{"id":908,"date":"2018-04-18T18:25:19","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T18:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/?p=908"},"modified":"2018-04-18T18:25:19","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T18:25:19","slug":"the-role-of-language-in-nutrionism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/2018\/04\/18\/the-role-of-language-in-nutrionism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Role of Language in Nutrionism"},"content":{"rendered":"
In Michael Pollan’s book, “In Defense of Food,” Pollan introduces the audience with a brief background about the development of nutritionism in the American political sphere in the 70s. One of the concepts that stood out to me from the first week’s reading was the important role of language in promoting nutritionism. In the first part of his book, Pollan provides us with an example of South Dakota Governor McGovern’s conflict in balancing the interests of South Dakota farmers and the health of all South Dakota constituents. During this time McGovern was confronted with the reality that processed foods were responsible for increased heart diseases, obesity, and other health risks. In sum, McGovern had attempted to address these public health issues by explicitly advising his constituents to avoid processed foods in exchange for natural foods. Farmers were extremely unhappy about the language he used because it advising South Dakota residents to avoid processed foods would harm their profits. \u00a0McGovern was pressured to use language that recommended eating foods with certain amounts of “x” nutrients instead of targeting food groups as a result of the backlash and political risks involved in using clear language. Pollan demonstrates to us that the language used surrounding food in our culture and passed state bills matters. In this situation, McGovern used language that isolated the good and bad nutrients in food in an attempt to avoid hurting his farmer constituents profits. However, the use of his language enabled to South Dakota constituents to continue purchasing processed food so long as they had “good nutrients” in them while completely disregarding the other health risks involved in consuming “fake food.”<\/div>\n
In the current popular discourse, there is a debate about the importance of language. For people on the right side of the political spectrum, political correctness is frivolous when using terms to describe groups of people or discuss issues such as immigration. On the left side of the political spectrum, language matters significantly. However, the problem of political correctness has been introduced to me in a context regarding contemporary immigration reform. But, Michael Pollan’s example of McGovern demonstrates the importance of language in politics beyond describing demographic of people. Language matters in the politics of food. Language has been a powerful tool in propagating nutritionism. It has obscured the severe health risks involved in consuming processed foods by highlighting the good and bad nutrients, but completely disregarding the existing health risks included in processed foods nonetheless.<\/div>\n
In Michael Pollan’s book, “In Defense of Food,” Pollan introduces the audience with a brief background about the development of nutritionism in the American political sphere in the 70s. One of the concepts that stood out to me from the first week’s reading was the important role of language in promoting nutritionism. In the first part of his book, Pollan provides us with an example of South Dakota Governor McGovern’s conflict in balancing the interests of South Dakota farmers and the health of all South Dakota constituents. During this time McGovern was confronted with the reality that processed foods were responsible for increased heart diseases, obesity, and other health risks. In sum, McGovern had attempted to address these public health issues by explicitly advising his constituents to avoid processed foods in exchange for natural foods. Farmers were extremely unhappy about the language he used because it advising South Dakota residents to avoid processed foods would harm their profits. \u00a0McGovern was pressured to use language that recommended eating foods with certain amounts of “x” nutrients instead of targeting food groups as a result of the backlash and political risks involved in using clear language. Pollan demonstrates to us that the language used surrounding food in our culture and passed state bills matters. In this situation, McGovern used language that isolated the good and bad nutrients in food in an attempt to avoid hurting his farmer constituents profits. However, the use of his language enabled to South Dakota constituents to continue purchasing processed food so long as they had “good nutrients” in them while completely disregarding the other health risks involved in consuming “fake food.”<\/div>\n
In the current popular discourse, there is a debate about the importance of language. For people on the right side of the political spectrum, political correctness is frivolous when using terms to describe groups of people or discuss issues such as immigration. On the left side of the political spectrum, language matters significantly. However, the problem of political correctness has been introduced to me in a context regarding contemporary immigration reform. But, Michael Pollan’s example of McGovern demonstrates the importance of language in politics beyond describing demographic of people. Language matters in the politics of food. Language has been a powerful tool in propagating nutritionism. It has obscured the severe health risks involved in consuming processed foods by highlighting the good and bad nutrients, but completely disregarding the existing health risks included in processed foods nonetheless.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Michael Pollan’s book, “In Defense of Food,” Pollan introduces the audience with a brief background about the development of nutritionism in the American political sphere in the 70s. One of the concepts that stood out to me from the first week’s reading was the important role of language in promoting nutritionism. In the first part of his book, Pollan… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":909,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions\/909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}