ABSTRACT

By the late 1980s, ‘healthy eating’ had largely failed as a public health discourse in Britain. Rather than providing consumers with a clear set of behavioural guidelines, it had fragmented into a confusing and ill-defined set of messages. In direct contrast to the anti-smoking campaign, which had succeeded in convincing large swathes of the British population to quit an unhealthy habit, the injunction to eat healthily failed to counteract rising levels of obesity in the 1990s, 2000s, and beyond. This article explores the emergence of a ‘healthy eating’ discourse in mid-to-late twentieth century Britain. It draws on a wide range of historical sources to consider how knowledge about food was re-fashioned across this period—by the state, by commercial actors, and by consumers themselves. While it is common to assert that the food and drink industry manipulated ‘ordinary people’ in this period, I argue that consumers were complicit in the shift towards unhealthy modes of consumption. They worked processed food products and ‘healthy eating’ messages into their everyday lives in contradictory ways. In turn, this article makes a strong case for histories of the everyday, arguing that ‘small’ histories of consumption can help to illuminate macro-level trends.

摘要

到 1980 年代后期，“健康饮食”在英国作为公共健康话语基本上失败了。它没有为消费者提供一套清晰的行为准则，而是分裂成一组令人困惑和定义不明确的信息。与成功说服大量英国人戒掉不健康习惯的反吸烟运动形成了鲜明对比，即健康饮食的禁令未能抵消 1990 年代、2000 年代及以后不断上升的肥胖水平。本文探讨了“健康饮食”话语在 20 世纪中后期英国的出现。它借鉴了广泛的历史资料，考虑了在这一时期，国家、商业行为者和消费者自己如何重新塑造了有关食物的知识。虽然人们普遍认为食品和饮料行业在这一时期操纵了“普通人”，但我认为消费者是向不健康消费方式转变的同谋。他们以相互矛盾的方式将加工食品和“健康饮食”信息融入日常生活。反过来，本文为日常生活的历史提供了强有力的理由，认为“小”消费历史有助于阐明宏观趋势。