“Fattening” One Health: An Interspecies Approach to Dismantling the “Obesity Epidemic”

Abstract The past 30 years have been marked by the alleged public health threat of the human “obesity epidemic” and recently parallel concerns have surfaced regarding “obesity” in companion animals. Simultaneously, new research has questioned not only rising “obesity” rates but also weight as a reliable determinant of human health and it is becoming apparent that the medicalization and stigmatization of fatness have a profound effect on patients’ quality of medical care. Moreover, fat studies scholars have offered a critical perspective on how fatphobia is institutionalized within our medical systems, but the ways in which it affects veterinary medicine remain unexplored. Thus, the One Health framework offers a way to examine interspecies trends of weight and physical health and can be extended to interrogate how fatphobia and speciesism interact in the healthcare setting with the ultimate goal of offering more holistic and equitable care for human and nonhuman patients alike.