دانلود رایگان مقاله پیام های مشکل ساز گفتمان تغذیه ای

Abstract

Nutritional science has assumed a fundamental importance in shaping food meanings and practices in the developed world. This study critically analysed the content of one weekly nutrition column written by a nutritional expert in a popular New Zealand magazine, from a social constructionist perspective, to investigate how nutritional advice constructs food, food practices and eaters. The analysis identified a range of ways in which the nutrition information communicated in the articles was potentially problematic for readers. The articles advocated eating for health with recommendations based on nutritional science, but depicted nutritional information as inconclusive, changeable and open to interpretation. Fear-based messages were used to motivate making 'healthy' food choices, through linking 'unhealthy' food choices with fatness and chronic ill health. Unhealthy foods were portrayed as more enjoyable than healthy foods, social occasions involving food were constructed as problematic, and exercise was defined only as a way to negate food consumption. Healthy eating was portrayed as a matter of personal choice, obscuring the situational factors that impact on food choice and health. We conclude that the nutritional advice analysed in this study constructs a way of understanding food that, if internalised by eaters, may evoke anxiety, confusion and dissatisfaction around food and eating.

4. Conclusion

This paper critically analyses how food, food practices and eaters are portrayed in the nutrition column of popular NZ magazine, the NZ Listener. The research objective was to better understand how food, eating and eaters may be constructed in dietary advice, written from a nutrition science perspective. Like many other nutrition messages in the media, the series of articles analysed here promote healthy eating. However, the way that healthy eating information was delivered in the articles proved to be problematic in a number of ways. The articles function to disconnect eating from positive emotional and social experiences, whilst providing advice that could lead to an emotionally negative relationship with food and eating. This way of understanding food and eating emphasises physical health and is framed within scientific discourses, but renders eating as joyless, controlled, individualized, confusing and motivated by fear. More generally, such messages reinforce and sustain neoliberal understandings of health, food, eating, and the eater. Understanding how such nutritional messages in the media construct these cultural beliefs around food and eating can open possibilities for a more critical approach to communicating and promoting healthy and pleasurable eating. Overall, the findings demonstrate a need to reconnect dietary advice with the social and psychological role of food and eating.