Academic literature on the topic 'Effects of climate change on New Zealand (excl. social impacts)'

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) have wide-ranging environmental impacts, including on aquatic species of social and commercial importance. In New Zealand (NZ), strategic growth of the aquaculture industry could be adversely affected by the occurrence of HABs. This review examines HAB species which are known to bloom both globally and in NZ and their effects on commercially important shellfish and fish species. Blooms of Karenia spp. have frequently been associated with mortalities of both fish and shellfish in NZ and the sub-lethal effects of other genera, notably Alexandrium spp., on shellfish (which includes paralysis, a lack of byssus production, and reduced growth) are also of concern. Climate change and anthropogenic impacts may alter HAB population structure and dynamics, as well as the physiological responses of fish and shellfish, potentially further compromising aquatic species. Those HAB species which have been detected in NZ and have the potential to bloom and harm marine life in the future are also discussed. The use of environmental DNA (eDNA) and relevant bioassays are practical tools which enable early detection of novel, problem HAB species and rapid toxin/HAB screening, and new data from HAB monitoring of aquaculture production sites using eDNA are presented. As aquaculture grows to supply a sizable proportion of the world’s protein, the effects of HABs in reducing productivity is of increasing significance. Research into the multiple stressor effects of climate change and HABs on cultured species and using local, recent, HAB strains is needed to accurately assess effects and inform stock management strategies.

Introduction The aim of this paper is to examine whether recent catastrophic tsunamis have driven a cultural shift in the awareness of Australians to the danger associated with this natural hazard and whether the media have contributed to the emergence of “tsunami” as a new Australian catastrophe. Prior to the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami disaster (2004 IOT), tsunamis as a type of hazard capable of generating widespread catastrophe were not well known by the general public and had barely registered within the wider scientific community. As a university based lecturer who specialises in natural disasters, I always started my public talks or student lectures with an attempt at a detailed description of what a tsunami is. With little high quality visual and media imagery to use, this was not easy. The Australian geologist Ted Bryant was right when he named his 2001 book Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard. That changed on 26 December 2004 when the third largest earthquake ever recorded occurred northwest of Sumatra, Indonesia, triggering the most catastrophic tsunami ever experienced. The 2004 IOT claimed at least 220,000 lives—probably more—injured tens of thousands, destroyed widespread coastal infrastructure and left millions homeless. Beyond the catastrophic impacts, this tsunami was conspicuous because, for the first time, such a devastating tsunami was widely captured on video and other forms of moving and still imagery. This occurred for two reasons. Firstly, the tsunami took place during daylight hours in good weather conditions—factors conducive to capturing high quality visual images. Secondly, many people—both local residents and westerners who were on beachside holidays and at the coast at multiple locations impacted by the tsunami—were able to capture images of the tsunami on their cameras, videos, and smart phones. The extensive media coverage—including horrifying television, video, and still imagery that raced around the globe in the hours and days after the tsunami, filling our television screens, homes, and lives regardless of where we lived—had a dramatic effect. This single event drove a quantum shift in the wider cultural awareness of this type of catastrophe and acted as a catalyst for improved individual and societal understanding of the nature and effects of disaster landscapes. Since this event, there have been several notable tsunamis, including the March 2011 Japan catastrophe. Once again, this event occurred during daylight hours and was widely captured by multiple forms of media. These events have resulted in a cascade of media coverage across television, radio, movie, and documentary channels, in the print media, online, and in the popular press and on social media—very little of which was available prior to 2004. Much of this has been documentary and informative in style, but there have also been numerous television dramas and movies. For example, an episode of the popular American television series CSI Miami entitled Crime Wave (Season 3, Episode 7) featured a tsunami, triggered by a volcanic eruption in the Atlantic and impacting Miami, as the backdrop to a standard crime-filled episode ("CSI," IMDb; Wikipedia). In 2010, Warner Bros Studios released the supernatural drama fantasy film Hereafter directed by Clint Eastwood. In the movie, a television journalist survives a near-death experience during the 2004 IOT in what might be the most dramatic, and probably accurate, cinematic portrayal of a tsunami ("Hereafter," IMDb; Wikipedia). Thus, these creative and entertaining forms of media, influenced by the catastrophic nature of tsunamis, are impetuses for creativity that also contribute to a transformation of cultural knowledge of catastrophe. The transformative potential of creative media, together with national and intergovernmental disaster risk reduction activity such as community education, awareness campaigns, community evacuation planning and drills, may be indirectly inferred from rapid and positive community behavioural responses. By this I mean many people in coastal communities who experience strong earthquakes are starting a process of self-evacuation, even if regional tsunami warning centres have not issued an alert or warning. For example, when people in coastal locations in Samoa felt a large earthquake on 29 September 2009, many self-evacuated to higher ground or sought information and instruction from relevant authorities because they expected a tsunami to occur. When interviewed, survivors stated that the memory of television and media coverage of the 2004 IOT acted as a catalyst for their affirmative behavioural response (Dominey-Howes and Thaman 1). Thus, individual and community cultural understandings of the nature and effects of tsunami catastrophes are incredibly important for shaping resilience and reducing vulnerability. However, this cultural shift is not playing out evenly.Are Australia and Its People at Risk from Tsunamis?Prior to the 2004 IOT, there was little discussion about, research in to, or awareness about tsunamis and Australia. Ted Bryant from the University of Wollongong had controversially proposed that Australia had been affected by tsunamis much bigger than the 2004 IOT six to eight times during the last 10,000 years and that it was only a matter of when, not if, such an event repeated itself (Bryant, "Second Edition"). Whilst his claims had received some media attention, his ideas did not achieve widespread scientific, cultural, or community acceptance. Not-with-standing this, Australia has been affected by more than 60 small tsunamis since European colonisation (Dominey-Howes 239). Indeed, the 2004 IOT and 2006 Java tsunami caused significant flooding of parts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia (Prendergast and Brown 69). However, the affected areas were sparsely populated and experienced very little in the way of damage or loss. Thus they did not cross any sort of critical threshold of “catastrophe” and failed to achieve meaningful community consciousness—they were not agents of cultural transformation.Regardless of the risk faced by Australia’s coastline, Australians travel to, and holiday in, places that experience tsunamis. In fact, 26 Australians were killed during the 2004 IOT (DFAT) and five were killed by the September 2009 South Pacific tsunami (Caldwell et al. 26). What Role Do the Media Play in Preparing for and Responding to Catastrophe?Regardless of the type of hazard/disaster/catastrophe, the key functions the media play include (but are not limited to): pre-event community education, awareness raising, and planning and preparations; during-event preparation and action, including status updates, evacuation warnings and notices, and recommendations for affirmative behaviours; and post-event responses and recovery actions to follow, including where to gain aid and support. Further, the media also play a role in providing a forum for debate and post-event analysis and reflection, as a mechanism to hold decision makers to account. From time to time, the media also provide a platform for examining who, if anyone, might be to blame for losses sustained during catastrophes and can act as a powerful conduit for driving socio-cultural, behavioural, and policy change. Many of these functions are elegantly described and a series of best practices outlined by The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency in a tsunami specific publication freely available online (CDEMA 1). What Has Been the Media Coverage in Australia about Tsunamis and Their Effects on Australians?A manifest contents analysis of media material covering tsunamis over the last decade using the framework of Cox et al. reveals that coverage falls into distinctive and repetitive forms or themes. After tsunamis, I have collected articles (more than 130 to date) published in key Australian national broadsheets (e.g., The Australian and Sydney Morning Herald) and tabloid (e.g., The Telegraph) newspapers and have watched on television and monitored on social media, such as YouTube and Facebook, the types of coverage given to tsunamis either affecting Australia, or Australians domestically and overseas. In all cases, I continued to monitor and collect these stories and accounts for a fixed period of four weeks after each event, commencing on the day of the tsunami. The themes raised in the coverage include: the nature of the event. For example, where, when, why did it occur, how big was it, and what were the effects; what emergency response and recovery actions are being undertaken by the emergency services and how these are being provided; exploration of how the event was made worse or better by poor/good planning and prior knowledge, action or inaction, confusion and misunderstanding; the attribution of blame and responsibility; the good news story—often the discovery and rescue of an “iconic victim/survivor”—usually a child days to weeks later; and follow-up reporting weeks to months later and on anniversaries. This coverage generally focuses on how things are improving and is often juxtaposed with the ongoing suffering of victims. I select the word “victims” purposefully for the media frequently prefer this over the more affirmative “survivor.”The media seldom carry reports of “behind the scenes” disaster preparatory work such as community education programs, the development and installation of warning and monitoring systems, and ongoing training and policy work by response agencies and governments since such stories tend to be less glamorous in terms of the disaster gore factor and less newsworthy (Cox et al. 469; Miles and Morse 365; Ploughman 308).With regard to Australians specifically, the manifest contents analysis reveals that coverage can be described as follows. First, it focuses on those Australians killed and injured. Such coverage provides elements of a biography of the victims, telling their stories, personalising these individuals so we build empathy for their suffering and the suffering of their families. The Australian victims are not unknown strangers—they are named and pictures of their smiling faces are printed or broadcast. Second, the media describe and catalogue the loss and ongoing suffering of the victims (survivors). Third, the media use phrases to describe Australians such as “innocent victims in the wrong place at the wrong time.” This narrative establishes the sense that these “innocents” have been somehow wronged and transgressed and that suffering should not be experienced by them. The fourth theme addresses the difficulties Australians have in accessing Consular support and in acquiring replacement passports in order to return home. It usually goes on to describe how they have difficulty in gaining access to accommodation, clothing, food, and water and any necessary medicines and the challenges associated with booking travel home and the complexities of communicating with family and friends. The last theme focuses on how Australians were often (usually?) not given relevant safety information by “responsible people” or “those in the know” in the place where they were at the time of the tsunami. This establishes a sense that Australians were left out and not considered by the relevant authorities. This narrative pays little attention to the wide scale impact upon and suffering of resident local populations who lack the capacity to escape the landscape of catastrophe.How Does Australian Media Coverage of (Tsunami) Catastrophe Compare with Elsewhere?A review of the available literature suggests media coverage of catastrophes involving domestic citizens is similar globally. For example, Olofsson (557) in an analysis of newspaper articles in Sweden about the 2004 IOT showed that the tsunami was framed as a Swedish disaster heavily focused on Sweden, Swedish victims, and Thailand, and that there was a division between “us” (Swedes) and “them” (others or non-Swedes). Olofsson (557) described two types of “us” and “them.” At the international level Sweden, i.e. “us,” was glorified and contrasted with “inferior” countries such as Thailand, “them.” Olofsson (557) concluded that mediated frames of catastrophe are influenced by stereotypes and nationalistic values.Such nationalistic approaches preface one type of suffering in catastrophe over others and delegitimises the experiences of some survivors. Thus, catastrophes are not evenly experienced. Importantly, Olofsson although not explicitly using the term, explains that the underlying reason for this construction of “them” and “us” is a form of imperialism and colonialism. Sharp refers to “historically rooted power hierarchies between countries and regions of the world” (304)—this is especially so of western news media reporting on catastrophes within and affecting “other” (non-western) countries. Sharp goes much further in relation to western representations and imaginations of the “war on terror” (arguably a global catastrophe) by explicitly noting the near universal western-centric dominance of this representation and the construction of the “west” as good and all “non-west” as not (299). Like it or not, the western media, including elements of the mainstream Australian media, adhere to this imperialistic representation. Studies of tsunami and other catastrophes drawing upon different types of media (still images, video, film, camera, and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and the like) and from different national settings have explored the multiple functions of media. These functions include: providing information, questioning the authorities, and offering a chance for transformative learning. Further, they alleviate pain and suffering, providing new virtual communities of shared experience and hearing that facilitate resilience and recovery from catastrophe. Lastly, they contribute to a cultural transformation of catastrophe—both positive and negative (Hjorth and Kyoung-hwa "The Mourning"; "Good Grief"; McCargo and Hyon-Suk 236; Brown and Minty 9; Lau et al. 675; Morgan and de Goyet 33; Piotrowski and Armstrong 341; Sood et al. 27).Has Extensive Media Coverage Resulted in an Improved Awareness of the Catastrophic Potential of Tsunami for Australians?In playing devil’s advocate, my simple response is NO! This because I have been interviewing Australians about their perceptions and knowledge of tsunamis as a catastrophe, after events have occurred. These events have triggered alerts and warnings by the Australian Tsunami Warning System (ATWS) for selected coastal regions of Australia. Consequently, I have visited coastal suburbs and interviewed people about tsunamis generally and those events specifically. Formal interviews (surveys) and informal conversations have revolved around what people perceived about the hazard, the likely consequences, what they knew about the warning, where they got their information from, how they behaved and why, and so forth. I have undertaken this work after the 2007 Solomon Islands, 2009 New Zealand, 2009 South Pacific, the February 2010 Chile, and March 2011 Japan tsunamis. I have now spoken to more than 800 people. Detailed research results will be presented elsewhere, but of relevance here, I have discovered that, to begin with, Australians have a reasonable and shared cultural knowledge of the potential catastrophic effects that tsunamis can have. They use terms such as “devastating; death; damage; loss; frightening; economic impact; societal loss; horrific; overwhelming and catastrophic.” Secondly, when I ask Australians about their sources of information about tsunamis, they describe the television (80%); Internet (85%); radio (25%); newspaper (35%); and social media including YouTube (65%). This tells me that the media are critical to underpinning knowledge of catastrophe and are a powerful transformative medium for the acquisition of knowledge. Thirdly, when asked about where people get information about live warning messages and alerts, Australians stated the “television (95%); Internet (70%); family and friends (65%).” Fourthly and significantly, when individuals were asked what they thought being caught in a tsunami would be like, responses included “fun (50%); awesome (75%); like in a movie (40%).” Fifthly, when people were asked about what they would do (i.e., their “stated behaviour”) during a real tsunami arriving at the coast, responses included “go down to the beach to swim/surf the tsunami (40%); go to the sea to watch (85%); video the tsunami and sell to the news media people (40%).”An independent and powerful representation of the disjunct between Australians’ knowledge of the catastrophic potential of tsunamis and their “negative” behavioral response can be found in viewing live television news coverage broadcast from Sydney beaches on the morning of Sunday 28 February 2010. The Chilean tsunami had taken more than 14 hours to travel from Chile to the eastern seaboard of Australia and the ATWS had issued an accurate warning and had correctly forecast the arrival time of the tsunami (approximately 08.30 am). The television and radio media had dutifully broadcast the warning issued by the State Emergency Services. The message was simple: “Stay out of the water, evacuate the beaches and move to higher ground.” As the tsunami arrived, those news broadcasts showed volunteer State Emergency Service personnel and Surf Life Saving Australia lifeguards “begging” with literally hundreds (probably thousands up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia) of members of the public to stop swimming in the incoming tsunami and to evacuate the beaches. On that occasion, Australians were lucky and the tsunami was inconsequential. What do these responses mean? Clearly Australians recognise and can describe the consequences of a tsunami. However, they are not associating the catastrophic nature of tsunami with their own lives or experience. They are avoiding or disallowing the reality; they normalise and dramaticise the event. Thus in Australia, to date, a cultural transformation about the catastrophic nature of tsunami has not occurred for reasons that are not entirely clear but are the subject of ongoing study.The Emergence of Tsunami as a “New Australian Catastrophe”?As a natural disaster expert with nearly two decades experience, in my mind tsunami has emerged as a “new Australian catastrophe.” I believe this has occurred for a number of reasons. Firstly, the 2004 IOT was devastating and did impact northwestern Australia, raising the flag on this hitherto, unknown threat. Australia is now known to be vulnerable to the tsunami catastrophe. The media have played a critical role here. Secondly, in the 2004 IOT and other tsunamis since, Australians have died and their deaths have been widely reported in the Australian media. Thirdly, the emergence of various forms of social media has facilitated an explosion in information and material that can be consumed, digested, reimagined, and normalised by Australians hungry for the gore of catastrophe—it feeds our desire for catastrophic death and destruction. Fourthly, catastrophe has been creatively imagined and retold for a story-hungry viewing public. Whether through regular television shows easily consumed from a comfy chair at home, or whilst eating popcorn at a cinema, tsunami catastrophe is being fed to us in a way that reaffirms its naturalness. Juxtaposed against this idea though is that, despite all the graphic imagery of tsunami catastrophe, especially images of dead children in other countries, Australian media do not and culturally cannot, display images of dead Australian children. Such images are widely considered too gruesome but are well known to drive changes in cultural behaviour because of the iconic significance of the child within our society. As such, a cultural shift has not yet occurred and so the potential of catastrophe remains waiting to strike. Fifthly and significantly, given the fact that large numbers of Australians have not died during recent tsunamis means that again, the catastrophic potential of tsunamis is not yet realised and has not resulted in cultural changes to more affirmative behaviour. Lastly, Australians are probably more aware of “regular or common” catastrophes such as floods and bush fires that are normal to the Australian climate system and which are endlessly experienced individually and culturally and covered by the media in all forms. The Australian summer of 2012–13 has again been dominated by floods and fires. If this idea is accepted, the media construct a uniquely Australian imaginary of catastrophe and cultural discourse of disaster. The familiarity with these common climate catastrophes makes us “culturally blind” to the catastrophe that is tsunami.The consequences of a major tsunami affecting Australia some point in the future are likely to be of a scale not yet comprehensible. References Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). "ABC Net Splash." 20 Mar. 2013 ‹http://splash.abc.net.au/media?id=31077›. Brown, Philip, and Jessica Minty. “Media Coverage and Charitable Giving after the 2004 Tsunami.” Southern Economic Journal 75 (2008): 9–25. Bryant, Edward. Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard. First Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. ———. Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard. Second Edition, Sydney: Springer-Praxis, 2008. Caldwell, Anna, Natalie Gregg, Fiona Hudson, Patrick Lion, Janelle Miles, Bart Sinclair, and John Wright. “Samoa Tsunami Claims Five Aussies as Death Toll Rises.” The Courier Mail 1 Oct. 2009. 20 Mar. 2013 ‹http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/samoa-tsunami-claims-five-aussies-as-death-toll-rises/story-e6freon6-1225781357413›. CDEMA. "The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency. Tsunami SMART Media Web Site." 18 Dec. 2012. 20 Mar. 2013 ‹http://weready.org/tsunami/index.php?Itemid=40&id=40&option=com_content&view=article›. Cox, Robin, Bonita Long, and Megan Jones. “Sequestering of Suffering – Critical Discourse Analysis of Natural Disaster Media Coverage.” Journal of Health Psychology 13 (2008): 469–80. “CSI: Miami (Season 3, Episode 7).” International Movie Database (IMDb). ‹http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0534784/›. 9 Jan. 2013. "CSI: Miami (Season 3)." Wikipedia. ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI:_Miami_(season_3)#Episodes›. 21 Mar. 2013. DFAT. "Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Annual Report 2004–2005." 8 Jan. 2013 ‹http://www.dfat.gov.au/dept/annual_reports/04_05/downloads/2_Outcome2.pdf›. Dominey-Howes, Dale. “Geological and Historical Records of Australian Tsunami.” Marine Geology 239 (2007): 99–123. Dominey-Howes, Dale, and Randy Thaman. “UNESCO-IOC International Tsunami Survey Team Samoa Interim Report of Field Survey 14–21 October 2009.” No. 2. Australian Tsunami Research Centre. University of New South Wales, Sydney. "Hereafter." International Movie Database (IMDb). ‹http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1212419/›. 9 Jan. 2013."Hereafter." Wikipedia. ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereafter (film)›. 21 Mar. 2013. Hjorth, Larissa, and Yonnie Kyoung-hwa. “The Mourning After: A Case Study of Social Media in the 3.11 Earthquake Disaster in Japan.” Television and News Media 12 (2011): 552–59. ———, and Yonnie Kyoung-hwa. “Good Grief: The Role of Mobile Social Media in the 3.11 Earthquake Disaster in Japan.” Digital Creativity 22 (2011): 187–99. Lau, Joseph, Mason Lau, and Jean Kim. “Impacts of Media Coverage on the Community Stress Level in Hong Kong after the Tsunami on 26 December 2004.” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 60 (2006): 675–82. McCargo, Duncan, and Lee Hyon-Suk. “Japan’s Political Tsunami: What’s Media Got to Do with It?” International Journal of Press-Politics 15 (2010): 236–45. Miles, Brian, and Stephanie Morse. “The Role of News Media in Natural Disaster Risk and Recovery.” Ecological Economics 63 (2007): 365–73. Morgan, Olive, and Charles de Goyet. “Dispelling Disaster Myths about Dead Bodies and Disease: The Role of Scientific Evidence and the Media.” Revista Panamericana de Salud Publica-Pan American Journal of Public Health 18 (2005): 33–6. Olofsson, Anna. “The Indian Ocean Tsunami in Swedish Newspapers: Nationalism after Catastrophe.” Disaster Prevention and Management 20 (2011): 557–69. Piotrowski, Chris, and Terry Armstrong. “Mass Media Preferences in Disaster: A Study of Hurricane Danny.” Social Behavior and Personality 26 (1998): 341–45. Ploughman, Penelope. “The American Print News Media Construction of Five Natural Disasters.” Disasters 19 (1995): 308–26. Prendergast, Amy, and Nick Brown. “Far Field Impact and Coastal Sedimentation Associated with the 2006 Java Tsunami in West Australia: Post-Tsunami Survey at Steep Point, West Australia.” Natural Hazards 60 (2012): 69–79. Sharp, Joanne. “A Subaltern Critical Geopolitics of The War on Terror: Postcolonial Security in Tanzania.” Geoforum 42 (2011): 297–305. Sood, Rahul, Stockdale, Geoffrey, and Everett Rogers. “How the News Media Operate in Natural Disasters.” Journal of Communication 37 (1987): 27–41.

Introduction The current social climate of Western societies understands fatness as the self-inflicted disease ‘obesity’; a chronic illness of epidemic proportions that carries accompanying risks of additional disease and that will eventually lead to death. In recent years, the stigmatisation and general negative societal evaluation of fatness and thus fat identities has increased (Sobal). Primarily, fatness has become a sign of medical deviance in that it is perceived to be a product of unhealthy eating behaviours and physical inactivity (Rothman). As a result, to be fat has become a barrier to entry in terms of employment opportunities, and has restricted the availability of health and insurance services for many (Sobal). Recently there has been a drastic increase in the availability of radical weight-loss solutions that strictly regulate and police fat-bodied deviants, namely in the form of surgery. Bariatric surgery, or weight-loss surgery, physically enforces the achievement of ‘health’ by curing obesity by reducing the size and functionality of the stomachs of the morbidly obese. However, bariatric ‘post-ops’ (short for post-operative) often encounter harmful consequences following their surgery in the form of increased self-surveillance, regulation and control in order to maintain their health through thinness. This article seeks to examine these consequences of surgery as a way to problematise the achievement of health through thinness overall. In order to address this issue, this article first establishes a framework of obesity discourse which enables us to understand how obesity is perceived as a self-inflicted disease in need of medical intervention within modern Western societies. From this position, we can begin to understand the purpose of interventions such as bariatric surgery. While it is acknowledged that surgery provides the morbidly obese with a gateway to health through the achievement of thinness and an escape from a heavily stigmatised identity, it is argued that this is done at the expense of placing increased regulations and surveillance upon individuals. Finally, in drawing on post-op experiences collected for research examining the life impacts of bariatric surgery, this article will examine how post-ops are subjected to intense policing, monitoring and regulating from themselves and others as a result of achieving and maintaining ‘health’ through body size. Obesity Discourse: Establishing a FrameworkScholars Evans, Rich, Davies and Allwood argue that contemporary Western responses to obesity can be conceptualised as operating within an ‘obesity discourse’ which provides a framework of “thought, talk and action concerning the body in which ‘weight’ is privileged not only as a primary determinant but as a manifest index of well-being” (13). Predominantly, this framework draws upon two key assumptions; that obesity is a legitimate and measurable disease that poses significant medical risks to populations, and that both the cause of and solution to obesity are individual lifestyle choices (Rich, Monaghan and Aphramor). More specifically, the obesity discourse is the result of the combined efforts of an extensive process of medicalisation in conjunction with an increasingly neoliberal approach to healthcare. Since the 1950s, fatness has been widely regarded as the disease ‘obesity’. Sobal argues that this occurred through an extensive process of medicalisation, which can be defined as when non-medical issues and behaviour are redefined and understood as medical problems through the use of medical jargon and medical solutions (Conrad). In particular, fat was portrayed as pathological and requiring medical intervention through “frequent, powerful and persuasive claims that [medicine] should exercise social control over fatness” (Sobal 69). In particular this has been exercised through the widespread implementation of the body mass index [BMI] into healthcare settings, as it is seen as an accessible, practical and affordable measure of ‘health’ (Ministry of Health). Unlike other markers of health, body weight is highly visible, and thus using it as an overall indicator of health increases surveillance of the self and others within populations. In this way we can see how the medicalisation of fatness works to produce what Bordo refers to as:one of the most powerful normalizing mechanisms of our century, insuring the production of self-monitoring and self-disciplining ‘docile bodies’ sensitive to any departure from social norms and habituated to self-improvement and self-transformation in the service of these norms. (186)Primarily, this is created through a construction of a ‘normal’ body shape or an ‘ideal’ weight, which can be specified using the BMI, and acts as a health imperative for individuals to achieve and maintain (Rich and Evans). However, these constructions do not factor in individual variations in body composition and thus represent a medically defined ‘thin ideal’, in that they are unobtainable and unrealistic for most people (Metzl 5). Consequently, the idea of a ‘normal weight’ strengthens contemporary body ideals (Burns and Gavey).The recent move in contemporary Western societies towards a neoliberal model of healthcare has significantly impacted societal attitudes towards fatness. The neoliberal healthcare model emphasises an individual’s choice and responsibility with respect to their health, and the privatisation of healthcare systems overall (Fries). While there is a general belief that this change gives patients more autonomy and input within the medical encounter (Lupton), the move towards a ‘democratisation’ of healthcare in reality further entrenches self-surveillance behaviours within populations by asserting that the responsibility for achieving and maintaining ‘health’ lies at the feet of the individual (Fox, Ward and O’Rourke). In particular, there is an assumption that ‘health’ can be ‘unproblematically’ achieved through individual efforts to discipline and regulate body size (Crawford) and thus individuals are obliged to engage in acts of self-discipline as both a personal and public service (Throsby, War). In this way, those who are labelled as ‘obese’ are not only questioned on their ability to appropriately care for themselves, but also their ability to be a good citizen (Throsby, War). Overall, the obesity discourse has intensified the stigmatisation of the obese in that they are portrayed as morally bad and weak-willed (Sobal) and ultimately reinforced the need for external regulatory bodies such as the weight-loss industry to monitor and control the obese. The combined efforts of the medical and weight-loss industry have produced a single message which suggests that if individuals want to maintain ‘health’ and prevent disease, there must be an enduring commitment to a ‘lifestyle change’. A ‘lifestyle change’ implies that in order to achieve successful weight loss and thus ‘health’, there needs to be enduring amendments to diet and exercise that are perceived as a ‘way of life’ rather than the ‘means to an end’ message marketed by other diet regimes (Fullagar). These changes are necessitated through an assumption that excess body weight is a sign of laziness and poor personal habits (Evans and Colls). Similar to the causes of obesity, there is a definitive notion that individual choices predicate the outcomes of weight loss endeavours. Thus, weight-loss successes and failures directly reflect how well individuals adhered to their ‘lifestyle change’ rather than the reliability and validity of the weight-loss regimes themselves (Saguy and Riley).Addressing Bariatric Surgery: The Solution to Morbid ObesityOver the past decade there has been a drastic increase in the availability of radical weight-loss solutions that strictly regulate and police fat-bodied deviants, namely in the form of surgery. While there appears to be support from the medical community for the effectiveness of a ‘lifestyle change’ as the primary solution to obesity, it should be highlighted that a ‘lifestyle change’ is only seen as a realistic option for certain obesity cohorts. In particular, surgery is reserved for the very highest of obesity cohorts – the morbidly obese – and is presented as their only viable option. ‘Morbid obesity’ is defined as having a BMI of 40 or higher and is associated with the most risk of comorbid diseases such as type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension (Foo et al.). According to the Ministry of Health, for individuals classified as morbidly obese, clinicians in New Zealand should strongly recommend bariatric surgery. Bariatric surgery describes a group of surgical procedures that physically restrict and redesign the stomachs of morbidly obese patients to achieve weight-loss as most procedures are permanent, and are associated with the greatest long-term weight loss in patients (Ministry of Health). Bariatric surgical procedures became popular due to their long-term effectiveness in weight-loss, and cost-effectiveness particularly for countries with public healthcare, through the drastic reduction in public health expenditure for co-morbid diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease (Sampalis et al.). These procedures are considered the only effective treatment option for morbid obesity or a ‘last resort’ (Cranwell and Seymour-Smith; Ogden, Clementi and Aylwin), and consequently the amount of surgeries performed annually within Australasia has increased at an exponential rate (Buchwald and Williams).What makes bariatric surgery so important as a weight-loss method is that it offers the ‘morbidly obese’, who are seen as persistently deviating from idealised body norms and unable or unwilling to conform to standardised forms of self-regulation, a reprieve from their stigmatising identity. Indeed, many morbidly obese individuals who are seeking weight loss state that bariatric surgery is their only ‘hope’ or choice, or the ‘right’ choice for them (Morgan; Ogden, Clementi and Aylwin). In particular, the fear of, or the onset of, illnesses associated with obesity can be a major factor in their decision to undergo surgery (Ogden, Clementi and Aylwin). In this way, motivations to have surgery are heavily reflective of obesity discourse in that the presence of body fat is a marker of ‘impending doom’ (Rich, Monaghan and Aphramor). Indeed as Wann highlights:I really do understand why someone would consider this extreme option. The stigma attached to even the slightest amount of body fat can be daunting, and the surgeon’s sales pitch can be very slick. (41)However, as Morgan argues, more must be done to critique bariatric surgery as it largely exemplifies the social forces that control and regulate modern societies. Bariatric surgery physically enforces weight-loss and adherence to acceptable eating practices, and makes dissent both punishable and difficult (203). The removal of a large portion of the stomach means that, bariatric surgery imposes “corporeal order and discipline” (Morgan 203) upon individuals. The stomach not only enforces strict self-surveillance protocols but also an unyielding control over the individual through the “forceful prohibition or ejection” (Morgan 202) of substances. Thus, if individuals fail to regulate and govern their intake, the surgical intervention does it for them. The side-effects of vomiting and dumping syndrome act as a regulation failsafe and a form of punishment – an ‘internal policeman’ (Morgan) – that rejects deviant behaviour and punishes the individual through unpleasant and often painful experience. In this way, bariatric surgery can be viewed as the ‘ultimate weapon’ in the war against obesity as it is a means through which deviant individuals and bodies can be controlled and normalised (Glenn, McGannon and Spence).Bariatric Surgery: For Better or for Worse?In order to interrogate the dominant notion perpetuated through obesity discourse that fatness is a disease and body weight more generally is a legitimate way of measuring ‘health’ overall, this article will now draw on key findings generated from recent research examining the life impacts of bariatric surgery conducted with a support group for bariatric surgery in Auckland, New Zealand. While bariatric surgery is portrayed as a gateway to health, Throsby (Re-Birthday) argues that ultimately it is constructed as a ‘tool’ for weight-loss, rather than a cure-all ‘magic pill’ (130). This means that users are required to engage in normative dieting practices in the midst of developing new techniques of discipline that are specific to the post-surgery experience. In this way bariatric surgery creates new levels of self-surveillance that are unique to post-surgery life (Throsby, Re-Birthday 120). Self-surveillance and policing are methods in which bariatric post-ops are subjected to critique, monitoring and maintenance by both themselves and others. A key aspect of this involves the moral construction of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods, which often influenced eating behaviours and narratives whereby bariatric post-ops adhere to normalised understandings of diet, nutrition and health (Simpson 84). This dichotomy of good and bad foods reflects dominant understandings of the causal relationship between food, health and body size. Researchers have noted that there is a significant change in the relationship individuals have with food following surgery, and that often this comes with a serious fear of weight regain, and thus an intense policing of food (Cranwell & Seymour-Smith; Ogden, Clementi and Aylwin). Often, further restrictions are placed on an already restricted diet in order to achieve thinness, which emphasises the importance of achieving and maintaining thinness through the micromanagement of food intake (Simpson). In part, this reflects the way that the rhetoric that equates obesity with individual responsibility can equally ascribe blame to patients for any subsequent weight gain following surgery (Throsby, Re-Birthday 130) and indeed previous research has highlighted extensive fear of weight regain, particularly when users encounter fluctuations in their weight (Cranwell and Seymour-Smith). This is arguably what makes discussions around the concept of ‘maintenance’ so important. Maintenance refers to the monitoring process post-ops enter into after losing a significant portion of their weight and reaching a ‘plateau’, or a point where they stop losing weight; in essence it involves discussions around how to maintain and manage a ‘healthy’ weight (Simpson 79). Largely this draws on the assumption that despite being treated for obesity through a surgical intervention, one can never be recovered or truly ‘cured’ of obesity and thus individuals must engage in consistent monitoring as a preventative measure through ‘maintenance’ (Throsby, Re-Birthday). Maintenance is a complex process for bariatric post-ops; it is inextricably linked to weight management and is therefore a visible and moral indicator as to how ‘well’ post-ops are doing in their weight loss endeavours (Simpson). In this way maintenance is heavily couched in obesity discourse as individuals are expected to integrate self-surveillance and regulation practices into a ‘lifestyle change’ in order to prevent future weight gain (Cranwell and Seymour-Smith). For most, maintenance is difficult, and is understood to require a consistent consciousness of food related behaviours in order to be successful. In the observed support group, participants discussed the observations that they had made about their difficulties with resisting ‘crave’ or ‘bad’ foods (primarily those associated with high calories) that they enjoy, as well as revealing the ways in which they had altered their behaviour to address maintenance concerns (Simpson 79). One participant revealed that recent weight gain was making maintenance ‘very hard’, and it was clear that they attributed this weight gain to personal failings despite admitting that there had been no change to their ‘healthy’ eating behaviour (80). In order to address this issue, the participant admitted that they had resorted to traditional dieting rhetoric and removed dairy from their diet (83). Other support group members encouraged the participant to also remove carbohydrates from their diet (83), which further reinforced the notion that weight is a product of personal choice and individual responsibility (Crawford; Donaghue and Clemitshaw). As a result of the rapid weight loss achieved through bariatric surgery, many post-ops struggle to adjust to their ‘new’ bodies. This makes maintenance increasingly difficult as many individuals continue to see themselves as ‘fat’ despite having achieved a ‘normal’ weight (Simpson). Arguably a key factor in their misinterpretation of their body size and composition is the abundance of excess skin that is left over after rapid weight-loss. Excess skin, which has to be surgically removed and cannot be lost through diet or exercise, is a sore issue for bariatric post-ops, as it is a reminder of their former ‘fat’ selves, and thus a source of continuous dissatisfaction and lowered self-esteem (Groven, Råheim and Engelsrud). This is a common problem for many bariatric post-ops, with many citing that their low-hanging stomach or ‘apron’ is a primary source of anguish. Indeed, one post-op admitted that it was “even harder now because … it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere” (Simpson 63), and another revealed that while they consciously understood that their ‘apron’ was excess skin and not fat, they still used it as a sign that they must continue to lose weight. In this way, the reduction of the ‘apron’ has become a dangerous fixation for this post-op and the way in which they measure their success (Simpson 63). Further, post-ops were monitored by family and friends, primarily through concerns over their small portion sizes, which led them to develop techniques to escape the scrutiny of others (Simpson 78). One technique that was particularly popular was the use of a smaller side plate during dinner time (Simpson 78). A smaller plate was both an easy way for post-ops to monitor and regulate their portions, and a method of avoiding criticism and monitoring from others as it effectively masked their reduced portions from the gaze of others. Indeed many post-ops lamented over the consistent external pressures from friends and family to increase their intake and discussed further masking techniques such as moving food around the plate to convince others that they were eating (Simpson 78). These behaviours are troubling as they mimic many primarily observed within the eating disorder community (Prestwood) and indeed Rich and Evans highlight that the level of stigmatisation surrounding fat and body size may push obese individuals into disordered relationships with food, exercise and the body (354). This would suggest that the discourses surrounding the bariatric and the eating disorder communities have lines of similarity in that weight and in particular, thinness is privileged as the primary method in which health and overall personal success is measured (Burns and Gavey; Rich and Evans). Concluding RemarksThe existence of behaviours such as maintenance, food policing and body fixation forces us to question the extent to which bariatric surgery is a gateway at all to ‘health’. While bariatric surgery enables morbidly obese individuals to escape stigmatisation by achieving the appearance of health, often this comes at the expense of increased surveillance, regulation and control of the individual. In this way it would seem that solutions to obesity only serve to extend and intensify behaviours of regulation and control promoted through obesity discourse. Ultimately the reality of the post-op existence problematises the very foundational assumptions that the pursuit of thinness is a legitimate pursuit of health.ReferencesBordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993. Burns, Maree, and Nicola Gavey. “‘Healthy Weight’ at What Cost? ‘Bulimia’ and a Discourse of Weight Control.” Journal of Health Psychology 9.4 (2004): 549-65.Buchwald, Henry, and Stanley E. Williams. “Bariatric Surgery Worldwide 2003.” Obesity Surgery 14.9 (2004): 1157-64.Conrad, Peter. “Medicalisation and Social Control.” Annual Review of Sociology 18 (1992): 209-32.Cranwell, Jo, and Sarah Seymour-Smith. “Monitoring and Normalising a Lack of Appetite and Weight Loss.” Appetite 58 (2012): 873-81.Crawford, Robert. “Healthism and the Medicalisation of Everyday Life.” International Journal of Health Services 10.3 (1980): 365-88.Donaghue, Ngaire, and Anne Clemitshaw. “‘I’m Totally Smart and a Feminist … and Yet I Want to Be a Waif’: Exploring Ambivalence towards the Thin Ideal within the Fat Acceptance Movement.” Women’s Studies International Forum 35 (2012): 415-25.Evans, Bethan, and Rachel Colls. “Doing More Good than Harm? The Absent Presence of Children’s Bodies in (Anti-)Obesity Policy.” Debating Obesity: Critical Perspectives, eds. Emma Rich, Lee F. Monaghan, and Lucy Aphramor. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 115-38.Evans, John, Emma Rich, Brian Davies, and Rachel Allwood. Education, Disordered Eating and Obesity Discourse: Fat Fabrications. London: Routledge, 2008.Foo, Jonathan, et al. “Bariatric Surgery: A Dilemma for the Health System?” New Zealand Medical Journal 123.1311 (2010): 12-4.Fox, Nick J., Katie J. Ward, and Alan J. O’Rourke. “The ‘Expert Patient’: Empowerment or Medical Dominance? The Case of Weight Loss, Pharmaceutical Drugs and the Internet.” Social Science and Medicine 60 (2005): 1299-309.Fries, Christopher J. “Governing the Health of the Hybrid Self: Integrative Medicine, Neoliberalism, and the Shifting Biopolitics of Subjectivity.” Health Sociology Review 17.4 (2008): 353-67.Fullagar, Simone. “Governing Healthy Family Lifestyles through Discourses of Risk and Responsibility.” Biopolitics and the ‘Obesity Epidemic’: Governing Bodies, eds. Jan Wright and Valerie Harwood. New York: Routledge, 2009. 108-26.Glenn, Nicole M., Kerry R. McGannon, and John C. Spence. “Exploring Media Representations of Weight-Loss Surgery.” Qualitative Health Research 23.5 (2012): 631-44.Groven, Karen S., Målfrid Råheim, and Gunn Engelsrud. “Dis-appearance and Dys-appearance Anew: Living with Excess Skin and Intestinal Changes Following Weight Loss Surgery.” Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 16.3 (2013): 507-23.Lupton, Deborah. “Consumerism, Reflexivity and the Medical Encounter.” Social Science and Medicine 45.3 (1997): 373-81.Metzl, Johnathan M. “Introduction: Why 'Against Health'?” Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality. Ed. Jonathan M. Metzl and Anna Kirkland. New York: New York University Press, 2010. 1-14. Ministry of Health, Clinical Trials Research Unit. Clinical Guidelines for Weight Management in New Zealand Adults. Wellington: Ministry of Health, 2009. Morgan, Kathryn P. “Foucault, Ugly Ducklings, and Technoswans: Analyzing Fat Hatred, Weight-Loss Surgery, and Compulsory Biomedicalised Aesthetics in America.” The International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 4.1 (2011): 188-220.Ogden, Jane, Cecilia Clementi, and Simon Aylwin. “The Impact of Obesity Surgery and the Paradox of Control: A Qualitative Study.” Psychology and Health 21.2 (2006): 273-93.Prestwood, Chris. “The Person with an Eating Disorder.” The Art and Science of Mental Health Nursing: A Textbook of Principles and Practice. 2nd ed. Eds. Ian Norman and Iain Ryrie. Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2009. 469-89.Rich, Emma, and John Evans. “‘Fat Ethics’ – The Obesity Discourse and Body Politics.” Social Theory and Health 3 (2005): 341-58.Rich, Emma, Lee F. Monaghan, and Lucy Aphramor. “Introduction: Contesting Obesity Discourse.” Debating Obesity: Critical Perspectives, eds. Emma Rich, Lee F. Monaghan, and Lucy Aphramor. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 1-35.Rothman, Kenneth J. “BMI-Related Errors in the Measurement of Obesity.” International Journal of Obesity 32 (2008): S56-9.Saguy, Abigail C., and Kevin W. Riley. “Weighing Both Sides: Morality, Mortality, and Framing Contests over Obesity.” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 30.5 (2005): 869-921.Sampalis, John S., et al. “The Impact of Weight Reduction Surgery on Health-Care Costs in Morbidly Obese Patients.” Obesity Surgery 14.7 (2004): 939-47.Simpson, Aimee B. Governing Obese Bodies: Examining Bariatric Surgery ‘Post-Op’ Narratives. MA thesis. University of Auckland, 2015.Sobal, Jeffery. “The Medicalization and Demedicalization of Obesity.” Eating Agendas: Food and Nutrition as Social Problems, eds. Jeffery Sobal and Donna Maurer. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995. 67-90.Throsby, Karen. “Happy Re-Birthday: Weight Loss Surgery and the New Me.” Body and Society 14.1 (2008): 117-33.———. “The War on Obesity as a Moral Project.” Weight Loss Drugs, Obesity Surgery and Negotiating Failure.” Science as Culture 18.2 (2009): 201-16.Wann, Marilyn. Fat!So? Because You Don’t Have to Apologise for Your Size. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1998.

Over the past century, many books for general readers have styled sharks as “monsters of the deep” (Steele). In recent decades, however, at least some writers have also turned to representing how sharks are seriously threatened by human activities. At a time when media coverage of shark sightings seems ever increasing in Australia, scholarship has begun to consider people’s attitudes to sharks and how these are formed, investigating the representation of sharks (Peschak; Ostrovski et al.) in films (Le Busque and Litchfield; Neff; Schwanebeck), newspaper reports (Muter et al.), and social media (Le Busque et al., “An Analysis”). My own research into representations of surfing and sharks in Australian writing (Brien) has, however, revealed that, although reporting of shark sightings and human-shark interactions are prominent in the news, and sharks function as vivid and commanding images and metaphors in art and writing (Ellis; Westbrook et al.), little scholarship has investigated their representation in Australian books published for a general readership. While recognising representations of sharks in other book-length narrative forms in Australia, including Australian fiction, poetry, and film (Ryan and Ellison), this enquiry is focussed on non-fiction books for general readers, to provide an initial review. Sampling holdings of non-fiction books in the National Library of Australia, crosschecked with Google Books, in early 2021, this investigation identified 50 Australian books for general readers that are principally about sharks, or that feature attitudes to them, published from 1911 to 2021. Although not seeking to capture all Australian non-fiction books for general readers that feature sharks, the sampling attempted to locate a wide range of representations and genres across the time frame from the earliest identified text until the time of the survey. The books located include works of natural and popular history, travel writing, memoir, biography, humour, and other long-form non-fiction for adult and younger readers, including hybrid works. A thematic analysis (Guest et al.) of the representation of sharks in these texts identified five themes that moved from understanding sharks as fishes to seeing them as monsters, then prey, and finally to endangered species needing conservation. Many books contained more than one theme, and not all examples identified have been quoted in the discussion of the themes below. Sharks as Part of the Natural Environment Drawing on oral histories passed through generations, two memoirs (Bradley et al.; Fossa) narrate Indigenous stories in which sharks play a central role. These reveal that sharks are part of both the world and a wider cosmology for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (Clua and Guiart). In these representations, sharks are integrated with, and integral to, Indigenous life, with one writer suggesting they are “creator beings, ancestors, totems. Their lifecycles reflect the seasons, the landscape and sea country. They are seen in the movement of the stars” (Allam). A series of natural history narratives focus on zoological studies of Australian sharks, describing shark species and their anatomy and physiology, as well as discussing shark genetics, behaviour, habitats, and distribution. A foundational and relatively early Australian example is Gilbert P. Whitley’s The Fishes of Australia: The Sharks, Rays, Devil-fish, and Other Primitive Fishes of Australia and New Zealand, published in 1940. Ichthyologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney from the early 1920s to 1964, Whitley authored several books which furthered scientific thought on sharks. Four editions of his Australian Sharks were published between 1983 and 1991 in English, and the book is still held in many libraries and other collections worldwide. In this text, Whitley described a wide variety of sharks, noting shared as well as individual features. Beautiful drawings contribute information on shape, colouring, markings, and other recognisable features to assist with correct identification. Although a scientist and a Fellow and then President of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, Whitley recognised it was important to communicate with general readers and his books are accessible, the prose crisp and clear. Books published after this text (Aiken; Ayling; Last and Stevens; Tricas and Carwardine) share Whitley’s regard for the diversity of sharks as well as his desire to educate a general readership. By 2002, the CSIRO’s Field Guide to Australian Sharks & Rays (Daley et al.) also featured numerous striking photographs of these creatures. Titles such as Australia’s Amazing Sharks (Australian Geographic) emphasise sharks’ unique qualities, including their agility and speed in the water, sensitive sight and smell, and ability to detect changes in water pressure around them, heal rapidly, and replace their teeth. These books also emphasise the central role that sharks play in the marine ecosystem. There are also such field guides to sharks in specific parts of Australia (Allen). This attention to disseminating accurate zoological information about sharks is also evident in books written for younger readers including very young children (Berkes; Kear; Parker and Parker). In these and other similar books, sharks are imaged as a central and vital component of the ocean environment, and the narratives focus on their features and qualities as wondrous rather than monstrous. Sharks as Predatory Monsters A number of books for general readers do, however, image sharks as monsters. In 1911, in his travel narrative Peeps at Many Lands: Australia, Frank Fox describes sharks as “the most dangerous foes of man in Australia” (23) and many books have reinforced this view over the following century. This can be seen in titles that refer to sharks as dangerous predatory killers (Fox and Ruhen; Goadby; Reid; Riley; Sharpe; Taylor and Taylor). The covers of a large proportion of such books feature sharks emerging from the water, jaws wide open in explicit homage to the imaging of the monster shark in the film Jaws (Spielberg). Shark!: Killer Tales from the Dangerous Depths (Reid) is characteristic of books that portray encounters with sharks as terrifying and dramatic, using emotive language and stories that describe sharks as “the world’s most feared sea creature” (47) because they are such “highly efficient killing machines” (iv, see also 127, 129). This representation of sharks is also common in several books for younger readers (Moriarty; Rohr). Although the risk of being injured by an unprovoked shark is extremely low (Chapman; Fletcher et al.), fear of sharks is prevalent and real (Le Busque et al., “People’s Fear”) and described in a number of these texts. Several of the memoirs located describe surfers’ fear of sharks (Muirhead; Orgias), as do those of swimmers, divers, and other frequent users of the sea (Denness; de Gelder; McAloon), even if the author has never encountered a shark in the wild. In these texts, this fear of sharks is often traced to viewing Jaws, and especially to how the film’s huge, bloodthirsty great white shark persistently and determinedly attacks its human hunters. Pioneer Australian shark expert Valerie Taylor describes such great white sharks as “very big, powerful … and amazingly beautiful” but accurately notes that “revenge is not part of their thought process” (Kindle version). Two books explicitly seek to map and explain Australians’ fear of sharks. In Sharks: A History of Fear in Australia, Callum Denness charts this fear across time, beginning with his own “shark story”: a panicked, terror-filled evacuation from the sea, following the sighting of a shadow which turned out not to be a shark. Blake Chapman’s Shark Attacks: Myths, Misunderstandings and Human Fears explains commonly held fearful perceptions of sharks. Acknowledging that sharks are a “highly emotive topic”, the author of this text does not deny “the terror [that] they invoke in our psyche” but makes a case that this is “only a minor characteristic of what makes them such intriguing animals” (ix). In Death by Coconut: 50 Things More Dangerous than a Shark and Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of the Ocean, Ruby Ashby Orr utilises humour to educate younger readers about the real risk humans face from sharks and, as per the book’s title, why they should not be feared, listing champagne corks and falling coconuts among the many everyday activities more likely to lead to injury and death in Australia than encountering a shark. Taylor goes further in her memoir – not only describing her wonder at swimming with these creatures, but also her calm acceptance of the possibility of being injured by a shark: "if we are to be bitten, then we are to be bitten … . One must choose a life of adventure, and of mystery and discovery, but with that choice, one must also choose the attendant risks" (2019: Kindle version). Such an attitude is very rare in the books located, with even some of the most positive about these sea creatures still quite sensibly fearful of potentially dangerous encounters with them. Sharks as Prey There is a long history of sharks being fished in Australia (Clark). The killing of sharks for sport is detailed in An American Angler in Australia, which describes popular adventure writer Zane Grey’s visit to Australia and New Zealand in the 1930s to fish ‘big game’. This text includes many bloody accounts of killing sharks, which are justified with explanations about how sharks are dangerous. It is also illustrated with gruesome pictures of dead sharks. Australian fisher Alf Dean’s biography describes him as the “World’s Greatest Shark Hunter” (Thiele), this text similarly illustrated with photographs of some of the gigantic sharks he caught and killed in the second half of the twentieth century. Apart from being killed during pleasure and sport fishing, sharks are also hunted by spearfishers. Valerie Taylor and her late husband, Ron Taylor, are well known in Australia and internationally as shark experts, but they began their careers as spearfishers and shark hunters (Taylor, Ron Taylor’s), with the documentary Shark Hunters gruesomely detailing their killing of many sharks. The couple have produced several books that recount their close encounters with sharks (Taylor; Taylor, Taylor and Goadby; Taylor and Taylor), charting their movement from killers to conservationists as they learned more about the ocean and its inhabitants. Now a passionate campaigner against the past butchery she participated in, Taylor’s memoir describes her shift to a more respectful relationship with sharks, driven by her desire to understand and protect them. In Australia, the culling of sharks is supposedly carried out to ensure human safety in the ocean, although this practice has long been questioned. In 1983, for instance, Whitley noted the “indiscriminate” killing of grey nurse sharks, despite this species largely being very docile and of little threat to people (Australian Sharks, 10). This is repeated by Tony Ayling twenty-five years later who adds the information that the generally harmless grey nurse sharks have been killed to the point of extinction, as it was wrongly believed they preyed on surfers and swimmers. Shark researcher and conservationist Riley Elliott, author of Shark Man: One Kiwi Man’s Mission to Save Our Most Feared and Misunderstood Predator (2014), includes an extremely critical chapter on Western Australian shark ‘management’ through culling, summing up the problems associated with this approach: it seems to me that this cull involved no science or logic, just waste and politics. It’s sickening that the people behind this cull were the Fisheries department, which prior to this was the very department responsible for setting up the world’s best acoustic tagging system for sharks. (Kindle version, Chapter 7) Describing sharks as “misunderstood creatures”, Orr is also clear in her opposition to killing sharks to ‘protect’ swimmers noting that “each year only around 10 people are killed in shark attacks worldwide, while around 73 million sharks are killed by humans”. She adds the question and answer, “sounds unfair? Of course it is, but when an attack is all over the news and the people are baying for shark blood, it’s easy to lose perspective. But culling them? Seriously?” (back cover). The condemnation of culling is also evident in David Brooks’s recent essay on the topic in his collection of essays about animal welfare, conservation and the relationship between humans and other species, Animal Dreams. This disapproval is also evident in narratives by those who have been injured by sharks. Navy diver Paul de Gelder and surfer Glen Orgias were both bitten by sharks in Sydney in 2009 and both their memoirs detail their fear of sharks and the pain they suffered from these interactions and their lengthy recoveries. However, despite their undoubted suffering – both men lost limbs due to these encounters – they also attest to their ongoing respect for these creatures and specify a shared desire not to see them culled. Orgias, instead, charts the life story of the shark who bit him alongside his own story in his memoir, musing at the end of the book, not about himself or his injury, but about the fate of the shark he had encountered: great whites are portrayed … as pathological creatures, and as malevolent. That’s rubbish … they are graceful, mighty beasts. I respect them, and fear them … [but] the thought of them fighting, dying, in a net upsets me. I hope this great white shark doesn’t end up like that. (271–271) Several of the more recent books identified in this study acknowledge that, despite growing understanding of sharks, the popular press and many policy makers continue to advocate for shark culls, these calls especially vocal after a shark-related human death or injury (Peppin-Neff). The damage to shark species involved caused by their killing – either directly by fishing, spearing, finning, or otherwise hunting them, or inadvertently as they become caught in nets or affected by human pollution of the ocean – is discussed in many of the more recent books identified in this study. Sharks as Endangered Alongside fishing, finning, and hunting, human actions and their effects such as beach netting, pollution and habitat change are killing many sharks, to the point where many shark species are threatened. Several recent books follow Orr in noting that an estimated 100 million sharks are now killed annually across the globe and that this, as well as changes to their habitats, are driving many shark species to the status of vulnerable, threatened or towards extinction (Dulvy et al.). This is detailed in texts about biodiversity and climate change in Australia (Steffen et al.) as well as in many of the zoologically focussed books discussed above under the theme of “Sharks as part of the natural environment”. The CSIRO’s Field Guide to Australian Sharks & Rays (Daley et al.), for example, emphasises not only that several shark species are under threat (and protected) (8–9) but also that sharks are, as individuals, themselves very fragile creatures. Their skeletons are made from flexible, soft cartilage rather than bone, meaning that although they are “often thought of as being incredibly tough; in reality, they need to be handled carefully to maximise their chance of survival following capture” (9). Material on this theme is included in books for younger readers on Australia’s endangered animals (Bourke; Roc and Hawke). Shark Conservation By 1991, shark conservation in Australia and overseas was a topic of serious discussion in Sydney, with an international workshop on the subject held at Taronga Zoo and the proceedings published (Pepperell et al.). Since then, the movement to protect sharks has grown, with marine scientists, high-profile figures and other writers promoting shark conservation, especially through attempts to educate the general public about sharks. De Gelder’s memoir, for instance, describes how he now champions sharks, promoting shark conservation in his work as a public speaker. Peter Benchley, who (with Carl Gottlieb) recast his novel Jaws for the film’s screenplay, later attested to regretting his portrayal of sharks as aggressive and became a prominent spokesperson for shark conservation. In explaining his change of heart, he stated that when he wrote the novel, he was reflecting the general belief that sharks would both seek out human prey and attack boats, but he later discovered this to be untrue (Benchley, “Without Malice”). Many recent books about sharks for younger readers convey a conservation message, underscoring how, instead of fearing or killing sharks, or doing nothing, humans need to actively assist these vulnerable creatures to survive. In the children’s book series featuring Bindi Irwin and her “wildlife adventures”, there is a volume where Bindi and a friend are on a diving holiday when they find a dead shark whose fin has been removed. The book not only describes how shark finning is illegal, but also how Bindi and friend are “determined to bring the culprits to justice” (Browne). This narrative, like the other books in this series, has a dual focus; highlighting the beauty of wildlife and its value, but also how the creatures described need protection and assistance. Concluding Discussion This study was prompted by the understanding that the Earth is currently in the epoch known as the Anthropocene, a time in which humans have significantly altered, and continue to alter, the Earth by our activities (Myers), resulting in numerous species becoming threatened, endangered, or extinct. It acknowledges the pressing need for not only natural science research on these actions and their effects, but also for such scientists to publish their findings in more accessible ways (see, Paulin and Green). It specifically responds to demands for scholarship outside the relevant areas of science and conservation to encourage widespread thinking and action (Mascia et al.; Bennett et al.). As understanding public perceptions and overcoming widely held fear of sharks can facilitate their conservation (Panoch and Pearson), the way sharks are imaged is integral to their survival. The five themes identified in this study reveal vastly different ways of viewing and writing about sharks. These range from seeing sharks as nothing more than large fishes to be killed for pleasure, to viewing them as terrifying monsters, to finally understanding that they are amazing creatures who play an important role in the world’s environment and are in urgent need of conservation. This range of representation is important, for if sharks are understood as demon monsters which hunt humans, then it is much more ‘reasonable’ to not care about their future than if they are understood to be fascinating and fragile creatures suffering from their interactions with humans and our effect on the environment. Further research could conduct a textual analysis of these books. In this context, it is interesting to note that, although in 1949 C. Bede Maxwell suggested describing human deaths and injuries from sharks as “accidents” (182) and in 2013 Christopher Neff and Robert Hueter proposed using “sightings, encounters, bites, and the rare cases of fatal bites” (70) to accurately represent “the true risk posed by sharks” to humans (70), the majority of the books in this study, like mass media reports, continue to use the ubiquitous and more dramatic terminology of “shark attack”. The books identified in this analysis could also be compared with international texts to reveal and investigate global similarities and differences. While the focus of this discussion has been on non-fiction texts, a companion analysis of representation of sharks in Australian fiction, poetry, films, and other narratives could also be undertaken, in the hope that such investigations contribute to more nuanced understandings of these majestic sea creatures. References Aitken, Kelvin. Sharks & Rays of Australia. New Holland, 1998. Allam, Lorena. “Indigenous Cultural Views of the Shark.” Earshot, ABC Radio, 24 Sep. 2015. 1 Mar. 2021 <https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/indigenous-cultural-views-of-the-shark/6798174>. Allen, Gerald R. Field Guide to Marine Fishes of Tropical Australia and South-East Asia. 4th ed. Welshpool: Western Australian Museum, 2009. Australian Geographic. Australia’s Amazing Sharks. Bauer Media, 2020. Ayling, Tony. Sharks & Rays. Steve Parish, 2008. Benchley, Peter. Jaws. New York: Doubleday, 1974. Benchley, Peter. “Without Malice: In Defence of the Shark.” The Guardian 9 Nov. 2000. 1 Mar. 2021 <https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/nov/09/features11.g22>. Bennett, Nathan J., Robin Roth, Sarah C. Klain, Kai M.A. Chan, Douglas A. Clark, Georgina Cullman, Graham Epstein, Michael Paul Nelson, Richard Stedman, Tara L. Teel, Rebecca E. W. Thomas, Carina Wyborn, Deborah Curran, Alison Greenberg, John Sandlos, and Diogo Veríssimo. “Mainstreaming the Social Sciences in Conservation.” Conservation Biology 31.1 (2017): 56–66. Berkes, Marianne. Over in Australia: Amazing Animals Down Under. Sourcebooks, 2011. Bourke, Jane. Endangered Species of Australia. Ready-Ed Publications, 2006. Bradley, John, and Yanyuwa Families. Singing Saltwater Country: Journey to the Songlines of Carpentaria. Allen & Unwin, 2010. Brien, Donna Lee. “Surfing with Sharks: A Survey of Australian Non-Fiction Writing about Surfing and Sharks.” TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Programs, forthcoming. Brooks, David. Animal Dreams. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2021. Browne, Ellie. Island Ambush. Random House Australia, 2011. Chapman, Blake. Shark Attacks: Myths, Misunderstandings and Human Fears. CSIRO, 2017. Clark, Anna. The Catch: The Story of Fishing in Australia. National Library of Australia, 2017. Clua, Eric, and Jean Guiart. “Why the Kanak Don’t Fear Sharks: Myths as a Coherent but Dangerous Mirror of Nature.” Oceania 90 (2020): 151–166. Daley, R.K., J.D. Stevens, P.R. Last, and G.R. Yearsly. Field Guide to Australian Sharks & Rays. CSIRO Marine Research, 2002. De Gelder, Paul. No Time For Fear: How a Shark Attack Survivor Beat the Odds. Penguin, 2011. Denness, Callum. Sharks: A History of Fear in Australia. Affirm Press, 2019. Dulvy, Nicholas K., Sarah L. Fowler, John A. Musick, Rachel D. Cavanagh, Peter M. Kyne, Lucy R. Harrison, John K. Carlson, Lindsay N.K. Davidson, Sonja V. Fordham, Malcolm P. Francis, Caroline M. Pollock, Colin A. Simpfendorfer, George H. Burgess, Kent E. Carpenter, Leonard J.V. Compagno, David A. Ebert, Claudine Gibson, Michelle R. Heupel, Suzanne R. Livingstone, Jonnell C. Sanciangco, John D. Stevens, Sarah Valenti, and William T. White. “Extinction Risk and Conservation of the World’s Sharks and Rays.” eLife 3 (2014): e00590. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.00590. Elliott, Riley. Shark Man: One Kiwi Man’s Mission to Save Our Most Feared and Misunderstood Predator. Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2014. Ellis, Richard. Shark: A Visual History. New York: Lyons Press, 2012. Fletcher, Garth L., Erich Ritter, Raid Amin, Kevin Cahn, and Jonathan Lee. “Against Common Assumptions, the World’s Shark Bite Rates are Decreasing.” Journal of Marine Biology 2019: art ID 7184634. <https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/7184634>. Fossa, Ada. Stories, Laughter and Tears Through Bygone Years in Shark Bay. Morrisville, Lulu.com, 2017. Fox, Frank. Peeps at Many Lands: Australia. Adam and Charles Black, 1911. Fox, Rodney, and Olaf Ruhen. Shark Attacks and Adventures with Rodney Fox. O’Neill Wetsuits, 1975. Gerhardt, Karin. Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Values of Hammerhead Sharks in Northern Australia. James Cook University, 2018. Goadby, Peter. Sharks and Other Predatory Fish of Australia. 2nd ed. Jacaranda Press, 1968. Grey, Zane. An American Angler in Australia. 1st ed. 1937. Derrydale Press, 2002. Guest, Greg, Kathleen M. MacQueen, and Emily E. Namey. Applied Thematic Analysis. Sage, 2012. Jaws. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Universal Pictures, 1975. Kear, Katie. Baby Shark: Adventure Down Under. North Sydney: Puffin/Penguin Random House, 2020. Last, Peter R., and John Donald Stevens. Sharks and Rays of Australia. CSIRO, 2009. Le Busque, Brianna, and Carla Litchfield. “Sharks on Film: An Analysis of How Shark-Human Interactions Are Portrayed in Films.” Human Dimensions of Wildlife (2021). DOI: 10.1080/10871209.2021.1951399. Le Busque, Brianna, Philip Roetman, Jillian Dorrian, and Carla Litchfield. “An Analysis of Australian News and Current Affair Program Coverage of Sharks on Facebook.” Conservation Science and Practice 1.11 (2019): e111. <https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.111>. Le Busque, Brianna, Philip Roetman, Jillian Dorrian, and Carl Litchfield. “People’s Fear of Sharks: A Qualitative Analysis.” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 11 (2021): 258–265. Lucrezi, Serena, Suria Ellis, and Enrico Gennari. “A Test of Causative and Moderator Effects in Human Perceptions of Sharks, Their Control and Framing.” Marine Policy 109 (2019): art 103687. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2019.103687>. Mascia, Michael B., C. Anne Claus, and Robin Naidoo. “Impacts of Marine Protected Areas on Fishing Communities.” Conservation Biology 24.5 (2010): 1424–1429. Maxwell, C. Bede. Surf: Australians against the Sea. Angus and Robertson, 1949. McAloon, Brendan. Sharks Never Sleep: First-Hand Encounters with Killers of the Sea. Updated ed. Hardie Grant, 2018. Moriarty, Ros. Ten Scared Fish. Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 2012. Muirhead, Desmond. Surfing in Hawaii: A Personal Memoir. Northland, 1962. Muter, Bret A., Meredith L. Gore, Katie S. Gledhill, Christopher Lamont, and Charlie Huveneers. “Australian and U.S. News Media Portrayal of Sharks and Their Conservation.” Conservation Biology 27 (2012): 187–196. Myers, Joe. “What Is the Anthropocene? And Why Does It Matter?” World Economic Forum 31 Aug. 2016. 6 Aug. 2021 <https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/08/what-is-the-anthropocene-and-why-does-it-matter>. Neff, Christopher. “The Jaws Effect: How Movie Narratives Are Used to Influence Policy Responses to Shark Bites in Western Australia.” Australian Journal of Political Science 50.1 (2015): 114–127. Neff, Christopher, and Robert Hueter. “Science, Policy, and the Public Discourse of Shark 'Attack': A Proposal for Reclassifying Human–Shark Interactions.” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 3 (2013): 65–73. Orgias, Glenn. Man in a Grey Suit: A Memoir of Surfing, Shark Attack and Survival. Penguin, 2012. Orr, Ruby Ashby. Death by Coconut: 50 Things More Dangerous than a Shark and Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of the Ocean. Affirm Press, 2015. Ostrovski, Raquel Lubambo, Guilherme Martins Violante, Mariana Reis de Brito, Jean Louis Valentin, and Marcelo Vianna. “The Media Paradox: Influence on Human Shark Perceptions and Potential Conservation Impacts.” Ethnobiology and Conservation 10.12 (2021): 1–15. Panoch, Rainera, and Elissa L. Pearson. “Humans and Sharks: Changing Public Perceptions and Overcoming Fear to Facilitate Shark Conservation.” Society & Animals 25.1 (2017): 57–76 Parker Steve, and Jane Parker. The Encyclopedia of Sharks. Universal International, 1999. Paulin, Mike, and David Green. “Mostly Harmless: Sharks We Have Met.” Junctures 19 (2018): 117–122. Pepin-Neff, Christopher L. Flaws: Shark Bites and Emotional Public Policymaking. Palgrave Macmilliam, 2019. Pepperell, Julian, John West, and Peter Woon, eds. Shark Conservation: Proceedings of an International Workshop on the Conservation of Elasmobranchs Held at Taronga Zoo, Sydney, Australia, 24 February 1991. Zoological Parks Board of New South Wales, 1993. Peschak, Thomas P. “Sharks and Shark Bites in the Media.” Finding a Balance: White Shark Conservation and Recreational Safety in the Inshore Waters of Cape Town, South Africa. Eds. Deon C. Nel and Thomas P. Peschak. Cape Town: World Wildlife Fund, 2006. 159–163. Reid, Robert. Shark!: Killer Tales from the Dangerous Depths. Allen & Unwin Kindle version, 2010. Riley, Kathy. Australia’s Most Dangerous Sharks. Australian Geographic, 2013. Roc, Margaret, and Kathleen Hawke. Australia’s Critically Endangered Animals. Heinemann Library, 2006. Rohr, Ian. Snappers, Stingers and Stabbers of Australia. Young Reed, 2006. Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales. “RZS NSW Fellows.” 2021. 6 Aug. 2021 <https://www.rzsnsw.org.au/about-us/rzs-nsw-fellows/rzs-nsw-fellows>. Ryan, Mark David, and Elizabeth Ellison. “Beaches in Australian Horror Films: Sites of Fear and Retreat.” Writing the Australian Beach Local Site, Global Idea. Eds. Elizabeth Ellison and Donna Lee Brien. Palgrave/Springer, 2020. 125–141. Schwanebeck, Wieland, ed. Der Weisse Hai revisited: Steven Spielberg’s Jaws und die Geburt eines amerikanischen Albtraums. Bertz & Fischer, 2015. Shark Hunters. Dirs. Ben Cropp and Ron Tayor. Sydney, 1962. Sharpe, Alan. Shark Down Under: The History Shark Attacks in Australian Waters. Dominion Publishing, 1976. Steele, Philip. Sharks and Other Monsters of the Deep. London: DK, 1998. Steffen, Will, Andrew A. Burbidge, Lesley Hughes, Roger Kitching, David Lindenmayer, Warren Musgrave, Mark Stafford Smith, and Patricia A. Werner. Australia’s Biodiversity and Climate Change. CSIRO Publishing, 2009. Taylor, Ron. Ron Taylor’s Shark Fighters: Underwater in Colour. John Harding Underwater Promotions, 1965. Taylor, Ron, and Valerie Taylor. Sharks: Silent Hunters of the Deep. Reader’s Digest, 1990. Taylor, Ron, Valerie Taylor, and Peter Goadby, eds. Great Shark Stories. Harper & Row, 1978. Repub. 1986 and 2000. Taylor, Valerie. Valerie Taylor: An Adventurous Life. Hachette Australia, 2019. Thiele, Colin. Maneater Man: Alf Dean, the World’s Greatest Shark Hunter. Rigby, 1979. Tricas, Timothy C., and Mark Carwardine. Sharks and Whales. Five Mile Press, 2002 Westbrook, Vivienne R., Shaun Collin, Dean Crawford, and Mark Nicholls. Sharks in the Arts: From Feared to Revered. Routledge, 2018. Whitley, Gilbert Percy. The Fishes of Australia: The Sharks, Rays, Devil-Fish, and other Primitive Fishes of Australia and New Zealand. Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, 1940. Whitley, Gilbert Percy. Australian Sharks. Lloyd O’Neil, 1983.

Background “The sense of taste,” write Nelson and colleagues in a 2002 issue of Nature, “provides animals with valuable information about the nature and quality of food. Mammals can recognize and respond to a diverse repertoire of chemical entities, including sugars, salts, acids and a wide range of toxic substances” (199). The authors go on to argue that several amino acids—the building blocks of proteins—taste delicious to humans and that “having a taste pathway dedicated to their detection probably had significant evolutionary implications”. They imply, but do not specify, that the evolutionary implications are positive. This may be the case with some amino acids, but contemporary tastes, and changes in them, are far from universally beneficial. Indeed, this article argues that modern food production shapes and distorts human taste with significant implications for health and wellbeing. Take the western taste for fried chipped potatoes, for example. According to Schlosser in Fast Food Nation, “In 1960, the typical American ate eighty-one pounds of fresh potatoes and about four pounds of frozen french fries. Today [2002] the typical American eats about forty-nine pounds of fresh potatoes every year—and more than thirty pounds of frozen french fries” (115). Nine-tenths of these chips are consumed in fast food restaurants which use mass-manufactured potato-based frozen products to provide this major “foodservice item” more quickly and cheaply than the equivalent dish prepared from raw ingredients. These choices, informed by human taste buds, have negative evolutionary implications, as does the apparently long-lasting consumer preference for fried goods cooked in trans-fats. “Numerous foods acquire their elastic properties (i.e., snap, mouth-feel, and hardness) from the colloidal fat crystal network comprised primarily of trans- and saturated fats. These hardstock fats contribute, along with numerous other factors, to the global epidemics related to metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease,” argues Michael A. Rogers (747). Policy makers and public health organisations continue to compare notes internationally about the best ways in which to persuade manufacturers and fast food purveyors to reduce the use of these trans-fats in their products (L’Abbé et al.), however, most manufacturers resist. Hank Cardello, a former fast food executive, argues that “many products are designed for ‘high hedonic value’, with carefully balanced combinations of salt, sugar and fat that, experience has shown, induce people to eat more” (quoted, Trivedi 41). Fortunately for the manufactured food industry, salt and sugar also help to preserve food, effectively prolonging the shelf life of pre-prepared and packaged goods. Physiological Factors As Glanz et al. discovered when surveying 2,967 adult Americans, “taste is the most important influence on their food choices, followed by cost” (1118). A person’s taste is to some extent an individual response to food stimuli, but the tongue’s taste buds respond to five basic categories of food: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. ‘Umami’ is a Japanese word indicating “delicious savoury taste” (Coughlan 11) and it is triggered by the amino acid glutamate. Japanese professor Kikunae Ikeda identified glutamate while investigating the taste of a particular seaweed which he believed was neither sweet, sour, bitter, or salty. When Ikeda combined the glutamate taste essence with sodium he formed the food additive sodium glutamate, which was patented in 1908 and subsequently went into commercial production (Japan Patent Office). Although individual, a person’s taste preferences are by no means fixed. There is ample evidence that people’s tastes are being distorted by modern food marketing practices that process foods to make them increasingly appealing to the average palate. In particular, this industrialisation of food promotes the growth of a snack market driven by salty and sugary foods, popularly constructed as posing a threat to health and wellbeing. “[E]xpanding waistlines [are] fuelled by a boom in fast food and a decline in physical activity” writes Stark, who reports upon the 2008 launch of a study into Australia’s future ‘fat bomb’. As Deborah Lupton notes, such reports were a particular feature of the mid 2000s when: intense concern about the ‘obesity epidemic’ intensified and peaked. Time magazine named 2004 ‘The Year of Obesity’. That year the World Health Organization’s Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health was released and the [US] Centers for Disease Control predicted that a poor diet and lack of exercise would soon claim more lives than tobacco-related disease in the United States. (4) The American Heart Association recommends eating no more than 1500mg of salt per day (Hamzelou 11) but salt consumption in the USA averages more than twice this quantity, at 3500mg per day (Bernstein and Willett 1178). In the UK, a sustained campaign and public health-driven engagement with food manufacturers by CASH—Consensus Action on Salt and Health—resulted in a reduction of between 30 and 40 percent of added salt in processed foods between 2001 and 2011, with a knock-on 15 percent decline in the UK population’s salt intake overall. This is the largest reduction achieved by any developed nation (Brinsden et al.). “According to the [UK’s] National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), this will have reduced [UK] stroke and heart attack deaths by a minimum of 9,000 per year, with a saving in health care costs of at least £1.5bn a year” (MacGregor and Pombo). Whereas there has been some success over the past decade in reducing the amount of salt consumed, in the Western world the consumption of sugar continues to rise, as a graph cited in the New Scientist indicates (O’Callaghan). Regular warnings that sugar is associated with a range of health threats and delivers empty calories devoid of nutrition have failed to halt the increase in sugar consumption. Further, although some sugar is a natural product, processed foods tend to use a form invented in 1957: high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). “HFCS is a gloopy solution of glucose and fructose” writes O’Callaghan, adding that it is “as sweet as table sugar but has typically been about 30% cheaper”. She cites Serge Ahmed, a French neuroscientist, as arguing that in a world of food sufficiency people do not need to consume more, so they need to be enticed to overeat by making food more pleasurable. Ahmed was part of a team that ran an experiment with cocaine-addicted rats, offering them a mutually exclusive choice between highly-sweetened water and cocaine: Our findings clearly indicate that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even in drug-sensitized and -addicted individuals. We speculate that the addictive potential of intense sweetness results from an inborn hypersensitivity to sweet tastants. In most mammals, including rats and humans, sweet receptors evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars and are thus not adapted to high concentrations of sweet tastants. The supranormal stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus lead to addiction. (Lenoir et al.) The Tongue and the Brain One of the implications of this research about the mammalian desire for sugar is that our taste for food is about more than how these foods actually taste in the mouth on our tongues. It is also about the neural response to the food we eat. The taste of French fries thus also includes that “snap, mouth-feel, and hardness” and the “colloidal fat crystal network” (Rogers, “Novel Structuring” 747). While there is no taste receptor for fats, these nutrients have important effects upon the brain. Wang et al. offered rats a highly fatty, but palatable, diet and allowed them to eat freely. 33 percent of the calories in the food were delivered via fat, compared with 21 percent in a normal diet. The animals almost doubled their usual calorific intake, both because the food had a 37 percent increased calorific content and also because the rats ate 47 percent more than was standard (2786). The research team discovered that in as little as three days the rats “had already lost almost all of their ability to respond to leptin” (Martindale 27). Leptin is a hormone that acts on the brain to communicate feelings of fullness, and is thus important in assisting animals to maintain a healthy body weight. The rats had also become insulin resistant. “Severe resistance to the metabolic effects of both leptin and insulin ensued after just 3 days of overfeeding” (Wang et al. 2786). Fast food restaurants typically offer highly palatable, high fat, high sugar, high salt, calorific foods which can deliver 130 percent of a day’s recommended fat intake, and almost a day’s worth of an adult man’s calories, in one meal. The impacts of maintaining such a diet over a comparatively short time-frame have been recorded in documentaries such as Super Size Me (Spurlock). The after effects of what we widely call “junk food” are also evident in rat studies. Neuroscientist Paul Kenny, who like Ahmed was investigating possible similarities between food- and cocaine-addicted rats, allowed his animals unlimited access to both rat ‘junk food’ and healthy food for rats. He then changed their diets. “The rats with unlimited access to junk food essentially went on a hunger strike. ‘It was as if they had become averse to healthy food’, says Kenny. It took two weeks before the animals began eating as much [healthy food] as those in the control group” (quoted, Trivedi 40). Developing a taste for certain food is consequently about much more than how they taste in the mouth; it constitutes an individual’s response to a mixture of taste, hormonal reactions and physiological changes. Choosing Health Glanz et al. conclude their study by commenting that “campaigns attempting to change people’s perception of the importance of nutrition will be interpreted in terms of existing values and beliefs. A more promising strategy might be to stress the good taste of healthful foods” (1126). Interestingly, this is the strategy already adopted by some health-focused cookbooks. I have 66 cookery books in my kitchen. None of ten books sampled from the five spaces in which these books are kept had ‘taste’ as an index entry, but three books had ‘taste’ in their titles: The Higher Taste, Taste of Life, and The Taste of Health. All three books seek to promote healthy eating, and they all date from the mid-1980s. It might be that taste is not mentioned in cookbook indexes because it is a sine qua non: a focus upon taste is so necessary and fundamental to a cookbook that it goes without saying. Yet, as the physiological evidence makes clear, what we find palatable is highly mutable, varying between people, and capable of changing significantly in comparatively short periods of time. The good news from the research studies is that the changes wrought by high salt, high sugar, high fat diets need not be permanent. Luciano Rossetti, one of the authors on Wang et al’s paper, told Martindale that the physiological changes are reversible, but added a note of caution: “the fatter a person becomes the more resistant they will be to the effects of leptin and the harder it is to reverse those effects” (27). Morgan Spurlock’s experience also indicates this. In his case it took the actor/director 14 months to lose the 11.1 kg (13 percent of his body mass) that he gained in the 30 days of his fast-food-only experiment. Trivedi was more fortunate, stating that, “After two weeks of going cold turkey, I can report I have successfully kicked my ice cream habit” (41). A reader’s letter in response to Trivedi’s article echoes this observation. She writes that “the best way to stop the craving was to switch to a diet of vegetables, seeds, nuts and fruits with a small amount of fish”, adding that “cravings stopped in just a week or two, and the diet was so effective that I no longer crave junk food even when it is in front of me” (Mackeown). Popular culture indicates a range of alternative ways to resist food manufacturers. In the West, there is a growing emphasis on organic farming methods and produce (Guthman), on sl called Urban Agriculture in the inner cities (Mason and Knowd), on farmers’ markets, where consumers can meet the producers of the food they eat (Guthrie et al.), and on the work of advocates of ‘real’ food, such as Jamie Oliver (Warrin). Food and wine festivals promote gourmet tourism along with an emphasis upon the quality of the food consumed, and consumption as a peak experience (Hall and Sharples), while environmental perspectives prompt awareness of ‘food miles’ (Weber and Matthews), fair trade (Getz and Shreck) and of land degradation, animal suffering, and the inequitable use of resources in the creation of the everyday Western diet (Dare, Costello and Green). The burgeoning of these different approaches has helped to stimulate a commensurate growth in relevant disciplinary fields such as Food Studies (Wessell and Brien). One thing that all these new ways of looking at food and taste have in common is that they are options for people who feel they have the right to choose what and when to eat; and to consume the tastes they prefer. This is not true of all groups of people in all countries. Hiding behind the public health campaigns that encourage people to exercise and eat fresh fruit and vegetables are the hidden “social determinants of health: The conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, including the health system” (WHO 45). As the definitions explain, it is the “social determinants of health [that] are mostly responsible for health iniquities” with evidence from all countries around the world demonstrating that “in general, the lower an individual’s socioeconomic position, the worse his or her health” (WHO 45). For the comparatively disadvantaged, it may not be the taste of fast food that attracts them but the combination of price and convenience. If there is no ready access to cooking facilities, or safe food storage, or if a caregiver is simply too time-poor to plan and prepare meals for a family, junk food becomes a sensible choice and its palatability an added bonus. For those with the education, desire, and opportunity to break free of the taste for salty and sugary fats, however, there are a range of strategies to achieve this. There is a persuasive array of evidence that embracing a plant-based diet confers a multitude of health benefits for the individual, for the planet and for the animals whose lives and welfare would otherwise be sacrificed to feed us (Green, Costello and Dare). Such a choice does involve losing the taste for foods which make up the lion’s share of the Western diet, but any sense of deprivation only lasts for a short time. The fact is that our sense of taste responds to the stimuli offered. It may be that, notwithstanding the desires of Jamie Oliver and the like, a particular child never will never get to like broccoli, but it is also the case that broccoli tastes differently to me, seven years after becoming a vegan, than it ever did in the years in which I was omnivorous. When people tell me that they would love to adopt a plant-based diet but could not possibly give up cheese, it is difficult to reassure them that the pleasure they get now from that specific cocktail of salty fats will be more than compensated for by the sheer exhilaration of eating crisp, fresh fruits and vegetables in the future. Conclusion For decades, the mass market food industry has tweaked their products to make them hyper-palatable and difficult to resist. They do this through marketing experiments and consumer behaviour research, schooling taste buds and brains to anticipate and relish specific cocktails of sweet fats (cakes, biscuits, chocolate, ice cream) and salty fats (chips, hamburgers, cheese, salted nuts). They add ingredients to make these products stimulate taste buds more effectively, while also producing cheaper items with longer life on the shelves, reducing spoilage and the complexity of storage for retailers. Consumers are trained to like the tastes of these foods. Bitter, sour, and umami receptors are comparatively under-stimulated, with sweet, salty, and fat-based tastes favoured in their place. Western societies pay the price for this learned preference in high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and obesity. Public health advocate Bruce Neal and colleagues, working to reduce added salt in processed foods, note that the food and manufacturing industries can now provide most of the calories that the world needs to survive. “The challenge now”, they argue, “is to have these same industries provide foods that support long and healthy adult lives. And in this regard there remains a very considerable way to go”. If the public were to believe that their sense of taste is mutable and has been distorted for corporate and industrial gain, and if they were to demand greater access to natural foods in their unprocessed state, then that journey towards a healthier future might be far less protracted than these and many other researchers seem to believe. References Bernstein, Adam, and Walter Willett. “Trends in 24-Hr Sodium Excretion in the United States, 1957–2003: A Systematic Review.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 92 (2010): 1172–1180. Bhaktivedanta Book Trust. 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