better efforts to address social inequality and injustice,
for example, by giving people better access to transportation and health care (Guthman, 2011; Kirkland, 2011).
Another theme of recent work is that our intense concern with obesity, and the specific ways that we discuss
obesity and healthy eating, needs to be understood in their cultural context, as reflecting moral attitudes and cultural
norms about eating, body shape, fat, and pleasure. Health researchers, activists, and scholars from multiple disciplines
have described the public conversation about obesity as characterized by negative moral judgments of overweight
people, for example, that they are lazy or lack self‐control (Puhl & Heuer, 2010). This public conversation inappropri-
ately attributes responsibility and moral blame to overweight people for being overweight, some argue, when in fact
being overweight has environmental and social causes and so is not something that individuals cause in the relevant
sense and thus not something that individuals should (always) be held responsible for.
Some recent work by philosophers situates obesity discourse within our broader cultural discourse about eating,
pleasure, and fat. What is the cultural meaning of fat? What is the cultural meaning of pleasurable eating? In particular,
in what ways do we moralize fat, moralize eating, and especially moralize pleasurable eating? Rebecca Kukla
(forthcoming) argues that eating practices are seen as revealing what kind of character people have. We
simultaneously ‘aesthetically and morally denigrate those who indulge in unusual, or frequent … gustatory pleasure,
we inseparably and correspondingly valorize them as brave and impressive risk‐takers unafraid of pleasure’. We
denigrate ‘unhealthy’ eating, but also valorize it. The result, according to Kukla, is that there is no ‘right’ way to eat
in our culture. Bordo (2012, p. 253) also notes how our culture sends us mixed messages about eating and body,
encouraging us to indulge in unhealthy foods while also admonishing us to get in shape and keep fat off our bodies.
‘Nowhere among these mixed messages, do we find anything like an ideal of moderation presented’, Bordo writes.
Mol (2010), on the other hand, notices that there are calls for moderation built into dietary advice, such as advice
encouraging us to consume less than a certain number of calories, or to consume certain foods in moderation. Mol
BARNHILL AND DOGGETT 7 of 9

problematizes these calls for moderation. They imply that the body is naturally greedy, Mol suggests, and needs to be
controlled by a rational mind. This way of opposing the (greedy) body to the (potentially rational) mind sets up ethicists
to take sides: some arguing that the rational mind needs more help in controlling the body, and others arguing for the
liberation of the body so that it may feel pleasure. But what if we approach bodily pleasure differently, Mol proposes,
not as something that is opposed to good health and that needs to be denied or limited, but as something that can be
attentively cultivated in ways that are consistent with good health?
Recent critical work on obesity is part of a larger body of critical work on eating, dieting, eating disorders, fat pho-
bia, weight discrimination, and related topics, which has continuity with past work by feminist philosophers on gender
and dieting, body image, and eating disorders (Bartky, 1990; Bordo, 1993; Orbach, 1980).This work argues that dieting
and eating disorders reflecting gender ideology and the pressure women face to be thin and fit. Dieting and eating
disorders should be seen as forms of gender oppression that perpetuate inequality and women's subordinate status
So, too, recent work argues that concern with obesity reflects ideologies about body size and individual character,
as well as reflecting gender ideology, and is a form of social inequality that perpetuates the stigmatization of and dis-
crimination against people who are overweight and obese (Wilkerson, 2010; Womack, 2014).
While much recent work by feminist philosophers takes a critical eye to obesity discourse and obesity prevention
efforts, Davis (2010) asks whether feminists have done enough to address obesity and to encourage feminist
responses to obesity (a notable exception, according to Davis, is Black feminist literature on the experience of
African–American women with obesity). Some work by philosophers offers suggestions about how to design more
ethical or more effective obesity prevention efforts (Barnhill et al., 2014; Davis, 2010; Mulvaney‐Day & Womack,
2009). A recurrent theme is the importance of asking what eating means to people, of recognizing that there will
be variation between social groups, and of recognizing that unhealthy eating practices and patterns may have multiple
kinds of personal and social value (Ibid.). Womack (2015) recommends ‘let's do more research to ask the public – what
does healthy eating look like to them in the contexts of their lives?’

5 | C O N CL U S I O N

This essay discusses three ways in which recent work in food ethics addresses food consumption: work on the ethics
of individual consumption of wrongfully produced goods, work on the ethics of obesity prevention efforts, and work
on obesity discourse and the ways it reflects ideologies about eating, fat, body, shame, and pleasure. Many worthwhile
topics under the broad heading of ‘food consumption and ethics’ have been left out of this discussion, among them
eating and individual and group identity, cultural food colonialism, and the ethics of eating etiquette. Much excellent
work on the topics that we have discussed has been left out. As we wrote in the companion to this piece, we believe
that the issues we have discussed are morally pressing issues, bearing directly on the welfare of billions of sentient
creatures. And while they have been pressing for as long as people have been producing food, the opportunity for
philosophers to contribute to our understanding of them and to effect change has never been better.

ACKNOWLEDGEMEN TS

For their help with this paper, we thank Mark Budolfson, Terence Cuneo, Bob Fischer, Matthew C. Halteman,
Elizabeth Harman, Kate Nolfi, Sarah Stroud, and an anonymous referee for this journal.

ENDNOTES
1
For helpful overviews of consumption ethics with helpful bibliographies, see Fischer (forthcoming) and Schwartz (2010).
2
Some content in this section draws from Barnhill, A. forthcoming, “Obesity Prevention and Promotion of Good Nutrition:
Public Health Ethics Issues,” in Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics, eds. Anna C. Mastrioanni, Jeffrey P. Kahn, Nancy Kass.
Oxford University Press, New York.
3
Some content in this section draws from Barnhill, A., Budolfson, M., & Doggett, T., “Introduction” in Barnhill, A.,
Budolfson, M., & Doggett, T., (Eds.) (forthcoming). The Oxford handbook of food ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.
8 of 9 BARNHILL AND DOGGETT

ORCID
Tyler Doggett http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5714-3633

W OR K S CI TE D
Abu‐Odeh, D. (2014). Fat stigma and public health: A theoretical framework and ethical analysis. Kennedy Institute of Ethics
Journal, 24(3), 247–265.
Adams, R. M. (2002). Finite and infinite goods. New York: Oxford University Press.
Barnhill, A., King, K. F., Kass, N., & Faden, R. (2014). The value of unhealthy eating and the ethics of healthy eating policies.
Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 24(3), 187–217. https://doi.org/10.1353/ken.2014.0021.
Barnhill, A., Budolfson, M., & Doggett, T. (Eds.) (forthcoming). The Oxford handbook of food ethics. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Barnhill, A. (forthcoming). Obesity Prevention and Promotion of Good Nutrition: Public Health Ethics Issues, in Oxford Handbook
of Food Ethics. In A. C. Mastrioanni, J. P. Kahn, & N. Kass (Eds.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Barry, C., & Wiens, D. (2016). Benefitting from wrongdoing and sustaining wrongful harms. Journal of Moral Philosophy, 13,
530–552.
Bartky, S. L. (1990). Femininity and domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression. New York: Routledge.
Beauchamp, T., & Frey, R. G. (Eds.) (2011). The Oxford handbook of animal ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable weight: Feminism, western culture, and the body. University of California Press.
Bordo, S. (2012). Beyond the anorexic paradigm. In B. S. Turner (Ed.), Routledge handbook of body studies (pp. 244–255). New
York: Routledge.
Bramble, B., Fischer, B., & ed.s. (2015). The moral complexities of eating meat. New York: Oxford University Press.
Budolfson, M. (2015). Consumer ethics, harm footprints, and the empirical dimensions of food choices in Chignell, Cuneo and
Halteman (2015).
Chignell, A., Cuneo, T., & Halteman, M. C. (2015). Philosophy comes to dinner. New York: Routledge.
Conly, S. (2013). Against autonomy: Justifying coercive paternalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Courtwright, A. (2013). Stigmatization and public health ethics. Bioethics, 72, 74–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467‐
8519.2011.01904.x.
Davis, K. (2010). Women and obesity: What feminists do (and don't) have to say about it. In S. Vandamme, S. van de Vathorst,
& I. Beaufort (Eds.), Whose weight is it anyway?: Essays on ethics and eating (pp. 33–42). Leuven: ACCO.
DeGrazia, D. (2009). Moral vegetarianism from a very broad basis. Journal of Moral Philosophy, 6, 143–165.
Dixon, B. (forthcoming). Obesity and responsibility. In Barnhill, et al (forthcoming).
Driver, J. (2015). Individual consumption and moral complicity. In Bramble and Fischer (2015).
Faden, R., & Powers, M. (2011). A social justice framework for health and science policy. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare
Ethics, 20(04), 596–604. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180111000338.
Fischer, B. (forthcoming). Arguments for consuming animal products. In Barnhill, et al (forthcoming).
Frey, R. G. (1983). Rights, killing, and suffering. Oxford: Blackwell.
Garnett, T., Mathewson, S., Angelides, P., & Borthwick, F. (2015). Policies and actions to shift eating patterns: What works?
Foresight, 515, 518–522.
Gruen, L., & Jones, R. (2015). Veganism as an aspiration. In Bramble and Fischer (2015).
Guthman, J. (2011). Weighing in: Obesity, food justice, and the limits of capitalism (1st ed.). Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Hausman, D. M., & Welch, B. (2010). Debate: To nudge or not to nudge*. Journal of Political Philosophy, 18(1), 123–136.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467‐9760.2009.00351.x.
Hursthouse, R. (2011). Virtue ethics and the treatment of animals. In Beauchamp and Frey (2011).
Kelly, D., & Morar, N. (forthcoming). I eat, therefore I am: Disgust and the intersection of food and identity. In Barnhill, et al
(forthcoming).
Kirkland, A. (2011). The environmental account of obesity: A case for feminist skepticism. Signs, 36(2), 463–485.
Kukla, R. (forthcoming). Shame, seduction, and character in food messaging. In Barnhill, et al (forthcoming).
Lawford‐Smith, H. (2015). Unethical consumption. Ethics and International Affairs, 29, 315–330.
Lomasky, L. (2013). Is it wrong to eat animals? Social Philosophy and Policy, 30, 177–200.
BARNHILL AND DOGGETT 9 of 9

McPherson, T. (2015). Why I am a vegan (and you should be one too). In Chignell, Cuneo and Halteman (2015).
Mol, A. (2010, 2010). Moderation or satisfaction? Food ethics and food facts. In S. Vandamme, S. van de Vathorst, &
I. Beaufort (Eds.), Whose weight is it anyway?: Essays on ethics and eating (pp. 121–133). Leuven: ACCO.
Moss, M. (2013). Salt, sugar, fat: How the food giants hooked us. New York: Random House.
Mulvaney‐Day, N., & Womack, C. A. (2009). Obesity, identity and community: Leveraging social networks for behavior
change in public health. Public Health Ethics, 2(3), 250–260. https://doi.org/10.1093/phe/php022.
Nefsky, J. (forthcoming). Collective action. In Barnhill, et al (forthcoming).
Orbach, S. (1980). Fat is a feminist issue: The anti‐diet guide to permanent weight loss. New York, New York: The Berkeley
Publishing Group.
Puhl, R. M., & Heuer, C. A. (2010). Obesity stigma: Important considerations for public health. American Journal of Public
Health, 100(6), Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2009.159491.
Roberto, C. A., Swinburn, B., Hawkes, C., Huang, T. T.‐K., Costa, S. A., Ashe, M., … Brownell, K. D. (2015). Patchy progress on
obesity prevention: Emerging examples, entrenched barriers, and new thinking. The Lancet, 385(9985), 2400–2409.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140‐6736(14)61744‐X.
Saghai, Y. (2013). Salvaging the concept of nudge. Journal of Medical Ethics, 39(8), 487–493. https://doi.org/10.1136/
medethics‐2012‐100727.
Schwartz, D. (2010). Consuming choices. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Scruton, R. (2006a). Eating our friends in Scruton (2006b)
Scruton, R. (2006b). A political philosophy. London: Bloomsbury.
Singer, P. (1975). Animal liberation. New York: Harper Collins.
Singer, P. (1980). Vegetarianism and utilitarianism. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 9, 325–337.
Sunstein, C. R. (2014). Why nudge?: The politics of libertarian paternalism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. (2008). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Waldron, J. (2014). It's all for your own good. The New York Review of Books, October 9, 2014.
Warfield, T. (2015). Eating dead animals. In Chignell, et al (2015).
Wilkerson, A. (2010). ‘Obesity’, the transnational plate, and the thin contract. Radical Philosophy Review, 13(1), 43–67. https://
doi.org/10.5840/radphilrev20101314.
Williams, G. (2015). The IDEFICS intervention: What can we learn for public policy? Obesity Reviews, 16(Suppl 2), 151–161.
https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.12355.
Womack, C. (2015). What we talk about when we talk about obesity. Retrieved September 5, 2016, from http://
theconversation.com/what‐we‐talk‐about‐when‐we‐talk‐about‐obesity‐38512
Womack, C. A. (2014). Gender, obesity, and stigmatization. In P. B. Thompson, & D. M. Kaplan (Eds.), Encyclopedia of food and
agricultural ethics (pp. 1100–1107). New York; Heidelberg: Springer.

Anne Barnhill is a Research Scholar with the Global Food Ethics and Policy Program at the Berman Institute of
Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University.

Tyler Doggett is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vermont.

How to cite this article: Barnhill A, Doggett T. Food Ethics II: Consumption and obesity. Philosophy Compass.
2018;e12482. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12482