Shifting Food Facts: Dietary Discourse in a Post-Truth Culture

The book "Shifting Food Truths" offers a critical analysis of the changing politics of food, eating, and nutrition, exploring how food knowledge is shaped and contested. It proposes a post-truth epistemological framework to understand shifting food truths and their implications for critical food and health studies. The book highlights the perpetuation of politically dangerous and epistemically narrow ideas of one way to eat "healthy" or "right" and offers examples of shifting food truths from macro-historical genealogies to contemporary case studies. It encourages a broader understanding of health problems as problems of living and advocates for contextual food truths that situate the problems of health within the broader context of living.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 144 pages
Publication date: 30 May 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This book is a vital contribution to the field of food discourse, offering a fresh and insightful perspective on the evolving politics of food, eating, and nutrition. It delves into critical epistemological questions about the formation of food knowledge and the reasons behind the oscillations in our dietary choices. In the midst of a sea of conflicting dietary advice and nutritional evidence, the book critically examines how healthy eating is framed and contested, particularly in the context of a "post-truth" culture where truth claims are constantly in flux. It explores the potential of a post-truth epistemological framework in critical food and health studies, raises thought-provoking questions, and examines what can be gained by abandoning rigid empirical pursuits of singular dietary truths.

By emphasizing the distinction between food fact and food fiction, the book argues that dangerous and epistemically narrow notions of one way to eat "healthy" or "right" are perpetuated. Drawing on a wealth of archival materials related to food and health and engaging in interviews with registered dietitians, the book presents a diverse range of examples of shifting food truths, spanning from macro-historical genealogies to contemporary case studies of dairy, wheat, and meat.

This book offers a rich and innovative analysis that provides new ways of thinking about and acting upon our increasingly complex food landscapes. It challenges our empirical Western reliance on singular food facts by advocating for an articulation of contextual food truths that situate health problems as problems of living, rather than as individualistic problems of eating. It will be of immense interest to students, scholars, and practitioners engaged in food studies, food policy, and nutrition.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367562380