Healthy Eating Policy: Racial Liberalism, Global Connections and Contested Science

Overview

Journal Food Ethics

Date 2022 Nov 2

PMID 36320557

Authors

Christopher Mayes

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The challenges to designing and implementing ethically and politically meaningful eating policies are many and complex. This article provides a brief overview of Anne Barnhill and Matteo Bonotti's while also critically engaging with the place of racial justice, global interconnectedness, and debates over science in thinking about ethics and politics of public health nutrition and policy. I do not aim to burden Barnhill and Bonotti with the responsibility to fully address these issues, but considering the interconnection of these issues and the ever pressing effects of climate change on local and global food systems, we collectively need to turn to these difficult and pressing questions about what a just food system looks like, what concerns are centred, and who is left out. I group these engagements with Barnhill and Bonotti under three headings: racial liberalism, global food system, and contested nutrition science. I conclude with some remarks about locality.

References

Friel S, Hattersley L, Snowdon W, Thow A, Lobstein T, Sanders D . Monitoring the impacts of trade agreements on food environments. Obes Rev. 2013; 14 Suppl 1:120-34. DOI: 10.1111/obr.12081. View

Watego C, Whop L, Singh D, Mukandi B, Macoun A, Newhouse G . Black to the Future: Making the Case for Indigenist Health Humanities. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021; 18(16). PMC: 8393378. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18168704. View

Puska P . Health in all policies. Eur J Public Health. 2007; 17(4):328. DOI: 10.1093/eurpub/ckm048. View

Garcia D, Galaz V, Daume S . EATLancet vs yes2meat: the digital backlash to the planetary health diet. Lancet. 2019; 394(10215):2153-2154. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(19)32526-7. View

Russell C . Meeting the Moment: Bioethics in the Time of Black Lives Matter. Am J Bioeth. 2021; 22(3):9-21. DOI: 10.1080/15265161.2021.2001093. View

Eichelberger K, Doll K, Ekpo G, Zerden M . Black Lives Matter: Claiming a Space for Evidence-Based Outrage in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Am J Public Health. 2016; 106(10):1771-2. PMC: 5024373. DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2016.303313. View

Leroy F, Cofnas N . Should dietary guidelines recommend low red meat intake?. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2019; 60(16):2763-2772. DOI: 10.1080/10408398.2019.1657063. View

Baum F, Lawless A, Delany T, Macdougall C, Williams C, Broderick D . Evaluation of Health in All Policies: concept, theory and application. Health Promot Int. 2014; 29 Suppl 1:i130-42. DOI: 10.1093/heapro/dau032. View

Gleeson D, Friel S . Emerging threats to public health from regional trade agreements. Lancet. 2013; 381(9876):1507-9. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(13)60312-8. View

10.

Zagmutt F, Pouzou J, Costard S . The EAT-Lancet Commission: a flawed approach?. Lancet. 2019; 394(10204):1140-1141. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(19)31903-8. View

11.

Katz D, Meller S . Can we say what diet is best for health?. Annu Rev Public Health. 2014; 35:83-103. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032013-182351. View

12.

Crawford R . Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life. Int J Health Serv. 1980; 10(3):365-88. DOI: 10.2190/3H2H-3XJN-3KAY-G9NY. View

13.

Hardeman R, Medina E, Boyd R . Stolen Breaths. N Engl J Med. 2020; 383(3):197-199. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2021072. View

14.

Moseley W, Carney J, Becker L . Neoliberal policy, rural livelihoods, and urban food security in West Africa: a comparative study of The Gambia, Cote d'Ivoire, and Mali. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010; 107(13):5774-9. PMC: 2851933. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0905717107. View

15.

Lee A, Houston A . Diets, Diseases, and Discourse: Lessons from COVID-19 for Trade in Wildlife, Public Health, and Food Systems Reform. Food Ethics. 2020; 5(1):17. PMC: 7385071. DOI: 10.1007/s41055-020-00075-4. View

16.

Delbridge R, Jovanovski N, Skues J, Belski R . Exploring the relevance of intersectionality in Australian dietetics: Issues of diversity and representation. Sociol Health Illn. 2022; 44(6):919-935. PMC: 9545968. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9566.13471. View

17.

Bond C, Whop L, Singh D, Kajlich H . "Now we say Black Lives Matter but … the fact of the matter is, we just Black matter to them". Med J Aust. 2020; 213(6):248-250.e1. DOI: 10.5694/mja2.50727. View

18.

Kamminga H, Cunningham A . The science and culture of nutrition, 1840-1940. Clio Med. 1995; 32:1-14. View

19.

Willett W, Rockstrom J, Loken B, Springmann M, Lang T, Vermeulen S . Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. Lancet. 2019; 393(10170):447-492. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31788-4. View

20.

Mayes C, Thompson D . What Should We Eat? Biopolitics, Ethics, and Nutritional Scientism. J Bioeth Inq. 2015; 12(4):587-99. DOI: 10.1007/s11673-015-9670-4. View