Anne Barnhill, Ph.D. is Core Faculty at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Dr. Barnhill is a philosopher and bioethicist whose research centers on the ethics of influence, the ethics of public health, the ethics of food, and agricultural policy. Dr. Barnhill is the co-editor of Digital Contact Tracing for Pandemic Response: Ethics and Governance Guidance, The Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics (OUP, 2018), and Food, Ethics and Society: An Introductory Text (OUP, 2016).
Matteo Bonotti, Ph. D. is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Monash University. His research interests include food justice, linguistic justice, democratic theory, political liberalism, the normative dimensions of partisanship and electoral design, and free speech. His work has appeared in such journals as the American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, Political Studies, the Journal of Applied Philosophy, Law and Philosophy, and the European Journal of Political Theory. Dr. Bonotti is the author of Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies (OUP, 2017) and the co-author of Recovering Civility during COVID-19 (2021).

• Introduction


• Chapter 1: The Ethical Dilemmas of (Un)healthy Eating


• Chapter 2: Political Philosophy and Healthy Eating Efforts: Some Important Connections


• Chapter 3: Healthy Eating Efforts and Millian Liberalism


• Chapter 4: Healthy Eating Efforts and Paternalism


• Chapter 5: Liberalism, Public Reason, and Healthy Eating Efforts


• Chapter 6: Unreasonable Healthy Eating Efforts


• Chapter 7: Designing Publicly Justified Healthy Eating Efforts


• Conclusion

When it comes to laws and policies that deal with food--such as special taxes on sugary drinks and the banning of certain unhealthy food ingredients--critics argue that these policies can be paternalistic and can limit individual autonomy over food choices. In Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach, Anne Barnhill and Matteo Bonotti show that both paternalistic justifications for healthy eating efforts and anti-paternalistic arguments against them can be grounded in perfectionist views that overly prioritize some values, such as autonomy and health, over other values. The authors therefore propose a more inclusive, public reason approach to healthy eating policy that will be appealing to those who take pluralism and cultural diversity seriously, by providing a framework through which different kinds of values, including but not limited to autonomy and health, can be factored into the public justification of healthy eating efforts.