Uppsala University, Sweden.
University of Oxford, UK.
Health (London). 2022 Sep;26(5):554-570. doi: 10.1177/13634593211038533. Epub 2021 Sep 20.
This article analyzes lay people's use of nutritionistic discourse in written correspondence with the Swedish Food Agency, an authority responsible for dietary advice. Examining 60 food related written digital messages, we apply a critical discourse analysis to parse the lexical items and grammar people use when constructing "food" in scientific terms. The findings show how message writers place nutrients at the discursive center. Message writers' grammatical constructions instrumentalize food and eating. This is reinforced by the message writers' frequent use of terms that indicate preciseness, such as numbers and amounts. Messages therefore emphasize the what, but not the how, of eating, implying a focus on food as subject to regulation and control. As such, eating is discursively reduced to an act of ingesting nutrients that can be decontextualized and managed in isolation-as entities to increase or avoid separately. These discursive features preclude the conceptualization of food choice and eating as subjective experiences of feelings, taste, and tradition.
本文分析了民众在与负责饮食建议的瑞典食品局的书面通信中使用营养话语的情况。本文通过对 60 封与食品相关的书面数字信息进行批判性话语分析，解析了人们在以科学术语构建“食物”时使用的词汇和语法。研究结果表明，信息撰写者如何将营养素置于话语中心。信息撰写者的语法结构使食物和饮食具有工具性。信息撰写者频繁使用表示精确性的术语，如数字和数量，进一步加强了这一点。因此，这些信息强调了“吃什么”，而不是“怎么吃”，暗示了对食物的关注是受监管和控制的。这样，饮食就被话语化为摄入营养的行为，可以脱离语境进行孤立管理——作为可以分别增加或避免的实体。这些话语特征排除了将食物选择和饮食视为感受、味道和传统的主观体验的概念化。
