I'm going to push back against this just a little bit because I see this sentiment a lot on Hexbear where food choice is equated with health with no investigation. This is still neoliberalism. And it's oversimplified. There is still a call for individual responsibility there, but it's masked as "good for the revolutionary cause". This also repeats in exercise and other self-betterment discussions here.
A carrot becomes processed when it's chopped and cooked. It's perfectly fine to eat still, no matter who does the cooking. Things that are fermented are very processed etc., but I bet most people call those healthy. So using that word and calling everything processed bad and worse the more it is processed isn't accurate. It does smell of healthism and food elitism. Health and healthy are moving targets and can get loaded with othering and ableism when discussed in certain ways.
Of course the capitalist system maximises profit, but it does that on all levels, including farming. If it's the same carrots on a ready meal and in your own cooking, how is your cooking automatically "healthier". The same pesticides and microplastics are still there. I am simplifying this a lot to make a point. Point is the performing of neoliberal self-government and assigning value to material things to align them morally somehow. In the moralisation of ways of eating, home-cooked food is deemed superior, but this is a social construction like any other.
If we are talking about growing your own produce or buying from farmers markets that enters an area of such high privilege that the majority probably can't do that. Asking them to is also individualism.
There is a lot of putting the responsibility on the individual in this thread. Maybe we should instead talk about things like soviet meal plans in factories or how we could make the food system better for all comrades.
I will say that nutrition as a science has a lot of problems that it is just now starting to come to terms with. Some examples.
I would argue that food is inherently political and has been turned into a moral issue. A comment saying it isn't, is not historically accurate in my opinion. Looking at how food choice has been framed and constructed in the USA alone clearly shows this.
We have also learnt to rely on expert knowledge to decide what is and isn't good to eat, this is how neoliberal expert systems work. We have taken it upon ourselves to manage and control this self-centered project and we feel good about ourselves when we choose "correct foods" as dictated by the system. These are not set in stone, modern examples of how would be discourses around saturated fats and carbohydrates.
All and all this is a huge discussion with several layers from medicalization to the framing of fatness that would require a lot more backgroung information, so it doesn't translate well to a comment on an internet forum.
I still recommend for example this book to investigate this futher: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469626475/modern-food-moral-food/
Sorry that I don't have alternative links to these.
deleted by creator
I'm going to push back against this just a little bit because I see this sentiment a lot on Hexbear where food choice is equated with health with no investigation. This is still neoliberalism. And it's oversimplified. There is still a call for individual responsibility there, but it's masked as "good for the revolutionary cause". This also repeats in exercise and other self-betterment discussions here.
A carrot becomes processed when it's chopped and cooked. It's perfectly fine to eat still, no matter who does the cooking. Things that are fermented are very processed etc., but I bet most people call those healthy. So using that word and calling everything processed bad and worse the more it is processed isn't accurate. It does smell of healthism and food elitism. Health and healthy are moving targets and can get loaded with othering and ableism when discussed in certain ways.
Of course the capitalist system maximises profit, but it does that on all levels, including farming. If it's the same carrots on a ready meal and in your own cooking, how is your cooking automatically "healthier". The same pesticides and microplastics are still there. I am simplifying this a lot to make a point. Point is the performing of neoliberal self-government and assigning value to material things to align them morally somehow. In the moralisation of ways of eating, home-cooked food is deemed superior, but this is a social construction like any other.
If we are talking about growing your own produce or buying from farmers markets that enters an area of such high privilege that the majority probably can't do that. Asking them to is also individualism.
There is a lot of putting the responsibility on the individual in this thread. Maybe we should instead talk about things like soviet meal plans in factories or how we could make the food system better for all comrades.
deleted by creator
I will say that nutrition as a science has a lot of problems that it is just now starting to come to terms with. Some examples.
I would argue that food is inherently political and has been turned into a moral issue. A comment saying it isn't, is not historically accurate in my opinion. Looking at how food choice has been framed and constructed in the USA alone clearly shows this.
We have also learnt to rely on expert knowledge to decide what is and isn't good to eat, this is how neoliberal expert systems work. We have taken it upon ourselves to manage and control this self-centered project and we feel good about ourselves when we choose "correct foods" as dictated by the system. These are not set in stone, modern examples of how would be discourses around saturated fats and carbohydrates.
All and all this is a huge discussion with several layers from medicalization to the framing of fatness that would require a lot more backgroung information, so it doesn't translate well to a comment on an internet forum.
I still recommend for example this book to investigate this futher: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469626475/modern-food-moral-food/
Sorry that I don't have alternative links to these.
deleted by creator