A diet to make you fat or fit? The role of ‘sumo stew’ in shaping a sumo wrestler
A recent study published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Sport and Social Science, ‘Bodies steeped in stew: sport, tradition and the bodies of the sumo wrestler’ by R. Kenji Tierney (Anthropology Department, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, USA), explores the meanings of ‘fat’ and obesity in sumo and Japanese culture and the part that chanko, or ‘sumo stew’, plays in this. A wrestler’s aim is to build strength and mass in their stomach, providing them with a lower centre of gravity which is needed to maintain