The Social Construction of 'Good Food'

By going around Europe, I'm often struck by the differences between the shops selling 'good food' in various countries. For example, Natura Sì and Holland & Barrett. Natura Sì is one of the most popular Italian supermarket chains of good food, or at least of what good food means in Italy. Holland & Barrett is the British provider of 'good food' par excellence.

In Natura Sì, everything relates to Nature, starting from the name of the chain. Advertisements, food packaging, furniture and the names of the products continually remind the consumer of the fact that food comes from Nature, and that Culture (meant as human intervention) rarely counts. 

Holland and Barrett's idea of 'good food', instead, is quite different. Each shop sells two kinds of food: the first is similar to the food sold by Natura Sì, but it does not have the same approach to naturalness. A couple of months ago, for example, I wanted to buy some cereals (spelt, millet, etc) but I didn't find the geographic origins of those products on the label. When I asked the clerk, he answered: “... China ... India ... or something like that...”

I laughed while imagining the same scene in Italy. Probably the customer would have sent a ferocious letter to newspapers and TV programmes, and the clerk would have been fired in a couple of days. (Incidentally, not knowing where those products came from, I didn't buy them). The same approach may be found on the respective websites. For example, Natura Sì declares the geographic origins of the cereals, while Holland & Barrett does not. In short, being aware of the geographic origins of an item of food is a relevant part of the Italian notion of 'good food', while it adds little to the British meaning of the term.

However, what is really surprising is the second part of each Holland & Barrett shop, selling plastic pots of proteins, vitamins, hydrolysed collagen, and other products which underline, declare and exalt the fact that good food is made by humans, and that Nature only provides the raw ingredients. It is technology, instead, that turns natural ingredients into something good. It is in this part of the shop that the British notion of 'eating well' contrasts with the Italian one. In Italy, in fact, technology is seen as the worst food's enemy, and companies often hide the industrial process necessary to produce many items of food. In their advertisements, Italian food companies invent natural scenarios that nothing have to do with those foods, as they perfectly know that a natural frame will help to sell the picture.

In conclusion, I think that 'good food' is a concept composed of two parts. The first is scientific, as we perfectly know that some foods damage our bodies. The second part is instead a social construction, and it changes according to where we are. What is interesting, for me, is to see how one part overwhelms the other according to the social and cultural context. As is said in the title of a wonderful book by David Bell and Gill Valentine, which contributed to shaping my passion for food culture, 'We are where we eat'.

Child Obesity: No Food Culture is Safe

According to recent news, France also now presents a high rate of child obesity. This has probably not surprised French people, but has certainly challenged the Anglo-Saxon idea that the French, and the Mediterraneans in general, eat healthy and light food, while the British and the American diets are richer in fats and sugar. This is probably true, but it is equally evident that for the last fifteen or twenty years the two approaches to food have become closer to each other.

In fact, Anglo-Saxon food is still fattier, saltier and sweeter, and richer in additives, colours and preservatives. But today processed and preserved foods are also massively sold in countries such as France, Greece and Italy, usually associated with an uniforming Mediterranean diet. Actually, a unique Mediterranean diet does not exist, as what people eat in France differs greatly from what the Greeks or Italians do. Paradoxically, these three diets are more similar today, thanks to the global food coming from big retailers, than in the past, when these three peoples used to eat more traditional food.

The common traits of the Mediterranean diet (the abundance of vegetables and fish, a balanced consumption of meat and sweets, the frequent usage of olive oil, etc.) guaranteed lower rates of obesity for years. Today this difference is fading, and Mediterranean countries are also affected by continuously growing rates of obesity and child obesity, although less than Anglo-Saxon and North European countries.

The news is bad, but it also has good potentialities. The fact that we have all the same problem, and that no one may state a supposedly greater attention to health, means that it's time to do something all together. France is following England in taxing junk food. Perhaps, this may provide some good results, but it also has the weakness of only targeting the poor. Other measures may offer a less classist approach and perhaps better results. For example, labelling products by also visually highlighting the risky ingredients could be a good idea. In the past, some countries have experimented with traffic lights, geometric shapes, colours and other strategies to visualise the unhealthiness of a product.

In the meantime, it should be enough to fix bad policies that worsened in the recent past. For example, in Italy, Britain and other countries, the products packaged by the supermarkets such as bread and meat don't have to show their ingredients on their labels. Customers must look for 'the book of the ingredients', usually on the other side of a big supermarket or lost somewhere; otherwise, they cannot know whether the bread they want contains lard or the meat they are buying is added to with nitrite. Regulating on such a thing would be a first signal demonstrating interest in contrasting unhealthy food.