Cooking up healthy citizens: the pedagogy of cookbooks

There are increasing levels of concern around the health of citizens within Western neo-liberal democracies like Britain, the USA, and Australia. These governmental concerns are made manifest by discursive mechanisms that seek to both survey and regulate the lifestyles, eating habits and exercise regimes of citizens. Such governmental imperatives have historically targeted schools with school food ranking high in the priorities of public health policy, particularly in regards to the fears around childhood obesity and related health problems (Gard and Wright, Rich, Vander Schee and Gard). However, more recently such concerns have spilled into the wider public arena in Australia where fears of an ?obesity epidemic?, the revision of the ?food pyramid? and recent calls that make it mandatory for fast food companies to display calorie/kilojoule content on menu boards illustrate the increasing levels to which governments seek to intervene regarding the health of citizens.