Education policy internationally positions schools as central sites of
intervention on ‘obesity epidemics’, particularly in working class
communities. This article presents a moral geographies approach
which examines how such obesity-focused healthy food imperatives
are experienced in specific places and times. The authors draw
on data from a participatory photo mapping exercise with 11-yearold
girls in a working class school setting in Ireland. Rather than
focus on the girls’ food consumption through classed, deficit-based
discourses of individual restraint or pleasure, they consider their
food desires to be an ethico-political force for connection, identification
and potential reconstruction of what constitutes ‘good’ food.
The participants were adept at performing officially ‘good’ food
knowledge, but also constructed food-based identities and relationships
that challenged prevailing, individualised imperatives to
‘make healthy choices’. The findings underline the importance of
critical pedagogies of food desire, which could engage factors such
as the strengths of family and community food cultures.