HW 5 - Dominant Discourses Regarding Contemporary Foodways in the U.S

In todays society, food is a wildly discussed issue. Especially in america, where obesity rates are climbing and whilst the government tries to encourage the people of america to eat healthier foods, nothing is making a significant change. A discourse is a way of having a conversation with particular ways, rules and people. This would mean that the dominant discourse of food in the united states is food being looked at as poison and as well as food as medicine.

After reading a couple of articles from the new york times, it is clear that articles often report on the diseases certain foods carry, and how fattening foods can be. This is where the argument of food as poison comes in to play. The people who are often quoted in these arguments are major politicians, companies or what the journalists consider to be important doctors. These companies often report facts and statistics that journalists will include to scare people in to believing junk food is bad. For example: In the article "Told to Eat Its Vegetables, America Orders Fries" Kim Severson includes that the "Center for Disease Control and Prevention" issued a study that only 26 percent of the nations adults eat vegetables three or more times a day. She goes on further to say that those results "fell far short of health objectives set by the federal government a decade ago". The basic outline of that information is that americans aren't eating healthy enough

For food being discussed as medicine, the Ny times article "Doctor's Orders - Eat Well to Be Well" Katrina Heron reports on doctor Preston Maring, who is a gynecologist and a surgeon who is keen on eating healthy and teaching others (as well as his son helping him) to eat healthier. This article focuses more on the food as medicine aspect because the journalist reports on how Dr.Maring and his son push the idea of eating healthier and how much better it is for you.

Based on the articles that i have read, i believe that people think we are living in a time in which significant reform of U.S. foodways might occur, but also think that is less likely to happen. Just like in the "Told to Eat Its Vegetables..." article, it was reported that food objectives fell short. Even the very thing the article was revolving around (baby carrot machines) were told to have no effect. Although there is barley an effect, there is still a lot of hope. As stated in the article Michelle Obama planted an organic garden in the white house lawn and tries to encourage people to eat vegetables as a part of her "Lets Move campaign against childhood obesity"

I imagine the food practices of a reasonably well-informed member of our society whose worldview gets sculpted by mass-media-propagated dominant discourse is that of a guilty pleasure. As stated in the "Told to Eat Its Vegetables..." article: " 'Eating vegetables is a lot less fun than eating flavor-blasted Doritos,' said Marcia Mogelonsly, a senior analyst for Mintel, a global marketing firm. 'You will always have to fight that'." That person who's food practices are sculpted by mass-media propagated dominant discourses will occasionally eat healthy food, but like Marcia Mogelonsly stated to the average person vegetables are more boring than junk food.