An activist participating in the Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago criticized the “diet industry,” stating it polices “Black fat flesh” and characterizing contemporary health standards and weight management as forms of “body fascism.”
During a session titled “Health Fascism” held on Saturday, author Da’Shaun L. Harrison articulated that the oversight and regulation of “Black fat flesh” serve as a fundamental underpinning for broader “entire systems of governance.”
“Black fatness is made meaningful through suffering, through surveillance, and through control and the policing of Black fat flesh anchors entire systems of governance. Without a population to discipline, there would be no BMI, no obesity epidemic, and no medical or scientific institutions organized around managing fatness,” Harrison stated. “The diet industry reflects this logic. It operates through what I once defined as formal and informal relationships among major food corporations, the medical-industrial complex, and individual wealthy benefactors to sustain a social order in which fat people are monitored, restricted, guilted, stolen from, and punished. Diet culture has always linked food to morality, framing restraint as virtue and pleasure as danger through language like 'guilty pleasure.'”
