Health, food and social inequality

Overview

The research challenges the dominant individual behaviour/responsibility paradigm of obesity and diet-related illness, with a focus on structural factors, investigating how the food industry develops products and markets them to people by, among other things, social class, and the normalisation via food marketing of snack and fast foods and the bundling together of such foods. Inextricably linked to food industry strategies is the changing nature of the food supply, beginning with developments in agriculture and including the role of agricultural subsidies, processing techniques, trade liberalisation and changes in food retailing.

Using a range of images and data to illustrate her talk, Carolyn discussed:

• epidemiological and other evidence for the diet-health-class link
• obesity prevalence by social class and deprivation decile among children and adults
• food industry scientists’ concerns regarding the health effects of processed food, particularly in the lower priced model
• various food industry actors acknowledging the role of social background, income, education and unconscious habit in food choice
• the contributions of Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus and Habermas’s concept of the lifeworld in illuminating limits to conscious choice and the role of structural forces in human action
• techniques used in marketing food
• the role of geodemographics in tracking and potentially reinforcing consumption patterns along social class lines by neighbourhood/local area
• references in food marketing literature to the social ranking of supermarkets, shoppers and food products
• a critique of marketing from marketers in the field and the academy, alongside social scientists.

Dr Carolyn Mahoney presented her findings from this publication entitled Health, food and social inequality: Critical perspective on the supply and marketing of food.