Food Industry Archives - Food, Fatness and Fitness

As I was reading the Sunday newspaper, a colorful full-page advertisement caught my eye. At the bottom sat a juicy burger. Two buns encased a thick patty stacked over arugula and topped with fresh onion rings, tomatoes, and mayonnaise. Behind the burger sat the phrase “Beyond Meat, Serve Love.” Over everything hung a headline declaring “The Next Generation of Beyond Meat is Here and It’s Not Just Loved by Those Who Have Tasted It.” As a historian who has written about food politics in Germany, I’m always curious about food politics in other places. In this case, that other place is the United States. Caught by the color, two mentions of “love,” and, let’s admit it, that mouth-watering burger, I…

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In 2007, a few months before the launch of the iPhone, journalist Nancy Miller reflected on the ominous impact its predecessor, the iPod, was having on consumer behavior. As a handheld device, the iPod could store bulky album collections, allowing its owners to listen to music on the go. Miller also made a more ominous point, suggesting that Apple’s intentions were more far-reaching: the company was enticing consumers to watch television and movies, play games, and follow the latest fashion trends on the Internet-enabled device, freeing people from being stuck at home when it came to consuming content. To help readers visualize what this future portended, Miller used candies and snacks as examples. She presented the Mini Oreo, introduced by the multinational…

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Blitzing, blasting, shredding, and, of course, pumping. For bodybuilders of the 1980s, these verbs were not just descriptors, but a way of life. In 1977, Pumping Iron, a docudrama featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger, helped American men fall in love with bodybuilding. Where Jane Fonda encouraged a boom of aerobics exercises for women, Arnold and his rag-tag group of muscular merry-men became the face of a new public interest in musculature. Bodybuilding grew as a sport, but just as importantly, as a hobby. This was a time when fitness became ‘serious leisure’ and, as multiple historians have affirmed, a time when individual health and fitness became a priority and a means of claiming social status. Muscular and lean bodies came to become…

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Underutilized, neglected, orphan, emergency, miracle, or super crops – these are labels and terms one can find in academic debates and marketing campaigns of so-called superfoods. Superfoods are crops that are celebrated for their high nutritional value and “curative properties.” They are often linked to indigenous communities, traditional practices and a unique place-based history. In recent years, the interest and enthusiasm for superfoods increased: A variety of food products such as chia seeds, moringa and quinoa were marketed globally as superfoods, which fundamentally affected and destabilized the local food systems these foods had been embedded in. Superfoods are often imagined as problem solvers; specifically development experts and the tech sector see them as promising solutions in addressing various issues such…

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The obesogenic environment refers to “the sum of influences that the surroundings, opportunities or conditions of life have on promoting obesity in individuals and populations.” The obesogenic environment encompasses the infrastructural, social, and culture conditions that influence people’s ability and willingness to engage in health seeking behaviours. These include the advertising and availability of high calorie food, the lack of safe green spaces for activity and play, and the motorisation of daily life. It represents an ecological lens for understanding and solving the ‘problem of obesity,’ shifting the responsibility for fatness from individuals to environmental factors, and highlights that certain populations (poor people; usually people of color) live in environments that put them at greater risk for fatness. Concerns over…

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Food, Fatness and Fitness

Critical Perspectives

Category Food Industry:

“Beyond Meat” Takes a Historian Back Then

A World of Snackers? Parallels between the Analog and the Digital Age: The Japanese Experience

Eat More to Lift More? Purposeful Weight Gain and Weight Loss in 1980s American Bodybuilding

Rich People’s Food? Changing Food Landscapes and the Need for a Critical Discourse on Superfoods

Poor Fatties Can’t Help but Make Unhealthy Decisions?: The Myth of the Obesogenic Environment