Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 

Volume 4 | Issue 3 Article 3 

 

 

Recommended Citation 
Dean, Megan. 2018. “Eating Identities, “Unhealthy” Eaters, and Damaged Agency.” Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 4 (3). 

Article 3. 

2018 

 

Eating Identities, “Unhealthy” Eaters, 

and Damaged Agency 
 

Megan Dean 

Georgetown University, mad301@georgetown.edu 



Dean: Eating Identities, “Unhealthy” Eaters, and Damaged Agency 

 

Published by Scholarship@Western, 2018  1 

 

Eating Identities, “Unhealthy” Eaters, and Damaged Agency1 
Megan Dean 

 
 
 
Abstract 

This paper argues that common social narratives about unhealthy eaters can 
cause significant damage to agency. I identify and analyze a narrative that combines 
a “control model” of eating agency with the healthist assumption that health is the 
ultimate end of eating. I argue that this narrative produces and enables four types of 
damage to the agency of those identified as unhealthy eaters. Due to uncertainty 
about what counts as healthy eating and various forms of prejudice, the unhealthy 
eater label and its harms to agency are more likely to stick to some people than 
others and may reinforce patterns of oppression. I argue that fat people are 
especially vulnerable to this identification and the damage it can do. I then consider 
possible “counterstories” about unhealthy eaters, alternative narratives that might 
be less damaging to agency than the control narrative. I identify one promising 
counterstory but suggest that it may be limited when it comes to repairing damage 
to the agency of fat people. Overall, this paper illustrates some of the complex ways 
that healthism about eating affects agency, and emphasizes the ethical importance 
of the ways we think about and discuss eating and eaters. 

 
 

Keywords: eating, food ethics, unhealthy eating, unhealthy eater, agency, social 
narratives, damaged agency, identity, healthy eating, health, ethics of eating, fat, 
relational autonomy 
 
 
 

                                                      
1 My sincere appreciation to Keith Underkoffler, Nabina Liebow, Rebecca Kukla, Kate 
Withy, Alison Reiheld, Catherine Womack, Cressida Heyes, Kristin Rodier, the 
Georgetown Publication Support Group, and anonymous reviewers for their help 
with this paper. Thanks to audiences at the 2016 meetings of Feminist 
Epistemologies, Methodologies, Metaphysics, and Science Studies, Women’s and 
Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes, and the 2017 Eastern APA for valuable 
comments on earlier iterations of these ideas. I am also very grateful to Anne 
Barnhill and the University of Pennsylvania Bioethics Bootcamp, and the Social 
Sciences and Humanities Research Council for their support of my research. 



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In healthist contexts like the United States and Canada, one of the central 
and most fundamental ways we categorize eating is as “healthy” or “unhealthy.” 
Though they may not always be salient, these categories present themselves as 
applying to all eating, underlying all other possible designations. And as the well-
worn cliché suggests, the way we eat is closely associated with who we are. (We 
might wonder whether it should be, though.) If all eating is healthy or unhealthy, we 
are all, in some sense, healthy or unhealthy eaters.  

In this paper I argue that common narratives about unhealthy eaters can be 
harmful. Specifically, I contend that these narratives can significantly damage the 
agency of those identified as unhealthy eaters. I begin by identifying and analyzing a 
common narrative about the kind of person who eats unhealthily, which I call the 
“control narrative.” This narrative combines a pervasive view of the eater qua 
agent—what I call a “control model” of eating agency—with the healthist 
assumption that health is or should be the ultimate end of eating. Within this 
narrative, unhealthy eating shows up as a sign that something has gone awry with 
the eater’s agency: perhaps her agency is undermined by ignorance, lack of self-
control, or a pathology of some sort. Whatever the case, a good agent, properly 
functioning, would simply not eat unhealthily.  

Drawing from work by Hilde Lindemann and Alisa Bierria, I argue that this 
narrative can damage the agency of those identified as unhealthy eaters in four 
ways: deprivation of opportunity, infiltrated consciousness, distorted action, and 
blocked identities. This potential damage should be especially concerning for 
feminists and others concerned with inequality and injustice because of uncertainty 
about what counts as healthy eating—and therefore who should be properly 
categorized as an unhealthy eater—but also because what does get counted as 
unhealthy eating is influenced by classism and racism. The “unhealthy eater” label, 
and its harms to agency, are therefore more likely to stick to some people than 
others and may reinforce patterns of oppression. In some cases, interactions 
between the control narrative and other common narratives can make the label 
particularly sticky and difficult to challenge. To illustrate this point, I draw out the 
ways that fat people are especially vulnerable to this identification and the damage 
it can do.2 

In my view, the agency-related harms produced by the control narrative, and 
the pronounced way in which it affects vulnerable populations, present powerful 
reasons to reject that narrative. In the next sections of the paper I consider possible 
“counterstories” about unhealthy eating, alternative narratives that might be less 
damaging to agency than the control narrative and could be productively deployed 

                                                      
2 I am using “fat” as a neutral descriptor here, following scholars in fat studies and 
other fields who wish to avoid inherently pathologizing terms like “obesity.” 



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as a form of moral repair (Lindemann Nelson 2001b). I begin with two alternative 
accounts of the eater qua agent and suggest that while these accounts offer some 
benefits, insofar as they maintain the assumption that health should be the ultimate 
aim of eating, they remain damaging in significant ways. In the final section, I 
suggest that a situationist account of the eater combined with values-pluralism, a 
position that rejects the assumption that eating should be for the sake of health, 
produces a promising counterstory in several respects. However, this narrative too is 
limited, and may be particularly unhelpful when it comes to repairing damage done 
to the agency of fat people, who are particularly vulnerable to the harms of the 
control narrative. This demonstrates some of the challenges of deploying 
counterstories as a means for moral repair, and the necessity of taking an 
intersectional approach to such projects. 

In addition to contributing to the growing literature critiquing healthism 
(e.g., Welsh 2011; Cheek 2008; Turrini 2015; Metzl and Kirkland 2010; Van Dyke 
2018), this paper aims to illustrate some of the complex ways that healthism about 
eating affects agency. Common bioethical debates about eating focus on the ways 
healthist policies and interventions may impinge upon the exercise of agency 
through limiting food choice. While I agree with Anne Barnhill and colleagues (2014) 
that the scope of these debates should extend far beyond concerns with individual 
agency, this paper shows that healthism can damage agency in more insidious ways 
than are often acknowledged. This paper also emphasizes the ethical importance of 
the ways we think about and discuss eating and eaters. Narratives about eating and 
eaters, including the stories we tell about eating agency itself, are more than just 
descriptive: they can shape and even damage agency. As participants in 
conversations about eating and eaters, and particularly as feminist philosophers and 
bioethicists working on eating, we should take account of the ethical effects of our 
views and assumptions about how eaters eat and what kinds of people those eaters 
are. 

 
The Control Narrative 

A common assumption behind a good deal of media, “common sense,” 
policy, and health research and writing is that individuals are in control of and 
personally responsible for their eating (Saguy 2012; Kukla 2018; Coveney 2006; 
Crawford 1994; Brownell et al. 2010; Schwartzman 2015). This presupposes a certain 
model of the eater, an eater who makes food choices based on the information she 
has and her goals, values, and desires. I call this the “control model” of the eater. 
This eater “receives advice about what to eat (a diet plan) or it gathers information 
(for instance, about calories) that will allow it to make its own plans. In addition, it 
must somehow muster the motivation to act on these plans” (Vogel and Mol 2014, 
308). Motivation most readily comes from desire. But when the eater’s desires do 



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not lead her in the direction of her goals, she must use willpower and self-restraint 
to act rationally, that is, in the service of her own goals.  

A variety of factors, including advertising, social pressure, and desires, can 
undermine the eater’s self-control and her ability to eat rationally, but it is 
ultimately her own responsibility to minimize the impact of these bad influences on 
her behavior. Her ability to secure and maintain self-control in the face of 
“temptation” is taken to reveal good character, especially strength of will. As 
Rebecca Kukla explains, “Good people with the right character make good [food] 
choices. Any other determinants of eating are marginal pressures that can be 
overcome by sufficiently virtuous eaters” (Kukla 2018, 595). Eating well—which, 
within healthist contexts means eating healthily—signals self-mastery, a 
characteristic assumed to be central not only to moral worth (Gilson 2015, 30) but 
also civic responsibility (Crawford 1994). 

Because the eater is ultimately in control of her eating, or at least should be, 
she is responsible for its consequences. Indeed, it is part of the control model that 
the eater is in some way responsible for her ability to act autonomously. You need 
to take responsibility for yourself, and if you are unable to do that on your own, 
then you need to seek out and accept help. This enables the moralization of both 
eating and, in healthist contexts, health. Bad health (and being fat, a common proxy 
for bad health) is blameworthy because it is the result of one’s poor agency, as 
revealed by bad eating. And this is, or should be, under your control.  

When the control model of the eater is combined with healthism about 
eating, it produces what I call the “control narrative” about unhealthy eaters. To be 
clear, healthism in general is a paradigm made up of two key components: first, the 
assumption that health is a “monolithic, universal good” (Metzl 2010, 9), and 
second, that individuals should be “actively engaged” in promoting their own health 
(Turrini 2015, 18; Cheek 2008). As Talia Welsh (2011) explains it, the central way for 
individuals to actively engage involves directing their “modifiable behaviors” toward 
health. Along with bodily movement or exercise, eating is one of our central 
“modifiable behaviors.” Healthism about eating, then, is the assumption that 
individuals should eat for the sake of health, above all else, and that eaters have a 
responsibility to make this happen. Good eating is eating for health, and good eaters 
eat healthily. 

When this assumption is combined with the control model of the eater, it 
produces a narrative by which anyone who fails to eat healthily is either ignorant, 
misinformed, weak-willed, “mindless,” or pathological. Perhaps the unhealthy eater 
is confused about whether butter or margarine is healthier, or if red wine is good for 
her. She may have undeniable cravings for cheese fries, or her willpower may fail in 
the face of the office bowl of candy. She might mindlessly snack on entire bags of 
chips while binge-watching TV, failing to make any conscious choice at all. She might 



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also be pathological—addicted to food, or living with an eating disorder—in which 
case her eating agency is deeply compromised, or perhaps (temporarily?) 
nonexistent. In any case, when an eater doesn’t eat in accordance with her own 
goals (health), it must be because she doesn’t have, or isn’t using, what good agency 
requires: adequate knowledge, adequate willpower or self-control, or adequate 
intention and awareness.  

In short, the control narrative characterizes unhealthy eaters as failed or 
flawed agents. Unhealthy eating is a sign that something has gone wrong with the 
eater’s agency, and that she needs help. She should either help herself or 
acknowledge and welcome help from someone else. Unlike narratives about eaters 
that connect ways of eating with personal commitments, social roles, or values (for 
example, “real men” eat meat, animal rights activists do not), this narrative posits 
that unhealthy eaters are not positively expressing their identities through eating. 
Rather, unhealthy eating is an expression of the eater’s inability or failure to express 
herself through eating.3 Unhealthy eating represents a failure or flaw that prevents 
the eater’s true self from shining through. To repair this, an unhealthy eater needs 
to educate herself, “pull up her socks,” pay closer attention to eating well, or admit 
she needs professional help to regain or repair her eating agency, and perhaps 
submit to paternalistic measures to force her to eat well.4  
 

Damaged Identities, Identity Damage 

I contend that the control narrative about unhealthy eaters can do significant 
damage to the agency of those taken to be unhealthy eaters. This is because, as 
Hilde Lindemann argues, agency is shaped by identity, and identity is constructed, at 
least in part, through narratives. According to Lindemann, social narratives about 
what it means to be this or that sort of person, what such persons typically do, and 
how those persons should be treated, play an important role in constructing 
identities. And a person’s identity—roughly, the kind of person she takes herself to 
be and others take her to be—has a significant impact on her agency. As Lindemann 
characterizes it, agency is centered in “capacities, competencies, and intentions that 

                                                      
3 Someone could say that this eating is revealing oneself, and that self is a flawed 
agent. But given the general societal narrative that we have “true” inner selves that 
need to be realized or achieved through self-control and work (Heyes 2007), I do not 
think we generally regard being a flawed or failed agent as one’s true self.  
4 Note that my argument discusses the control model qua narrative and does not 
explicitly consider its accuracy as ways of describing the world. How accurate or true 
an account is (however one defines truth) is something that lends a narrative power, 
but it is not the only thing relevant to a narrative’s success. For the purposes of my 
argument here, I remain agnostic about which account of eating agency is true. 



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lie within the individual” (Lindemann Nelson 2001b, 51), but the exercise and 
development of these capacities, competencies, and intentions is shaped by what 
the agent thinks is appropriate, expected, or available to her as a certain “kind” of 
person, how others expect and allow her to act, and how they understand her 
actions. And all of this is informed by social narratives.  

But there isn’t simply a top-down identity to agency relation of influence; 
identity and agency interact in more of a loop. Agents “assess the accuracy” of their 
self-conceptions in light of their actions (Lindemann 2014, 6) and may adjust their 
self-identifications accordingly. Likewise, others may “confer” an identity on an 
agent because of how she acts or “de-confer” an identity that she previously held 
because her actions do not line up with that identity. These self-identifications and 
conferrals inform the agent’s actions and intentions, capacities, and competencies. 
In this way, identity and agency, informed by social narratives linking identities with 
actions, shape each other. 

Many social narratives link different ways of eating to different kinds of 
people. Anthropologists, sociologists, and food studies scholars have done a great 
deal of work cataloguing and interpreting the many ways food and eating are 
connected to racial, gender, ethnic, class, and other social identities. For example, 
for many white people, eating so called “ethnic” foods is a way to show 
adventurousness or cosmopolitanism (Heldke 2003). And in many communities, if 
you are a “real man” you eat a lot of red meat and not a lot of vegetables 
(Rothgerber 2013; Ruby and Heine 2011) or “rabbit food” (as my uncle calls them). 
Who we understand ourselves to be, and who others understand us to be, affects 
how and what we eat; how and what we eat, in turn, influences who we understand 
ourselves to be and who others understand us to be.  

According to this account, identity shapes agency through social narratives. I 
have suggested that social narratives about eaters, including about what eating 
agency is like, are part of what constructs an identity. But identities can shape 
agency in more and less enabling ways. Lindemann introduces the idea of a 
“damaged identity” as an identity composed of social narratives that “constrict” or 
“diminish” agency (Lindemann Nelson 2001b, 45). A damaged identity blocks 
recognition of someone as having full moral standing, as being worthy of respect as 
an agent, and so blocks possibilities for action and interaction that depend on that 
standing (Lindemann Nelson 2001a, xii).  

For example, “woman” is a damaged identity in societies where social 
narratives about women’s hysterical natures lead people to take women as less than 
fully rational agents. These narratives enable people to dismiss women’s actions as 
irrational and women’s statements as the incoherent or inconsequential ramblings 
of someone overtaken by hormones. When we think of women this way we tend 
not to trust them with certain socially valuable and important roles, such as being 



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the president of the United States. Even more perniciously, these narratives may 
lead women to think of themselves, qua women, as unreliable or incompetent 
agents, and therefore the possibility of, for example, being a politician, is closed off 
to them “from the inside.”5 In this way, a damaged identity can limit what actions 
are available to you, which capacities you develop, how others take up your actions 
and what they allow you to do—which affects what you can accomplish—and what 
you even consider possible for you and others like you. 

One problem with the language of “damaged identity” is that it suggests that 
there are undamaged identities which enable the free exercise of agency (cf. 
Lindemann Nelson 2001b, 45). If so, our aim should be to ensure that everyone has 
one of those. But all identities constrict and constrain agency in certain ways, even 
when those identities are relatively privileged—consider everything that narratives 
about “real men” constrain people from doing. Even generous narratives push us 
toward some actions more than others; indeed, this is one of the ways that 
identities enable agency, by making certain actions, capacities, and goals seem well 
within our grasp. But this effectively closes off, or at least makes less attractive and 
likely, certain other intentions, actions, projects, and the development of certain 
capacities.6 

Recognizing this, the interesting ethical question is not which identities are 
damaged and which are not, but in what ways a given identity—constituted as it is 
from social narratives—constrains and constricts agency, and to what degree? How 
sticky or stubborn and narrow or wide are these constraints? How difficult is it to 
challenge the narratives that construct this identity? Focusing on these questions 
would lead us to work to identify the specific ways that identities place significant, 
narrow, stubborn, and recalcitrant constraints on agency, rather than looking for 
damaged identities in general. This is the task I take up in the next section by 
identifying four different types of damage that are produced and enabled by the 
control narrative about unhealthy eaters. 

 
Four Types of Identity Damage 

In contexts dominated by the control narrative, unhealthy eaters may be 
treated as incompetent eaters. An unhealthy eater may not be trusted to make 
eating decisions for herself. Others may try to paternalistically control her eating, for 

                                                      
5 Sandra Bartky’s canonical work on psychological oppression offers us one way of 
fleshing out the idea that possibilities get closed off “from the inside” (1990). 
6 Alisa Bierria (2014) also criticizes this tendency to conceptualize agency as either 
there or not there, damaged or undamaged. She recommends thinking of different 
types of agency, some of which may be available to an individual and some of which 
may not. 



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example, by restricting what she buys, watching her when she eats, or requiring her 
to report her eating to them. This surveillance and control can prevent people from 
eating what they desire, exploring new cuisines, acquiring the skills and knowledge 
necessary to select and prepare foods, cultivating and pursuing certain eating 
pleasures (Welsh 2011; Schwartzman 2015), and gaining the sorts of social goods 
that come along with sharing meals with each other. Lindemann calls this type of 
constriction of agency “deprivation of opportunity” (Lindemann Nelson 2001b, 51). 
While in many contexts it is difficult to fully control others’ eating, those whose food 
is prepared or provided by others—like children, teens, people in institutions 
(schools, prisons, nursing homes), and people with certain disabilities (Williams-
Forson and Wilkerson 2011)—are particularly vulnerable to this type of constraint. 

The more that someone identified as an unhealthy eater is treated as 
incompetent, especially by people in positions of power and authority, the more 
likely she is to internalize that narrative, leading to “infiltrated consciousness” 
(Lindemann Nelson 2001b, 51). She may come to believe that her eating is out of 
control and that she is unable to make herself eat appropriately. She might, in other 
words, “lose confidence in [her] worthiness to be the author of [her] own conduct” 
(Lindemann 2001b, 56), vis-à-vis eating. This self-understanding, caused, in part, by 
the way others perceive and treat her, ends up justifying the limits, constraints, and 
controls that others place on her. It can make an eater vulnerable to those who offer 
to control her eating for her, and to the exploitative and often dangerous diet 
industry which will sell her the technologies and tools she “needs” in order to eat in 
an acceptable way.  

Someone might object here that surely some people who eat unhealthily are 
in fact flawed, failed, or non-agents. Many people have had the experience of 
wanting to eat more healthily, setting that as a goal, and failing. This could be 
legitimately attributed to a lack of willpower, ignorance, or some other failure linked 
to agency. Recognizing that one’s eating agency is limited or flawed and admitting 
the need for help may thus be a positive and necessary step. In some cases, being 
treated paternalistically may be appropriate and should not be understood as 
damage to agency, but as a way of helping someone achieve their ends.7  

To be sure, this may sometimes be the case. Some people are indeed 
ignorant about which ways of eating would help them achieve their eating goals 
(whether they want to eat more healthily or something else) and could use some 

                                                      
7 A version of this argument is put forward in Sarah Conly’s (2014) work, where she 
argues that paternalistic food policy and interventions actually help people be more 
autonomous, because as the flawed sorts of agents we are, we are often unable to 
actually achieve the goals and ends we set for ourselves (i.e., eating healthily) 
without such interventions.  



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education, while others may benefit from more self-awareness and self-control. 
Certain eating disorders may undermine the agency of eaters in ways that can be 
fatal (and certain ways of eating may be fully agential but still harmful), which could 
justify paternalistic intervention as well as a self-conception as someone who needs 
such help. In such cases, self-understandings and paternalistic interventions may not 
be properly characterized as agency damage at all.  

But even if there are such cases, the problem is that the control narrative 
characterizes unhealthy eating in general as a sign of flawed, failed, or non-agency. 
It leaves very little space for unhealthy eating to mean anything else. This should 
make us nervous. For one, precisely what counts as healthy eating is not always 
clear. Given ambiguities in the concept of health (Van Dyke 2018), and financial 
incentives for corporations and producers to have their diet or food product appear 
healthy, it may not be surprising that wildly different and sometimes incompatible 
ways of eating are lauded as healthy. Healthy eating could mean counting calories, 
eating organic, following a Mediterranean diet, avoiding GMOs, or partaking in 
foods that “flush out” fat or “detox” your organs (Klein and Kiat 2015; Mohammadi 
2014; Zeratsky 2015).  

Even when the definition of healthy eating is narrowly circumscribed, 
uncertainty about what foods or diets meet its criteria persists. One dominant 
understanding of healthy eating is as nutritious eating: eating in accordance with 
nutritional guidelines and recommendations for certain amounts of vitamins, 
macronutrients (protein, carbs, fats), or calories (Scrinis 2013). Despite the fact that 
certain claims about nutritious eating (e.g., fruit and veggies are good: eat a lot of 
them) have remained constant for decades (Nestle 2013), there is a widespread 
perception that nutritionists’ knowledge about what is healthy is in constant flux. 
We are told margarine is healthier than butter, then the opposite is true; red wine 
and chocolate are bad for you one day, then they are full of cancer-fighting 
antioxidants; carbohydrates are an essential part of a daily diet, but then they are 
accused of contributing to the so-called obesity crisis. This produces uncertainty (as 
well as anxiety) about what counts as healthy eating, which—as Marion Nestle 
argues—is encouraged by and benefits certain food corporations, producers, and 
lobbyists (Nestle 2013). These ambiguities and uncertainties about what counts as 
healthy eating raise the possibility that some people who are taken to be unhealthy 
eaters might not be so in any meaningful sense.8  

                                                      
8 To be clear, what matters here is what gets perceived as healthy and unhealthy 
eating, which may be related but is not identical to what should count as healthy 
and unhealthy eating. For the purposes of this paper, this is because what matters is 
who gets perceived as an unhealthy eater and treated as such, not who is “really” an 
unhealthy eater. 



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In addition, what gets counted as healthy food and eating is often inflected 
by race and class prejudice. For instance, fresh, local, organic vegetables are often 
held up as exemplars of healthy foods, while more affordable options like frozen or 
canned vegetables are ignored (Kirkland 2011, 474; Guthman 2008). White bread is 
derided as unhealthy, but baguettes are not subject to the same condemnation 
(Kirkland 2011, 474). Milk and other dairy products are promoted as an essential 
part of a healthy diet by the US and Canadian governments, though many Latinx and 
people of African heritage—indeed, most people whose heritage is not northern 
European—lose the ability to process dairy in adolescence (Freeman 2013).9 This 
means that in some cases, people may be perceived as unhealthy eaters, and even 
understand themselves as such, because of prejudice rather than any legitimate 
criteria for determining the healthfulness of a diet. 

In addition to these concerns about false positives, we might also worry that 
some unhealthy eating is not accurately explained as a failure of agency. Perhaps 
someone eats unhealthily, but is doing their best in a food context shaped by 
poverty and systemic racism. In that case, the unhealthy eating reflects a bad 
environment, not a bad agent. Blaming the unhealthy eating on the agent’s failures 
rather than the oppressive environment individualizes systemic problems in a way 
that can re-entrench those problems and make them all but impossible to 
adequately address (Reiheld 2015). Another possibility is that someone who eats 
unhealthily simply does not prioritize health in their eating. We eat for many 
different reasons, not just health, and we might reject the assumption that health 
should be prioritized over other values. I will return to these alternative 
explanations for unhealthy eating shortly. For now, the key point is that it is not 
obvious that eating unhealthily is incompatible with good agency, but this is 
precisely what the control narrative suggests. 

The possibility that someone could be incorrectly identified as an unhealthy 
eater, or that unhealthy eaters could be incorrectly identified as flawed or failed 
agents, is important because infiltrated consciousness and deprivation of 
opportunity can affect anyone identified as an unhealthy eater, regardless of their 
actual status as an agent, and regardless of whether they eat unhealthily in any 

                                                      
9 Nailing down accurate definitions of “healthy” and “unhealthy” eating, and figuring 
out whether and how these concepts might rid themselves of racism, classism, and 
other forms of prejudice, is outside the scope of this paper. It seems a worthwhile 
project to identify and articulate concepts of health that might be less problematic 
than others, but that is not my project here. What I am interested in are the 
consequences of dominant narratives about unhealthy eating (that is, what 
generally gets counted as such) and the “kind” of people these narratives describe 
and, in part, produce.  



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meaningful sense of the term. Deprivation of opportunity depends only on others 
taking me to be an unhealthy eater and therefore an incompetent agent in need of 
help. But, as I have suggested, others could get it wrong. My unhealthy eating may 
be fully informed, intentional, and in service of my values and goals, or I may not eat 
unhealthily at all, even by mainstream standards. Nonetheless, as Lindemann writes: 
“We will be treated according to who we seem to be, even if that’s not who we are” 
(2014, 82). And if others regularly treat me as an incompetent agent, even if I am 
not, I may come to believe that I am. And thus, my agency may be damaged. 

The possibility of a mismatch between the way people perceive you and the 
way you are brings us to the third and fourth categories of identity damage caused 
by the control narrative about unhealthy eaters. According to Alisa Bierria (2014), an 
important part of agency is having our actions make sense to others. Most of the 
time, we want our intentions, as expressed by our actions, to be clear to those 
around us. But what my actions mean in social space—and so, what my actions 
are—is partially determined by others. I don’t have sole authorship of them; others 
play an irreducible role in their authoring. As Bierria explains, “Even if an agent 
develops her intentions and acts accordingly, others who observe the agent's action 
also construct narratives of meaning about her actions, empowering them as social 
authors of her autonomous action" (2014, 131).  

This process of social authoring doesn’t always go smoothly. The way my 
actions are understood by others (or if they are understood at all) depends on what 
interpretive resources observers have available to them. When these resources are 
dominated by incomplete, prejudiced, or misleading narratives about a certain 
“kind” of actor or action, they can systematically distort the way observers 
understand actors’ intentions and actions. Bierria gives the example of the way 
stereotypes and prejudices about black criminality in the United States 
systematically distort interpretation of black people’s actions (2014, 131). She 
explains that white people taking food from stores after Hurricane Katrina were 
described by media as “finding” food, while a black person doing the same thing was 
labelled a “looter” (Bierria 2014, 132). This characterization of the black person’s 
actions is informed by racist social narratives, which enabled the media to project 
“phantom intentions” of criminality onto the black person in question. Through the 
social authorship of action, she may end up “acting” in ways she never meant to 
act—that is, what she does, as it is understood in social space, is made criminal—
and what she actually meant to do and understood herself as doing, like finding food 
to survive, is erased (Bierria 2014, 133).  

In a similar way, the control narrative can distort how observers interpret the 
eating of those identified as unhealthy eaters. This eating is viewed as a sign that the 
eater’s agency is flawed or nonexistent, rather than as a reflection of her identity, 
values, preferences, and the like. Because the categories of “healthy” and 



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“unhealthy” eating can be understood as superseding all other categorizations and 
characterizations of eating, they have the power to undermine all other 
interpretations of that eating. But, again, if we may eat unhealthily in an agential 
way, or what gets counted as unhealthy eating is a result of uncertainty or prejudice, 
this is a problem. It means that the categorization of eating as unhealthy may distort 
the eater’s action, and thus the further characterization of that eating as a sign of 
troubled agency is also a distortion. This is the third way that the control narrative 
constricts agency: it can distort unhealthy eaters’ attempts to eat as they intend or 
to have their eating mean what they want it to. Unhealthy eaters’ intentions and 
their own understandings of their actions are displaced or erased, and their eating is 
reconstructed into evidence of failed, flawed, or non-agency (Bierria 2014, 134). 

The fourth form of damage to agency arises from the deeply intertwined 
relationship between agency and identity. Recall that others confer identities on us 
in virtue of our actions, including our eating. But if you continually fail to take my 
eating as I mean it, then you will not take it to reflect the identities I am attempting 
to live out through my eating, and will not confer them on me. I will be unable, in a 
significant sense, not only to act in the way I intend but to be who I am trying to be. 
It is true that we can take on identities first-personally, by self-identifying in ways 
that others don’t acknowledge. But identities also have a third-personal component; 
they require social recognition (Lindemann 2014, 4). Without this recognition, our 
ability to inhabit or at least maintain most identities is limited.  

By distorting interpretations of eating, the control narrative can obstruct 
unhealthy eaters from taking on certain identities. But deprivation of opportunity 
and infiltrated consciousness can also obstruct identities. Depriving eaters of 
opportunities to eat can literally prevent them from eating in ways that would 
enable them to inhabit, or be recognized as inhabiting, certain identities. And 
infiltrated consciousness can take the possibility of certain actions, and therefore 
certain identities, off the table “from the inside.”  

As mentioned earlier, there are many different racial, gender, ethnic, and 
other sorts of identities linked to ways of eating. Those identified as unhealthy 
eaters could be precluded from inhabiting these identities if the eating associated 
with the identity is blocked, precluded, or interpreted as a sign of failed, flawed, or 
non-agency rather than the identity in question. But the central identity obstructed 
by the control narrative is “healthy eater.” Being a healthy eater is associated with 
being a responsible citizen and a good person overall, not to mention a good agent 
(Coveney 2006; Crawford 1994; Kukla 2018). By blocking this identity, and thereby 
these associations, the control narrative deeply constrains the agency of those 
identified as unhealthy eaters. This can affect an eater’s actions, intentions, and the 
cultivation of her capacities in many areas of life, not just with regard to eating. This 



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might be one of the most significant ways that the control narrative about unhealthy 
eaters can damage agency. 

 
Who Is an Unhealthy Eater? 

Anyone identified as an unhealthy eater may have their agency damaged by 
the control narrative. However, because what gets counted as health and healthy 
behaviour is not only uncertain but inflected with classism and racism, some people 
are more likely to be identified as unhealthy eaters than others, and the label may 
stick to different people in more and less restrictive ways. In addition, the effects of 
the control narrative can be modulated by interactions with other social narratives. 
For example, the label may be less likely to stick to men than women because of 
stereotypes associating masculinity with indifference, and even antagonism, toward 
health (Springer and Mouzon 2011; Courtenay 2000). If men eat unhealthily, their 
eating may be understood as expressive of their masculinity, rather than reflective 
of their damaged agency. At the very least, this narrative opens up space to 
reinterpret men’s eating so that it is not automatically or permanently understood 
as a failure of agency. Women, however, are often expected to be responsible not 
only for their own eating and health but for the eating and health of their families 
(Reiheld 2015). The label of unhealthy eater may not only be more likely to stick to 
women than men, but a woman may be subject to the assumption that she is a 
flawed or failed agent because of the way her family eats, not just because of her 
own eating. 

I suggest that “unhealthy eater” sticks to and affects fat people in 
particularly stubborn ways. Despite the fact that the connection between eating and 
body size is deeply complex (Bombak 2014; Campos et al. 2006), it is widely 
assumed that a fat body is the result of unhealthy eating. This assumption appears 
in almost all the academic and mainstream literature on fat, whether the authors 
think that unhealthy eating is caused by lack of willpower, ignorance, the eater’s 
proximity to convenience stores and fast food outlets, or their failure to read the 
latest diet book.10 While these authors may come to different conclusions about 
what ultimately explains unhealthy eating, they share the common and pervasive 
assumption that a fat body is almost always caused by unhealthy eating. Given this 
narrative, it is highly likely that a fat person will be taken as an unhealthy eater, 

                                                      
10 As Alison Reiheld writes, “With rare exceptions, to discuss obesity as it has been 
framed [by the medical establishment] is to discuss a disease that is related to food. 
Here . . . the old saying applies: it is the exceptions that prove the rule” (2015, 231). 
Some exceptions include most work in the field of fat studies, Julie Guthman’s work 
on toxins as possible contributors to “obesity” (2013), and folks working in the 
Health at Every Size movement (Bacon 2010). 



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regardless of her actual eating practices. Whether the person eats healthily or not, 
others will confer on her the identity of unhealthy eater simply because of the size 
of her body.  

Moreover, because the association of fat bodies with unhealthy eating is so 
pervasive, and alternative explanations for fatness are so rarely considered, 
attempts to correct this conferral are likely futile. When there is a misreading of an 
agent’s intention, reparative strategies can often be used to reauthor the action in a 
more accurate way (Bierria 2014). For example, say I hand you a book, and you think 
I have given it to you to read. You say, “I don’t want this book,” but I just want you 
to hold it so I can answer my phone. To correct this misreading, I can explain my 
intentions to you, a third party can explain it to you (“she just needs to answer her 
phone”), or you may be prompted to use your imagination and rethink what I am 
doing, perhaps when I meet your comment with a blank stare and proceed to 
answer my phone.  

These methods could be used to correct misreadings of “unhealthy eating” 
(“I don’t usually eat entire pies in one sitting, but today is March 14, Pi day!”). But 
when there are systematic misinterpretations of the actions of those Bierria calls 
“disenfranchised agents” due to widespread prejudice, these agents often do not 
have recourse to reparative strategies (Bierria 2014, 132). Attempts by the actor to 
explain or prompt reinterpretation might be preempted, ignored, or dismissed as 
lies. Others are unlikely to step in and explain, since they are likely drawing from the 
same set of prejudiced narratives. In such cases, the interpreter is unlikely to see a 
need for reinterpretation, even if the actor or a third party does protest. 

This is often the case with fat people’s eating. There is widespread cultural 
and institutional enforcement of the idea that fat people get fat because they eat 
unhealthily. It is simply “common sense,” backed up by government and medical 
institutions (not to mention media and diet companies), that fat people get fat by 
eating poorly.11 As Samantha Murray writes: "We exist in a culture of a negative 
collective 'knowingness' about fatness. . . . We presume we know the histories of all 

                                                      
11 Empirical research catalogs some of these “common sense” beliefs, many of 
which pertain to perceived flaws in fat people’s agency. Review articles looking at 
prejudice and discrimination against fat people found widespread perceptions of fat 
people as lacking in self-discipline, and that medical professionals found “obese” 
people to be noncompliant, “indulgent,” and lacking “willpower” (Puhl and Brownell 
2001; Puhl and Heuer 2009). Studies have shown that educating people about the 
complex causes of fatness can reduce “obesity bias” (Pearl and Lebowitz 2014; 
Hilbert 2016), while educating people about alleged “controllable” contributors to 
fatness has been found to increase it (Teachman et al. 2003). 



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fat bodies, particularly those of fat women; we believe we know their desires (which 
must be out of control) and their will (which must be weak)" (2005, 154). 

Because alternative explanations of fatness are few and far between, many 
observers cannot draw on them to inform their interpretations or produce the 
“productive self-doubt” (Bierria 2014, 132) that would prompt reinterpretation. 
Instead, when alternative explanations are raised, they are likely to be characterized 
as excuses rather than legitimate explanations, undercutting their power to force or 
inform reinterpretation. The hegemony of the “unhealthy eating causes fat” 
narrative means that when the testimony of fat people about their own eating does 
not concur with that narrative, it is dismissed as obviously false or deluded. 12 As the 
blogger “Your Fat Friend” writes:  

 
Being called a liar—openly—has become a regular feature of my life as 
a fat person. Any answer I offer about my body, the food I eat, the way 
I feel, or the regularity with which I move is answered with a dismissal. 
. . . These questions—about diet, exercise, worth and will—have no 
answers that will satisfy their askers. My words have already been 
betrayed by the believed brokenness of my body. . . . There is nothing I 
can say to counter the assumptions attached to my wide, soft frame. 
(Your Fat Friend 2017).  
 

And even when well-established medical authority provides an alternative 
explanation that will be accepted within the control narrative—say the fatness is 
understood to be out of the person’s control because of a thyroid condition, and she 
is seeing a doctor about it—the presumption that the individual is fat because she 
eats too much will need to be cancelled out again and again and again.  

For these reasons, fat people as a group are particularly likely to be identified 
as unhealthy eaters and subjected to the forms of damaged agency that I have 
described. To be clear, this is not to say that fat people do not have agency at all, or 
that their agency is necessarily damaged. Rather, the combination of the control 
narrative about unhealthy eaters and the assumed link between fatness and 
unhealthy eating makes fat people particularly susceptible to the damage that may 
accompany being labeled as an unhealthy eater and leaves them with few effective 
means of avoiding those harms. 

                                                      
12 Ragen Chastain (2011) calls this phenomenon the “but but but syndrome.” 
Assumptions about fat people’s eating, exercise behaviors, or health status may be 
challenged with evidence (such as testimony, athletic achievements, or medical test 
results) but this evidence is discounted or rejected because it doesn’t fit the 
assumptions. 



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This situation may contribute to and reinforce the oppression that fat people 
experience in North American society (Eller 2014; Farrell 2011).13 It may also 
compound other forms of oppression and inequality. Fat people are a diverse group, 
and interactions between the control narrative, the “fat is caused by unhealthy 
eating” narrative, and narratives about race, gender, class, ethnicity, ability, and the 
like may amplify damaging effects on agency. For example, sexist narratives about 
women as emotional, irrational, and lacking in self-control, and sexist and racist 
narratives about black women as irresponsible (Collins 2000), may reinforce 
interpretations of women’s apparent unhealthy eating as failures of agency. This 
may make it even more difficult for fat women, and fat black women in particular, to 
shake off the unhealthy eater label or force reinterpretations of their eating, even if 
there are alternative interpretations available. As we will discuss shortly, such 
interactions between narratives not only make some people particularly vulnerable 
to the damaging effects of the control narrative but present challenges for projects 
of moral repair. 

 
Counterstories: Alternative Models of the Eater 

I have argued that the control narrative about unhealthy eaters can damage 
agency by informing how others identify, perceive, and treat unhealthy eaters, and 
how these individuals understand themselves. In my view, these damaging effects 

                                                      
13 It should be noted while being fat might make you particularly vulnerable to the 
harms associated with being identified as an “unhealthy eater,” given the racism and 
classism involved in identifying health and healthy eating, being “thin” does not in 
itself get you off the hook. Being thin does, for some people, offer protection from 
identification as an unhealthy eater. Thin people may be better able to force 
reinterpretation of their unhealthy eating, or that eating may be taken as a 
momentary lapse in agency, rather than a chronic condition. As Julie Guthman 
writes in her discussion of Kathleen LeBesco’s work, “Fat people are imbued with 
little subjectivity no matter what they do, while thin people are imbued with 
heightened subjectivity no matter what they do” (Guthman 2007, 78). Though I have 
not found any research on the subject, I suspect that class and race come into play 
with who gets off the hook here; for instance, low-income white folks may be less 
likely to be seen as healthy eaters no matter how “normal” their BMI. Their thinness 
may be attributed to smoking or drug use rather than good eating practices, 
regardless of their actual engagement in any of those activities. Also, if those 
promoting the idea of “skinny fat” (Castañon 2016) or “normal-weight central 
obesity” (Sahakyan et al. 2015) get their way, the assumption that thinness equals 
health will be broken (while, at the same time, the link between fat and ill-health is 
reinforced). 



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and the pronounced way in which they affect vulnerable populations, like fat 
people, present powerful reasons to reject the control narrative. This is not to 
suggest that such effects should be our only consideration when deciding between 
accounts of eating agency or of what counts as good eating, just that they should be 
included. In any case, there are other good reasons to abandon the control 
narrative. For example, feminists have criticized the dualism and antagonism toward 
the body inherent in the control model (Bordo 2003, 144–146), and the way it 
undervalues or completely ignores how relationships and context shape, constrain, 
and enable agency (Mackenzie and Stoljar 2000; Reiheld 2015; Gilson 2015). Food 
and health scholars have also criticized the control model because it is apparently 
unable to produce effective eating interventions and fails to adequately explain the 
apparently massive shifts in eating habits over recent decades in the US (Brownell et 
al. 2010).  

In light of these issues, alternative accounts of the eater have begun to gain 
traction in eating and health research and in the media. These accounts might be 
useful as “counterstories,” narratives that challenge and potentially replace 
dominant, damaging narratives (Lindemann Nelson 2001b, 45). Since there is no 
such thing as an undamaged identity, we are not seeking narratives that do not 
constrain or constrict agency in any way. Rather, we want a counterstory that is, at 
least, less damaging than the dominant narrative and, ideally, more enabling than 
constrictive. To this end, I now consider two alternative accounts of the eater and 
the effects of their characterizations of unhealthy eaters on agency.  

 
The Environmental Model 

In response to the failures of traditional approaches to solving the “obesity 
crisis” (Hill and Peters 1998; Egger and Swinburn 1997), an environmental model of 
eating agency was developed in the 1990s. It has since become popular among 
some public health researchers as a corrective to the nearly exclusive focus on 
individual-level factors as determining eating (and other) behaviour (Brug et al. 
2008; Larson and Story 2009; Glanz and Mullis 1988). Broadly speaking, the 
environmental model draws attention to features of the environment that influence 
what are considered the two main areas of behaviour contributing to fatness: eating 
(energy input) and exercise (energy output).14 These environmental features include 
food policy and regulations, subsidies, the types of stores and restaurants near one’s 
school, work, or home, one’s income, cultural norms, and family traditions.  

While the control model allows that the environment can influence eating 
(framing it as something that a virtuous eater will overcome, if need be), the 

                                                      
14 This presumes an “energy-balance model” of obesity. Guthman questions the 
validity of this model (2013), but it is widely taken for granted. 



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environmental model emphasizes that environmental influences can preclude or 
compromise individual control over eating. Proponents of the environmental model 
argue that contemporary environments—often called “obesogenic” or “toxic” 
environments (Brownell and Horgen 2004, 7)—undermine our ability to exercise our 
eating agency. These environments are broadly characterized as abundant in easily 
accessible, tasty, inexpensive, intensely marketed, “energy-dense,” but innutritious 
foods, and a variety of social and cultural forces that encourage or at least fail to 
discourage regular consumption of large portions of these foods.  

There are two key ways that contemporary environments compromise 
eating agency. First, they limit which foods are available for people to choose from. 
In “food deserts”—residential areas where healthy items are not readily available or 
affordable and fast foods and convenience foods are—choosing healthy foods is 
practically and economically difficult because they simply aren’t there to choose 
from.15 Second, the environment “hijacks” human biology and physiology (Brownell 
et al. 2010, 381–382). The story here is that humans evolved to survive in conditions 
of scarcity, which means that we are predisposed to eat large amounts of energy-
dense foods when they are available and to store this energy in the form of fat 
(Brownell and Horgen 2004, 25). In the toxic contemporary environment, energy-
dense foods are plentiful and constantly available, and we rarely encounter periods 
of scarcity. Since our biology “naturally” makes it nearly impossible for us to resist 
these ubiquitous sweets and “junk food” (Contento et al. 2007, 180), it is no surprise 
that we eat so much of it. In addition to the omnipresence of palatable innutritious 
foods that satisfy our “innate biological predispositions” (Contento et al. 2007, 180), 
certain forms of marketing may also bypass our agency and “tap directly” into our 
bodies (Brownell et al. 2010, 385). 

While it seems logically possible to conceive of an environmental account of 
eating agency that does not make healthist assumptions about eating, the 
environmental model was developed and continues to be widely promoted and 
deployed within a healthist framework. A healthist environmental narrative about 
unhealthy eating attributes that eating to an unfortunate combination of practical 
limitations, our natural predilection for certain foods, and the toxic environment. 
One important implication of this narrative is that unhealthy eaters should not be 
blamed for their poor eating. Personal responsibility is (at least ostensibly) not the 
focus. Rather, it is the environment that is primarily to blame, and it is the task of 

                                                      
15 “Food desert” is defined differently by different researchers (Walker, Keane, and 
Burke 2010). It generally refers to neighbourhoods with fewer supermarkets, which 
are assumed to have a better selection of healthy foods at reasonable prices, and 
more fast food outlets and/or convenience stores.  



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governments, corporations, public health organizations, and other collective bodies 
to alter that environment so people will eat better.16 

One benefit of shifting responsibility away from the individual is that it 
undermines the moralization of unhealthy eating. Given that many of the targets of 
“antiobesity” programs are low-income women of color (Guthman 2013, 143), some 
feminists and antiracists have found this feature particularly appealing (Yancey, 
Leslie, and Abel 2006). In terms of agency, shifting responsibility to the environment 
interrupts the association between being an unhealthy eater and being a flawed or 
failed agent. Instead, it makes unhealthy eating not really agential at all. 

That said, personal responsibility for eating is not entirely absent from this 
account. Feminist critics have argued that it shows up in implicit explanations of 
how some people manage to eat well despite living in toxic environments (Guthman 
2007; Kirkland 2011). If we assume that obesogenic environments are ubiquitous, 
healthy eaters in such environments must be good agents, able to fend off the 
encroachment of the environment, while unhealthy eaters cannot. As Guthman 
writes: “If junk food is everywhere and people are all naturally drawn to it, those 
who resist it must have heightened powers” (2007, 78). This is troubling since most 
of those assumed to eat unhealthily are members of low-income minority 
populations. We thus end up with a narrative in which wealthier, thinner, white 
people have good eating agency while poorer people of colour do not have eating 
agency at all: “Members of one group move powerfully through the world 
determining their body sizes and health statuses; others are pitiably stuck within 
and determined by the environment" (Kirkland 2011, 467–477).  

Alternatively, if we suppose that only certain environments, such as food 
deserts, are toxic, then only those living in those environments are precluded from 
exercising their eating agency. But food deserts are generally understood to be low-
income areas, so this produces a similar story about agency. Poor people’s eating 
agency is negated by their environment, while wealthy people, living in nontoxic 
(clean?) environments, can exercise their eating agency unimpeded by 
environmental factors.17  

                                                      
16 Personal responsibility for eating is simply postponed, not eliminated entirely. The 
promise is that without the corrupting influence of an obesogenic environment, 
people will be better able to exercise their eating agency, which (given healthist 
assumptions) means they will eat more healthily, or at least, they will be properly 
personally responsible for their own unhealthy eating (Brownell et al. 2010, 383–
384). 
17 It is possible that one could take an environmental model that denies anyone 
really has eating agency and that eating is generally determined by the 
environment. Perhaps those who do eat healthily despite “junk food” being 



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An environmental narrative about unhealthy eaters undercuts some of the 
damage done to agency by the control narrative. Rather than taking unhealthy 
eating as a sign of a flawed or failed agency, we can attribute it to the environment. 
But understanding unhealthy eating as something that is not agential can lead to its 
own forms of deprivation of opportunity and infiltrated consciousness. Given this 
understanding, institutions can easily justify interventions into unhealthy eaters’ 
lives because they are clearly unable to help themselves eat better. And if I come to 
understand my own eating in this way, why would I bother to try to change it 
myself? I may therefore welcome outside interventions and paternalistic control of 
my eating, understanding myself to be unable to do any better. This account can 
also lead to distorted actions and blocked identities in much the same way as the 
control narrative. Others will not interpret my unhealthy eating as reflective of my 
identity or values. Such eating is nothing more than a product of a toxic 
environment. And this will prevent me from constructing an identity other than 
“unhealthy eater” in and through my eating.18 In these respects, the environmental 
narrative about unhealthy eaters is not much better than the control narrative.  
 
The Situationist Model  

Another model of the eater is the “situationist model,” which draws on 
situationist psychology and has been popularized through the work of Brian Wansink 
and “nudge” proponents Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein.19 Implicit in this work is 

                                                      
“everywhere” are in different “microenvironments” than those who do not. (This 
explanation raises problems with defining the limits of an environment, since there 
will be people in the same household who, on this explanation, must live in different 
microenvironments). This would mean that no one is really a better eating agent 
than anyone else, which would undercut some of the harm. But unhealthy eaters 
would still be singled out for intervention because their eating is problematic; they 
would still need help from others, whereas healthy eaters would not. 
18 Because an environmental account is not often presented as a general theory of 
agency but only of eating (and exercise), this denial of agency and identity may not 
bleed into other areas of life. But this is a significant constriction on agency, even if 
confined to eating. 
19 Wansink’s work has recently been criticized for a variety of significant 
methodological problems and self-plagiarism. This has led to the retraction of six 
articles in addition to multiple corrections, as of March 2018 (Lee 2018). It’s not 
clear that this undermines the viability of the situationist model of the eater, as the 
retracted work was less about the model itself than about particular instances of it 
at work (e.g., looking at which particular environmental features had which 



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an account of an eater who has some control over their eating, but this control is 
attenuated by unavoidable openness to environmental cues and the use of 
nonconscious cognitive shortcuts. For example, how much we eat at a given meal is 
rarely determined by careful calculation or measurement. Instead, we tend to use 
informal consumption norms, which are influenced by a variety of factors including 
how many people you eat with, who those people are (e.g., strangers or friends and 
family), how much they eat, the size of the plate or bowl you use, and the size of the 
portion served (Hermans et al. 2012; Herman, Roth, and Polivy 2003). Though we 
may think that “internal” factors like hunger and satiety are the most important 
determinants of how much we eat, these factors are often overridden by the 
environmental cues shaping the consumption norms in a particular context. We 
generally do not notice the influence that these features have on our judgments 
about how much to eat and how much we ate (Spanos et al. 2014, 1487). For 
instance, in a study by Hermans and others, most of the participants claimed to have 
eaten an amount typical for them when the study showed that the amount they ate 
was altered by both portion size and how much their eating companion ate 
(Hermans et al. 2012, 593).  

Simply knowing that the environment affects your behaviour in this way 
does little to stop it from determining the way in which you eat. Nevertheless, 
individuals can take steps to manipulate their environments to help them eat in 
accordance with their goals. Rather than insisting we just use our knowledge and 
willpower to overcome “temptation” and the influence of our environments, we can 
strategically use our openness to the environment to make ourselves eat in 
accordance with our values. Brian Wansink offers many tips and strategies for how 
to do this: use smaller plates, decide how much to eat before your meal rather than 
during it, keep healthy snacks like fruit visible and hide unhealthy foods in 
cupboards, and so on (Wansink 2004, 471–472). 

This focus on the possibility of individual control distinguishes the situationist 
model of eaters from the environmental model.20 Whereas the environmental 
model deemphasizes personal responsibility while emphasizing the need for broad, 
structural changes, the situationist model suggests that individuals can and should 

                                                      
particular effects on eating). That said, Wansink’s disgrace may undermine the 
narrative force of the situationist account as it is so closely associated with him. 
20 The models may be compatible (Kelly Brownell and colleagues (2010) promote 
both, for instance); a situationist model might be understood as a fleshing out of the 
ways microenvironmental features affect individuals. This would be welcome for 
proponents of the environmental account, given that environmental accounts are 
lacking in theoretical explanations of why certain features affect behaviour in the 
way they are assumed to do (Brug et al. 2008).  



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take personal responsibility for their eating—at least to a certain extent. We may 
not be able to block the environment from influencing us, but we can shape that 
environment so it influences us in ways we endorse. In this way, we are less 
personally responsible for eating a whole bag of chips once it is opened 
(consumption norms make it difficult for us to stop) and more personally 
responsible for failing to arrange our environment in ways conducive to good eating 
(i.e., not getting our hands on that bag in the first place). 

The situationist model avoids the problematic suggestion that healthy eaters 
are superior agents with “heightened powers” while others have no eating agency at 
all. Instead, it requires only the claim that all humans use cognitive shortcuts. That’s 
just how we are; it is not a feature that belongs to some and not others. Moreover, 
this model is optimistic about personal control; there is room for eaters to take 
control of their eating, just in a roundabout way. Individuals can employ a variety of 
tactics to modify their eating by modifying their environments, though there may be 
limits to what an individual can accomplish given that no one can fully control their 
own environment.  

A situationist account does not rule out that some people may eat 
unhealthily due to flaws in agency, like lack of willpower or self-control. It simply 
offers a variety of alternative explanations. Unhealthy eating may be attributable to 
a lack of understanding about what needs to be done (perhaps one is stuck thinking 
that willpower alone will do the trick), a lack of good strategy to make the desired 
change, or environmental factors outside of one’s control. Those who have proper 
strategies may have difficulties implementing them due to time, ability, or resource 
constraints. It may not be physically difficult for most of us to move things around in 
our cupboards, but if we do not have time to do it or the money to pay someone 
else to, it may not get done.21 And in some cases, the changes required to eat better 
are outside of any individual’s control, as with food deserts or even with cafeterias 
structured to induce overeating. Here, institutions, collectives, and others who have 
the power to make these broader changes will need to step in. 

There are some clear benefits to the situationist narrative. For one, it offers a 
variety of possible explanations for unhealthy eating, opening up space for 
contestation and reinterpretation. While eating unhealthily could be due to lack of 
self-control or ignorance, it might also be due to a poorly organized kitchen, or 
plates that are very large. Because kitchen organization, plate size, and many of the 
other environmental factors that supposedly cause unhealthy eating are things 
eaters might change, eaters may be less likely to internalize the idea that they have 
no hope of controlling their own eating. Even if the changes needed are out of an 

                                                      
21 For those with certain physical disabilities or chronic pain, reorganizing the 
cupboards may be well out of the realm of physical possibility. 



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individual’s reach, at least the blame can be displaced from agency and onto the 
environment.22 Individuals may be better enabled to reject attempts to control their 
eating if they believe they can make the necessary tweaks on their own or believe 
that the problem is with the environment and not with themselves. 

That said, a situationist narrative may helpfully widen the range of possible 
explanations of unhealthy eating, but insofar as it fails to challenge the assumption 
that eating should be for health, it maintains one crucial and harmful constraint on 
agency: unhealthy eating cannot show up as an expression of good agency or one’s 
identity or values. Any account that precludes the possibility that unhealthy eating 
may express an individual’s identity or values can lead to distorted eating and 
blocked identities. But not all deployments of the situationist account make this 
healthist assumption. In Nudge, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein are careful to 
reject the idea that good eating must be healthy eating. Following from their 
libertarian commitments, they insist that people should be free to prioritize other 
values in their eating and other behaviours (2009, 5). This produces a values-
pluralist situationist narrative about unhealthy eaters. In the next and final section 
of the paper, I consider how such a narrative might function as a counterstory.  

 
Counterstories: Values-Pluralist Situationism 

Despite the prominence of healthism about eating, many people seem to 
have pluralist intuitions about eating. For example, many people think that pleasure 
is an important eating value, in addition to health (Kukla 2018; Welsh 2011; Noë 
2012). Empirical research suggests that people also see eating as related to taste, 
ethics, cost, convenience, identity, and social relationships (Connors et al. 2001; 
Bisogni et al. 2002; Devine et al. 1999). In line with these intuitions, some 
philosophers have pushed back on healthism about eating by suggesting that what is 
ethically important about eating is that individuals are able to autonomously pursue 
their own values through that eating, which may or may not include or prioritize 
health (Noë 2012; Bonotti 2015; Thaler and Sunstein 2009). I call this position 
“values-pluralism” about eating.  

Values-pluralism does not preclude the possibility that unhealthy eating 
could be a breakdown of agency, but it enables an alternative positive interpretation 
of that eating. Values-pluralists cannot assume that someone is a flawed or failed 
agent when they eat unhealthily. Rather, they must always ask whether the person 
has autonomously chosen to pursue a value other than health through their eating. 

                                                      
22 That said, neoliberal individualizing and responsibilizing narratives may make 
people feel it is their fault for not having the time or money or energy to take care of 
themselves by altering their environments in the necessary way. 



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Published by Scholarship@Western, 2018  24 

 

Eating deep fried Oreos on a regular basis may be good agency at work, if the agent 
prioritizes pleasure and finds that dish intensely pleasurable (Noë 2012).  

While values-pluralist arguments often rely on something like a control 
model of the agent (at least implicitly), Thaler and Sunstein combine it with their 
situationist model of agency. As we have already discussed, the situationist model 
increases the number of possible explanations for unhealthy eating as well as 
avenues for addressing unwanted unhealthy eating. If we add the possibility that 
unhealthy eating could be good agency at work, we undercut the major limitation I 
identified with the healthist situationist narrative: unhealthy eating could show up 
as a reflection of identity and values. A values-pluralist situationist narrative would 
thereby not only increase the number of possible explanations of unhealthy eating 
but also enable unhealthy eaters to understand their unhealthy eating as agential, 
making them less vulnerable to those who would take advantage of them or try to 
control their eating. And it may also make people more open to interpreting others’ 
unhealthy eating as reflective of someone’s identity, character, and values, rather 
than their ignorance, lack of willpower, or nonexistent eating agency. In these 
respects, a values-pluralist situationist narrative about unhealthy eaters seems a 
quite promising counterstory. 

That said, I have some significant reservations about the power of this 
narrative as a means of moral repair. In particular, I suspect that it is limited in its 
ability to repair the agency of fat people, who, as I have argued, are especially 
vulnerable to the harms of the control narrative. Recognizing that the effects of a 
narrative on agency are modulated by interactions with other narratives, I suggest 
that fat people will be unlikely to benefit from this narrative for at least two reasons.  

First, ableism may prevent fat people from being recognized as (or 
recognizing themselves as) agential unhealthy eaters.23 Even if we agree that 
individuals may legitimately prioritize values other than health, ableist assumptions 
about the value of able-bodiedness may lead us to believe that when someone’s 
health is at risk or already compromised, the rational thing to do is prioritize health. 
In other words, intuitive sympathy for values-pluralism about eating may dissolve 
when the eater in question is sick, disabled, or perceived to be at high risk of illness 
or disability. This affects fat people because according to the American Medical 
Association, obesity is a disease (Pollack 2013). It is repeatedly and often urgently 
proclaimed that being fat “causes” or at least (and somewhat more accurately) is 
associated with serious illness, disability, and early death. According to an ableist 
narrative, then, even if some people can legitimately prioritize nonhealth values in 
their eating, fat people—some of whom are by definition diseased, and all of whom 

                                                      
23 For a discussion of ableism and its links to other forms of oppression, see Robert 
McRuer (2013). 



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are widely assumed to be at risk for bad health if not already unhealthy—should 
prioritize health. Otherwise they are irrational, which pushes them into the flawed 
or failed agent category.  

Second, even if fat people do get counted as agential unhealthy eaters, the 
identity or values their eating is taken to reflect may be bad, as in sinful, corrupt, or 
irresponsible. David Mela claims that over 50 years of scientific research has been 
premised on the idea that “obese” people must get more pleasure out of food than 
“nonobese” people do, which explains why they (allegedly) eat so much even to the 
(alleged) detriment of their health (Mela 2006). This suggests that if fat people’s 
unhealthy eating is taken as agential, it is likely to be attributed to a pursuit of 
pleasure. As Rebecca Kukla argues, our ethical evaluations of pleasure-seeking 
through food are complicated at best (2018). Who gets to be hedonistic without 
being judged a morally corrupt or irresponsible person is deeply coloured by 
classism, racism, and other forms of prejudice. For instance, thin, beautiful French 
women seem welcome to be hedonists, perhaps in part because their food 
pleasures presumably revolve around copious amounts of brie and wine, and they 
are assumed to remain beautiful despite (or even because of) their eating practices. 
On the other hand, low-income, fat Americans, whose tastes are presumed to fall 
more into the junk food and fast food range, seem more likely to be judged as 
irresponsible or gluttonous. In this case, a values-pluralist situationist narrative may 
simply push the object of criticism from an unhealthy eater’s failed, flawed, or 
nonexistent eating agency to her bad character or values. And being understood a 
bad person can have its own damaging effects on agency.  

 
Conclusion 

One of the goals of this paper was to illustrate some of the complex ways 
that healthism about eating affects agency. As noted in the introduction, 
conversations about agency and the ethics of eating often exclusively focus on the 
ways policies and interventions can impinge on the exercise of agency through food 
choice. But I have suggested that healthist narratives can also affect agency in 
significant ways. I have argued that the common control narrative about unhealthy 
eaters may damage the agency of those identified as such in four different ways. I 
suggested that two prominent alternative accounts of eating agency—the 
environmental model and the situationist model—are not much better, at least on 
their own. A values-pluralist situationist narrative holds some promise, but I have 
suggested that it is limited in its ability to repair the agency of some of those most 
vulnerable to the harms of the control narrative, namely fat people.  

This discussion emphasizes that any project of repair featuring 
counterstories needs to be responsive to the dynamic nature of social narratives and 
their intersectional effects on identity and agency. It also highlights that a single 



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counterstory is unlikely to be sufficient to repair the agency of those whose 
identities are constructed out of, or at least in relation to, multiple damaging 
narratives. Despite these challenges, I hope to have shown that resisting harmful 
healthist narratives about eaters is an important and worthwhile project. This is not 
to suggest that doing so should be our only response to healthism; healthism’s 
harms extend far beyond agency and responding to these harms will require a 
variety of tactics. Nonetheless, as participants in ubiquitous discussions about eating 
and eaters—whether focused on environmental degradation, animal suffering, 
weight loss, food insecurity, climate change, or diet-related illness—we can and 
should work to undercut harmful narratives about eaters and promote more 
empowering ones. Precisely which narratives we should work to promote, and how 
to do so effectively, will have to be part of a future discussion. But I hope to have 
shown that it is a discussion we should have, and that the conceptual tools offered 
here will help make it a productive one. 
 
 
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MEGAN DEAN is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Georgetown University. She has a 
master of arts in philosophy from the University of Alberta. Megan works in feminist 
philosophy, European philosophy (especially Foucauldian theory and 
phenomenology), bioethics, and philosophy of science, with a topical focus on 
bodies and embodiment. Her current research is on the ethical and epistemic effects 
of common conceptions of eating and eaters.