Identity at the Dinner Table: What to Eat, Nutritionism + Sustainable Futures
Sarah, a mother of two, is walking into the breakfast aisle trying to buy a box of healthy cereal for her young children sitting in the shopping trolley. They are pulling at her shirt and heartstrings trying to persuade her to buy a bright box of CocoPops while she is gradually becoming overwhelmed by this bombardment of choice. Low sugar, low fat and no cholesterol run around her head as she attempts to remember which dietary advice is the healthy choice. In order to navigate the plethora of perspectives on what is ‘healthy’, heuristics are implemented to make the decision easier. Lobstein and Davies reveal that when questioned, consumers, despite difficulty in knowing how to implement this knowledge, claim to be able to discern ‘what is or is not healthy’ (2008:331). In order to assist consumers and increase the market share of the producer, mental shortcuts such as ‘traffic light’ signalling on food packages (ibid) facilitate the ease and practicability of selecting ‘healthy’ food options. The focus in recent years to investigate these consumer assistance tools (eg. nutrient labels and terms such as ‘healthy’ and ‘low fat’) has increased the academic appetite to understand how individuals form ideas of and engage with discourses of health.
The preoccupation in contemporary Western society with making the right decisions as to ‘what is good to eat’ (Coveney, 2000: x), I will argue, originally stems from a reconceptualisation of food as component parts which will be explained through the history of nutritionism. The philosophical structure produced from the various forms of moral hierarchical dichotomisation, which became established with the 20th century’s discourse of body, food (nutrition), and society, laid the foundations for how food has become characterised in these terms of good/bad for the modern subject (Coveney, 2000:160). The rise of nutritionism provides the groundwork for the dichotomy to flourish under this moral assignment as one of the factors that comprises modern identity and has led to the shift from religious to health based identity. Perhaps the relationship between consumption and identity can be explained by the long standing belief in the proverb, ‘you are what you eat’ (Fox, 2008:1). Further than the physical, social and pleasurable need to satisfy hunger, eating also provides a ‘powerful symbol of who we are’ (ibid). Therefore, for the post-modern citizen, identity is no longer a definitive consequence of the community one is born into nor is it stable in nature, but becomes something one actively creates ‘through consumption’ (Elliot, 1998: 132). For the contemporary neoliberal consumer, the media represents the central vehicle in which these ideological principles are transferred. Within this context, the nature of how to ‘achieve health’ (Roy, 2008) will be discussed in terms of the mode in which these ideas are transferred to the individual and how these ideas manifest both conceptually and actually. This paper will then trace the implementation of these ideas in the context of the family dinner table to see how this ideology is actualised in language and choice. While many sites of socialisation form an individual’s ideology of what health means or how to achieve it, focusing on the dinner table will provide some insight into this complex topic.
Rise of Nutritionism
In order to explain the emergence of the dichotomy good/bad food, this section will explore the foundation for which the binary relationship was established. The emergence of nutritionism as a part of the human consumption landscape can be traced back to the 19th century German chemist Justus von Liebig (Anderson, 2014: 51). Building on the English doctor William Prout’s (1785 – 1850) discovery of the three constituting parts of food (protein, fat and carbohydrates), Liebig’s (1803 –1873) discovery of micro-nutrients, along with his theory of metabolism, launched the human fascination with nutrition and food science (Pollan, 2008: 20). From these beginnings, the authority to guide ‘what to eat’ was removed from the body and the power was placed in nutritional science. This trend, which came in response to outbreaks of scurvy, gained vogue amongst the middle classes during the early 1900s and resulted in the use of ‘vitamins’, later named ‘magic molecules’ (ibid).
At this time, knowledge of the body became devalued and dominated by medical and scientific discourse, which as a result came to shape the prevailing conceptualisation of health (Clarke 2011:164). More simply, the idea that the body is a source of authority on itself, based on lived experience or innate knowledge, or what it needs to consume, began to be replaced by the logical ‘scientific discourse of nutritional science’ (ibid:163). The ‘absolute certainty’ quality attributed to natural-scientific knowledge (Grimshaw, 1996) began to take precedent in both the natural sciences and the body. Due to the invisibility of these particles to the untrained or ‘un-scientific’ eye, choices of ‘what to eat’ and ideas of what is healthy/not healthy was usurped from the realm of the individual and into the domain of the expert nutritionist (Pollan, 2008:3). Naturally, as theories of these magic molecules began to take centre stage and the shift from eating food for aesthetic pleasure or necessity transformed into ‘eating nutrients’, food came to be defined by its place on the spectrum (Scrinis, 2008:39). In consequence of this paradigm, the conscious understanding of food shifted to consideration within a continuum, between good nutrients/foods and bad nutrients/foods (ibid:29). As we have seen, the public discourse and contemporary understanding of food in binary terms of good/bad has been shaped by the authority medical knowledge superposed knowledge of the body along with the re-defining of food in terms of ‘nutrition science’.
This ideology, which became termed by Australian sociologist George Scrinis (2008) and made popular by journalist Michael Pollan, prioritises the scientifically determined nutrients contained within the food over the whole food itself (Pollan, 2007:1). The sum of the nutrient and biochemical composition of each individual component, within this paradigm, is considered superior or at least equal to the food (ibid). Within the framework of nutritionism, as Scrinis elaborates (quoted in Pollan, 2008: 32), ‘even processed foods may be considered to be healthier for you than whole foods if they contain the appropriate quantities of some nutrients’.
This ‘reductive approach to food’ began to predominate the policy surrounding and the public’s understanding of not only food but of their health (Scrinis, 2008: 39).
With this model applied to the realm of ‘what to eat’, scientific knowledge and the rational mind are not only empowered with the ability to make the decision of what to consume, but the decision is considered a ‘matter of choice’ (Clarke 2011:164). This notion of ‘what to eat’ and the rational route in which the consumer should follow in making a decision has most significant implications, which will be discussed later through both elements of the equation: the food and the being. As a result, the moral decision of consuming good/healthy or bad/unhealthy food is formulated in the same fashion, as individuals in contemporary society are both openly considered failures or bad for giving in and often broadcast their ‘weakness’ for consuming these foods (ibid).
Many argue however that the characterisation of food as nutritious or not is not based on any ‘consistent standards or criteria’ but customarily defined by the ‘absence of [currently] problematic ingredients - fat, sugar, sodium- rather than by the presence of any beneficial nutrient they might contain’ (Drewnowski, 2005 :721). In other words, food is emphasised in terms of its micro-nutrient profile and health achieved through the restriction of these ‘evil’ macros: fats or carbohydrates. As a result, dietary guidelines appeal to the same form of logic (Marks et al., 2000:142). While this perhaps inconsistent allocation has been proven extremely unproductive to the consumer, who is therefore required to translate the nutrient recommendations into actual food in their shopping cart, this emphasis still perseveres (ibid).
The seemingly arbitrary and changeable nature of nutrition advice has been most clearly seen in the politics of fat consumption. Questions as to the efficacy of the conventional nutritional wisdom embedded in the ‘low-fat-is-good-health hypothesis’ (Freeland-Graves, 2002:100), originally proposed in the 1970s by Ancel Keys (1970, cited in Krauss, 2000) who suggested that consuming fat raises cholesterol and causes heart disease, has in recent years been confronted with scientific research that opposes this idea. While the once unexplainable ‘French Paradox’, whereby somehow the people of France have lower incidence of coronary heart disease despite high intake of dietary cholesterol and saturated fat (Ferrières, 2004: 107), had always raised questions as to this relationship, the fat-fearing American populations under the guise of their nutritional advisors or doctors avoided fat as if it were the plague (Teicholz, 2014). Slowly but surely, the suggestion of replacing margarine with butter, which only a few years ago would have resulted in a nutritionist’s career suicide, is now gaining traction and causing the nutritional community to slowly follow suit.
To investigate the rise of the Western contemporary nutrition discourse, Crotty (1995:64) describes the promulgation of ‘Good Nutrition’ by nutrition experts, doctors and scientists. This view, she suggests, is a form of social control whereby individuals are encouraged to adopt these principles in theory and in eating practice, or risk being diagnosed as ‘sick’ and morally cast of out good citizenry (ibid). The contemporary manifestation of this ‘medical model’ (Coveney, 2006 :17) which Crotty is so critical of, places all of the power to guide and control behaviour and achieve good health of the body in scientific knowledge. Attempts to quantify the nutritional nature or content of any food have proved highly problematic and difficult, especially as the scientific knowledge and subsequent advice is forever changing, as well as the shifting focus from the concern with avoidance of disease towards motivations of greater health (Bury, 1994 in Lawton, 2003:240).
To provide greater context to the philosophical structures which gave rise to the dichotomisation of good/bad food, the dividing practices of the medicalised body are explained. Within the last few decades the ‘growth of medicalisation’, or the process in which elements of life which were previously considered outside the ‘jurisdiction of medicine come to be construed as medical problems’ has occurred at such a rapid rate that the Western body and idea of health is forever changed (Clarke et al., 2003 :153). While Clarke et al. discuss the historical shift from medicalisation to bio-medicalisation and more specifically the influence of bio-technology on the body, the analysis and framing of the discussion is most applicable and useful to the transformation of health in contemporary Western society. Through the contemporary reinterpretation of Foucault’s (1984, in Clarke et al., 2003:184) notion of ‘dividing practices’, individuals and their bodies are perceived to be in need of increasingly more discipline and ‘invasive technologies of bio-medicalisation’ due to population’s ‘risky genetics, demography and behaviours’(Clarke et al., 2003: 184). These practices come in the forms of increased monitoring, diagnosing, and maintenance of one’s health and require greater knowledge and responsibility for self and others (ibid). The obligation to ‘know and take care of thyself’, as explained in this article, not only exemplifies this contemporary ideology of health but helps to give rise to new personal identities and relationships to self and society (ibid).
Perhaps, as a result of the reconceptualisation of the body in terms of its component parts, coupled with the moral hierarchy and need for technologies to repress the undisciplined, the foundations for understanding food in the same terms is the next logical step.
Shift Towards Health Identity
Similar to the binary between ‘normality’ and ‘abnormality’, which provides societal order through clear distinctions between those on either side of the ‘deviant-immoral or respectable- moral’ divide (Douglas, 1970:3), the distinction between ‘good food’ and ‘bad food’ is both equally powerful and not representative of the ‘truth of being’ (Dennis, 1970:174). Similar to how highlighting the deviant in society produces law abiding moral citizens, the moral dichotomisation of food, in this way, has similar ramifications, but on the body. In modernity, these highly recognisable and defined categories of whether or not a food item is healthy or good, perform a similar direct tool of population control and act as an effective form of indirect governance through self-surveillance and self-regulation (Foucault, 1987). Social cohesion has shifted from a traditional to a post- industrial society where society and community were based on a shared moral compass or consciousness (Warren, 1996:60) towards a society whose values are based on difference and individualism (Mestrovic, 1992).
In order to understand how the conceptualisation of food into absolute categories of healthy/good and unhealthy/bad arose as necessary when traditional identity no longer applied, it is important to outline the human motivations and larger social influences for this occurrence. Tradition ‘no longer steers the construction process’ as identity is no longer defined by the institution and therefore the post-modern individual is charged with the task of constructing and maintaining one’s identity (Boeve, 2005:104). Boeve describes this process whereby for the contemporary individual, ‘detraditionalisation’ and ‘marketisation’ undermine the socialising influence of traditional institutions, such as religion and as a consequence the individual loses the template for guiding his identity and is left to fill in the missing pieces (ibid). Therefore, individuals ‘need to rebuild their self-understandings’ and utilise the market and its resources to achieve their needs (McAlexander et al, 2014:858).
In traditional societies, religiously ordained structures serve their members as ‘pillars of
identity’ (McAlexander et al, 2014:859) and govern and define all aspects of life in questions ranging from who to marry to how or what to consume (Goffman, 1968). Perhaps facilitated by the practical need for cooperation in these traditional societies and the lack of geographical mobility, individuals sustained close-knit communities, which acted to help maintain social order and cohesion (Goody, 1982). Many social thinkers theorised the transformation of community in the rise of industrialised Western society and the subsequent influence it had on individual’s identity and sense of community. Boeve’s secularisation thesis helps to explain the gradually diminishing impact both individually and socially on the Christian tradition: modernisation and religion are inverse of each other; ‘the more modernisation, the less religion’ (Boeve, 2005:104). Within this shifting climate, religion no longer plays a role in the ‘construction and legalisation of individual and social identities’ (ibid).
The social harmony that is found in religion, where order is consecrated in the moral conventions common in traditional community, begins to lessen in importance with transition to capitalist laden industrialised Western society, where the means of individual governance are replaced with laws of ‘convention’: the individual is left to fight to regain his identity as a member of a community (Truzzi, 1971). Order is preserved, Durkheim explains, irrespective of the change in the organisation of community as long as the quintessential element - the common consciousness - is fostered and therefore allowed to prosper (2003). While the body was once informed by the ‘divine Sobriety’, for the contemporary citizen it becomes disciplined by ‘calories and protein’ (Turner, 1982:29).
If we were to rely on the traditional definition of community, mentioned above, to help explain the new form of community, we would have an incomplete explanation. The complexities of the interaction between self and identity, constantly evolving and amplifying with the ever connected global world, continue to impede the simplicity of the equation. The contemporary quest for community is ‘undertaken for therapeutic reasons’ as consumers seek to avoid the social isolation common in the structure of postmodern society (Thompson, 2007:148). Benedict Anderson (1983, in Weber, 2009) argues that contemporary community, as a result of the practical transformations which do not allow for face-to-face community, are based on one which is socially constructed via those who perceive themselves apart of these ‘imagined communities’ (Weber, 2009: 40). These communities, formed as a response to the post-industrial society, whether based on brand association or adherence to a specific diet (eg. Paleo), provide a sense of much needed individual and community identity (Thompson, 2007:148). These forms of communities, facilitated by the powers of the interconnected viral age, are indoctrinated through public discourse and rituals and are based on individual alliance to any varied interest rather than a forced religious or kinship tie (ibid).
Therefore, for the post-modern citizen identity is no longer a definitive consequence of the community one is born into nor is it stable in nature, but becomes something one actively creates ‘through consumption’ (Elliot, 1998:132). The ‘search for self-identity’, according to Elliott and Wattanasuwan (2015:131), is a key determinant of the postmodern individual. In order to resist being faced with the ‘looming threat of personal meaninglessness’ (Giddens, 1991:201), the individual seeks to create and maintain an identity through consumption. In contemporary society, consumerism plays a most meaningful role in the ‘creation and production of a sense of self’ (Todd, 2012:48). In other words, the moral quality individuals assign to themselves via consumption of certain foods, motivated by the need to curate the lost form of traditional identity, comes to the forefront of the modern subject’s identity practice.
Most famously argued by Baudrillard (1998), consumption is the predominant site in which one creates and communicates identity. Following these assumptions, capitalised on by the marketers’ insinuation that the person in the advertisement ‘could be you’, the contemporary consumer has the ability to mould any ‘self’ by flipping through the advertisements and purchasing the right product from the magazine pages (Stromberg, 1990:12).
Within this new ideology of identity, which by some is termed as more characteristic of a religion rather than an ideology (Stromberg, 1990:12), the individual becomes first and foremost a consumer, who has the ability to exercise free-will to form or consume the identity one wishes to embody (ibid). While it is difficult to divorce an individual’s particular socio-cultural and historical context which informs the array of possible identities made salient to them at any one time, from the chosen identity, the assumed freedom of choice inherent within this mode allows for greater movement and flexibility within one’s life time.
While the direction of the relationship remains unclear between advertisers’ suggestion of consumables and the individual’s need to buy the said product, the market resolves this consumer wish through constantly providing purchasable items to compose whatever identity is desired. Many examples could be sited here, but for the purpose of beginning this discussion an article from the 1985 Glamour magazine helps to highlight the longevity and discursive nature of how this phenomena is materialised in print. The editor writes, ‘if you’ll give me just a few minutes of your time [...] I can help you change almost anything about yourself...Begin the great and continuing makeover of you!’ (Stromberg,1990:14).
Citizen Socialisation through the Media
The ways in which bodies are socially constructed and the means in which these ideas are conveyed and internalised are extremely complex and intricate (Lupton,1994:602). While isolating any single determining attribute offers an incomplete perspective, for the purpose of this paper, print media will be focused on, as it holds a most significant role in the distribution of knowledge and how or what a healthy lifestyle entails is conveyed to individuals in society (Santich, 1995:127).
In the 20th century, media writings on health focused on the neoliberal principles of individual responsibility and the many forms it takes as they became the prominent form of transmitting healthy discourse to the public. The media’s role in the spreading of notions of what constitutes ‘healthy lifestyles’ as well as ‘techniques for fabricating the healthy self’ (Bunton 1997: 239) is undeniable. The media's portrayal of the ‘healthy lifestyles’ as something vital to being a moral member of society, is also vital to the process of self- identity making. Therefore, for the modern citizen, knowledge of the ‘good diet’ has become the central focus and the ‘only rational choice’ as it holds them responsible for acquiring the knowledge to attain health (Clarke, 2011:164)
In the 1990s, the American media’s expanding obsession and broadcasting of the obesity ‘epidemic’ and the alleged health problems associated with it, increased alongside the Americans expanding waistlines (Boero, 2007:41). Between 1990 and 2001, The New York Times published over 750 articles on obesity and its detrimental health effects. In the same decade or so, they published only 531 articles on climate change and pollution and 672 articles on the the AIDS epidemic (Boero, 2007:42). The plethora of articles surrounding the fears of nationwide obesity, fatness and expanding body size were presented in dark opposition to health and frequently presented along with its ‘cure’ and supplemented with costly quick fix faddish foods, or the suggestion to eliminate entire macronutrient food groups. Through taking a social constructionist approach to the ‘obesity epidemic’, Boero looks at the way the discourse surrounding the obesity epidemic was defined and framed as both an individual responsibility and societal epidemic (ibid: 42). Magazines are one of the foremost avenues of society’s declaration of the prevailing or optimum ideas of what is healthy and how to attain such a state of being (Andsanger and Powers 1999). They ‘act as guidebooks for women’s lives’ (Ballaster et al., 1991) by providing questions and solutions to the created problems or desires of the readers, to be found within the pages of the magazine (Roy, 2008:464). Boero’s argument, helps to show how the media shapes and creates individuals conceptualisation of health and how to attain such a state is most clearly seen as a result of a few mechanism of transference: the media’s explicit communication of these ideas to the readers and the secondary transmission of this information to the less educated.
Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith, (1990:209-210) explored in one of her most seminal texts, the concept that social life, in all of its manifestations, is ‘textually-mediated’. ‘Communication, action and social relations’, she expresses, are ‘infused with a process of inscription, producing written meaning[...] or working from them’ (ibid:209). Smith suggests that writing is not just the spoken word put down on paper, but through the process of the thought it takes to write the word, it acquires new meaning (Barton, 2001:101). Truth and knowledge are not only man-made but social reality ‘comes into being through language’(Smith,1999:128), therefore human language or the reality that is socially constructed in the process is not an objective characterisation of reality but a product of the humanly constructed knowledge process (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Following Smith’s theoretical understanding of the social construction of language, our identities and lived experiences are mediated through the language which surrounds them. Thus, language which makes up the discursive practices and from which social practice and meaning is constructed (Fairclough,1995) can be used as a basic standpoint to understand how healthy eating discourse in magazines shapes the meaning of the term in our everyday lives.
Along with the rise of neoliberal politics and economic policies beginning in the 1970s (McGregor, 2001, p.83), the social and individual body began to take on a similar framework. Health in the West has been reimagined as a ‘morally-laden personal attribute’ associated with the neoliberal notions of ‘individual responsibility and achievement’ (Paugh & Izquierdo, 2009: 185). On a global level, neoliberal ideology is shaping healthcare policy, while on an individual level these principles are forming philosophical thought and practical food choice (McGregor, 2001, p.83). Within this framework, the goal of health becomes ‘maximising freedom, well-being, [and] quality of life’ (2007:53), which informs consumers’ conceptualisation of not only what they should eat, but also largely shapes the opinion of their subsequent choices (Fusrt et al., 1996:247).
This idea is most clearly exemplified in discussing the Great American Makeover (2006:24), an idea and a book with the same title, through which Dana Heller describes the factors that unite, create and sustain the ‘Americanness’ desire for self improvement and uphold the American or first world dream . The neoliberal ideologies, she argues, ‘position the subject as an entrepreneur of the self’ who is required to engage in the constant process of self improvement in order to compete in the global market and health maintenance to be a good citizen (Weber, 2009:39). In extension of the thought mentioned earlier, that scientific knowledge is superior to bodily knowledge, food consumption is conceptualised as an individual’s responsibility and choice. Therefore, when an individual ‘wrongly’ indulges or engages in ‘deviant irrational behaviour’, it is considered entirely their responsibility when they ‘suffer negative health consequences’ (Clarke 2011:164).
Lived Practice : Ethnography of Family Dinner Table
While this paper has explored the identity motivations and one of the prominent modes in which ideas of health are defined and transferred to the social body, the process by which these ideas are embodied has yet to be examined. To investigate how the knowledge of health behaviour and eating habits are experienced in practice and the moral implications of these daily health negotiations, analysis of two dinner table ethnographies are used to illustrate its daily manifestation.
In an ethnography of the American dinner table, Paugh and Izquierdo (2009) conducted research amongst middle class working families in Los Angeles, California. Their work and linguistic analysis of the interactions during the dinner time of five families culminated in the published work, Why is This a Battle Every Night?: Negotiating Food and Eating in American Dinnertime Interaction and is therefore most illuminating to the lived experience of these practices over the dinner table.
The family is the site where knowledge of healthy behaviour and eating habits are formed, negotiated and reinforced (Beach and Anderson, 2003). The family dinner table acts to socialise the younger generation through both everyday participation and observation of the food routines and interactions and reveals the parent’s moral ‘health-conscious expectations’ of what they should eat and what they should feed their children (Paugh & Izquierdo, 2009:186). At this crucial site, both class and cultural perspectives and inclinations towards ‘healthy, eating practices [...] notions of morality, responsibility, individualism, success, and what it means to be a family’ are revealed through the practice (Paugh & Izquierdo, 2009:185).
Their paper investigates the socialisation of health related beliefs and the subsequent internalisation of daily consumption practices and how they are expressed in reaction to the everyday family mealtime, through looking at the ‘battles’ which endure as a result of the conflict between the parents morally endowed expectations of what their children ‘should’ eat and what the children ‘want’ to eat (ibid:186). Through conversation analysis, the anthropologists draw attention to the ways social interactions create cognitions about health and food behaviour through analysing the language of the dinner table.
Parents’ desire to feed their children ‘healthy’ food, which is arguably a result of their own explicit or implicit socialisation and the child’s similar socialisation but with different desired outcomes, creates such anxiety and unpleasantness that the meal is often unbearable for everyone involved (Paugh & Izquierdo, 2009: 199). The desire to feed their children what they consider ‘healthy’ foods is so strong that the parents often resort to adopting food-reward schemes, i.e. desserts are employed as a reward for eating these ‘healthy foods’(ibid). As a result, food in the mind of the child is logically conceived in terms of a reward or punishment and therefore the conceptualisation of food in terms of the good/bad continuum is born and reinforced.
In a second dinner time ethnography, this polarising continuum of deciphering good from bad food was similarly explored by Wiggins (2004), through analysing audio-recorded mealtimes of families in the North of England. Following the neoliberal framing of food and consumption, Wiggins identifies two types of ‘healthy eating talk’ most prevalent during the meal interaction ‘focusing on the individual’ talk, which holds the child accountable for their food choices and behaviour at the meal, and communication, which falls under the ‘general advice giving’ umbrella, where the parent discusses with the child what ‘is health’ and what is not (Wiggins, 2004 :545). The child, since the first time he is confronted with ‘healthy eating talk’ at the dinner table, internalises the knowledge of what constitutes healthy or unhealthy as an individual problem to be solved.
Within Wiggins’ dinner time conversation, the items identified as being healthy for ‘your body’ are generalised in terms of the minerals (potassium in this example) any good body/citizen in society requires (ibid: 541). The generic quantities of any mineral and explanations given for the consumption of these foods completely void of any understanding of human variance, are most evident in this piece (ibid). This perfectly modelled understanding of nutritionism exemplifies the earlier discussion of Marks et al.’s (2000) notion of the confusion consumers face attempting to understand what each member of their family needs to consume and how to choose food to supply these requirements. Within these lines of conversation, food and its nutritional contents are spoken about in terms of definable knowledge and advice inherent within this community and are doubtless and factual (Wiggins, 2004 :540). Additionally, Wiggin’s recordings of a family discussing the homemade gravy, rather than granules, about to be served at dinner (ibid) reveals the way healthy eating is constructed and expressed in each family member's mind. Line 16 (ibid:550) of the family transcript highlights the appearance of the ominous ‘their’ (the media or health advisors) recommendations of what to consume to be healthy; ‘they recommend you use granules rather than homemade gravy’ as it is ‘very low fat’ (ibid:550). Even though ‘they’ are not identified by name or form, the importance of the purveyed opinion and pressure to eat according to these ideas is most evident and powerful.
Being healthy, as presented by Wiggins through her analysis, is constructed through the consumption of particular ‘trace elements’, minerals or vitamins within the said food, the soil, or the body (2004:545). Therefore, this construction is grounded on the idea that these physical needs of the body are greater, or more important than the individual's personal taste preferences or desires. Subsequently, health, in this context and as a result of the over nutritionisation of food and life in general, is postulated as achievable through consuming the ‘right’ elements or behaving in the ‘right’ way. While the phrasing of health in these terms provides a beacon of hope to the human potential, it also leaves the space for misinterpretation and market manipulation. The unintentional schooling which occurs in this context, whether actively or passively, produces schemas of food knowledge to guide the practical daily consumption patterns (ibid:541).