Julie Guthman

Weighing In takes on the «obesity epidemic,» challenging many widely held assumptions about its causes and consequences. Julie Guthman examines fatness and its relationship to health outcomes to ask if our efforts to prevent «obesity» are sensible, efficacious, or ethical. She also focuses the lens of obesity on the broader food system to understand why we produce cheap, over-processed food, as well as why we eat it. Guthman takes issue with the currently touted remedy to obesity—promoting food...

In this groundbreaking study of organic farming, Julie Guthman challenges accepted wisdom about organic food and agriculture in the Golden State. Many continue to believe that small-scale organic farming is the answer to our environmental and health problems, but Guthman refutes popular portrayals that pit «small organic» against «big organic» and offers an alternative analysis that underscores the limits of an organic label as a pathway to transforming agriculture.<BR /><BR /> This...

Strawberries are big business in California. They are the sixth-highest-grossing crop in the state, which produces 88 percent of the nation&rsquo;s favorite berry. Yet the industry is often criticized for its backbreaking labor conditions and dependence on highly toxic soil fumigants used to control fungal pathogens and other soilborne pests.<BR /><BR /> In <I>Wilted</I>,&#160;Julie&#160;Guthman tells the story of how the strawberry industry came to rely on...