Food, Nutrition and the Media

This chapter tries to locate the contributions of the edited volume into the broader field at the intersections of media and health. It draws the wider horizon of this field in terms of its interdisciplinarity, the stakeholders involved and the various perspectives and issues at stake. The field is much wider than health communication, but also deals with issues of the representation of health, food and nutrition, which are central to this book. Other major approaches deal with research on media production processes, stakeholder analyses in relation to health news production, distribution and consumption, and audience’s engagements with health news with links to citizen’s health news literacy, trust and power.

Studied as an economic, socio-cultural phenomenon within disciplinary boundaries but questioning “traditional disciplinary divisions,” food has been configuring a new field of research since the end of the last century, Food Studies, linked to Media Studies. Anthropology, sociology, history, psychology and other branches of human and social sciences are mobilized to work together to understand cultures and culinary practices and to question critically societal implications of food production and consumption. Beyond the classical approaches in sociology, for which food has a functional role (ensuring survival) or socio-symbolic (“Tell me what you eat, I will tell you who you are”), we emphasize the recent shift in Food Studies. In many respects, this displacement is nourished by a more clearly anthropological perspective: the food phenomenon as a situation in which identities, individual and collective, are defined, (re)constructed and negotiated simultaneously.

The chapter presents the main directions for a comparative analysis of media and nutrition at a second level: media representations of “food” and “nutrition,” on the one hand, and scientific articles on those issues on the other. As compared with the high number of research produced in Western Europe or the United States, the studies in Central and Eastern Europe on food and nutrition were rather scarce. In our opinion, there is a need for information about food and nutrition as they were covered in media and presented in scientific articles in the case of countries from Eastern and Central Europe. The proposed comparative analysis used a standard methodology—the quantitative content analysis made on national samples of articles from media and scientific articles. In our opinion the results could fill an existing gap in the scientific knowledge about those issues in a geographical region.

The chapter aims to understand the thematic coverage of nutrition topics in the Estonian scientific and mass media environment. Sources of inspiration for the analysis were gathered from modern understandings of audiences, media influences and individual responsibility in the health area. The most popular topic for mainstream media was related to healthy eating. The most popular scientific nutrition topic was related to the development of eating habits. The second most covered topic for both general and scientific media was related to physical activity and nutrition, although contexts were different. The third most popular topic was related to different diets in general media and illnesses and well-being in scientific media. The conclusion and limitations of the study are discussed in the final part of the article.

This chapter focuses on the growing problem of overweight and obesity among children and its consequences. One of the ways to fight these problems is to pay attention to food and nutrition issues. The chapter is based on the analysis of Polish publications where “Food” and “Nutrition” are being discussed, and then checking how many of them concern the overweight and obesity among children. The analysis of 128 scientific articles in the field of “Food” and “Nutrition” shows that only 10 of them tackle the important issue of overweight and obesity among children. Based on the analysis, several recommendations are put forward to allow shaping pro-health behaviours starting from early childhood.

Food, along with breathing, hydration and movement, is a conditional factor of human life. This chapter aims to analyze the media coverage of scientific studies in the Republic of Moldova. The research data includes national scientific articles, selected according to a conventional algorithm used for all the countries included in the study. The working tool is the content analysis grid for scientific articles. The keywords used “Nutrition” and “Food” were searched during the reference time interval between 1 January 2014 and 1 January 2017. There are articles in the field of nutrition in the Republic of Moldova, but they are published in national media which are not promoted on scientific networks and websites.

This chapter discusses the results of a research on media coverage of nutrition in Germany, an issue of great media interest in this country. The research objectives are to identify the most typical frames used in the coverage of the theme of nutrition, to point out the major debate topics and the related issues on this subject, and to outline the characteristics of the media coverage. The methodology used is the content analysis, applied to the German online media over a three-year period. The most frequent topics and frames in the German media coverage of nutrition are health and diets, including the risks associated with nutrition and food, and these subjects are addressed mostly in detailed analysis articles, usually providing information from reliable sources.

Two main topics have occurred from the analysis of food and nutrition in Bulgarian online news: promotion of healthy eating lifestyle and recommended diets in the context of primary and secondary disease prevention. The media analysis has been juxtaposed against four discourse patterns: ethical, health, industrialization and entertainment frames. The researcher places the social dimension of weight bias and obesity stigma within the “ethical” frame, which is associated with shame and personal guilt. The “health” frame encompasses an integral mosaic of food and nutrition topics, cross-tabulated with three levels of prevention. Within the “industrialization” frame, the author deploys the dichotomy of industrial foods versus natural foods, as well as food chain stores versus corner shops. Finally, popularizing healthy eating lifestyle as smart and trendy has been positioned within the so-defined “entertainment–educational” dimension. The chapter unfolds how food and nutrition perceptions correspond to micro-social agents as well as to macro-social ones.

Media has a colossal power; currently, it forms public opinion and engages in decision-making. This chapter aimed to analyze how “nutrition” and “food” were reflected in the online media from the Republic of Moldova. As a source for data collection, the search browser www.​google.​com was used. The analysis was carried out using a grid analysis of forty-five items. The topics of nutrition and food were analyzed in news and media websites, TV station/websites, newspapers, aggregate online sites, and news agencies. As a result, recommendations on healthy food and nutrition, health in general, diets, and diseases are made in most articles. The information about nutrition and food information varied and was of medium quality.

Food as a whole represents a significant component of our lives. In the context of fast social globalization, we need to question whether this component has a specific representation in the Romanian media. The present chapter has explored how food culture, diets, veganism, and other food trends are framed in leading Romanian language newspapers and magazines and has identified possible future social trends in these directions. The methods used by authors are quantitative and qualitative research based on a content analysis, which was conducted from January 1, 2014 to January 1, 2017, on Romanian newspaper and magazines articles. The results showed that Romanian journalists are highly interested in concepts such as “food healthism” and are prone to rely on a higher source of expertise or a public personality, to mold their personal opinion regarding arising food trends.

The chapter showed the fact that the food coverage in the Romanian media made a minimal appeal to scientific evidence—almost half of all articles did not mention a person or document when they addressed the food topic. The focus of the articles published in Romanian media was almost exclusively on the coverage of certain aspects of food concerning health and disease, nutrition in general and diseases related to food and nutrition. The analysis also identified the existence of five main frames for “food”-related issues covered by Romanian media: “Nutrition”, “Diet”, “Risks”, “Disease” and “Food”.

This chapter explores the configuration of communist-era food brands into the broader context of the local market. The analysis is guided mainly by the success stories of transitioning brands and by the unexpected presence of preserved food dating from more than 30 years ago. The introduction reviews the links between memory and material culture and between the marketing of nostalgia and branding strategies. The second part resumes the authors’ previous findings on a typology of Romanian brands from the past (“Originals”, “Updated”, “Romanian Tastes”, “Archetypal Figures”, “Nostalgic”, and “Collectibles”) and presents a new analysis within the framework established by Wally Olins, based on the four vectors of brand tangibility. Gaining a different perspective on the commodification of communist-era food brands, the discussion looks upon the longevity of past brands in relation with the following criteria: product/recipe, identity/packaging, communication/advertising, and consumer experience/taste.

This chapter focuses on two forms of appropriation of urban space through new forms of festivity organized around fine eating. Although those new forms intervene with public space and use its ideology, these practices rather question the universal access to it. They are usually organized as private events but insist on a higher, often non-commercial, purpose that adds value to the experience, following the logic of new capitalism. This may be the demonstrative struggle with wastefulness or aestheticization of food consumption in public spaces as a form of creating new experiences. The new media play a crucial role in experiencing and producing those events: from their disclosure and access to the organization of their visual identity.

The chapter reflects a series of resignifications and major structural alterations of traditional symbolic elements, which presently are assigned with a new value according to a new urban lifestyle. The ideas that construct the chapter represent the result of observations upon various symbolic elements that young generations either no longer decode or decode in a very different manner, compared with the traditional interpretation. Symbolic reinterpretations occur with regard to the advertising domain, as well as to food consumption and health. If these new reconstructions and symbolic interpretations remained only at the level of ideas and advertising campaigns, without drastically influencing significant part of our daily choices, diet, lifestyle and health, we would not feel the need to challenge and follow the evolution of this phenomenon carefully. In return, as individuals’ perceptions and goods consumption are directly influenced by the structural changes of the current symbolic communication, it becomes compelling to reflect upon these aspects.

This chapter aims to discuss the South Korean food culture and its developing ways of coping with the traumatic memory of the Korean War (1950–1953). The focus of the chapter was on budaejjigae (army base stew), a South Korean dish dating from the period after the Korean War. For the last more than 60 years, based on elements of its traditional culinary culture, such as esthetical and curative values of food, South Korea has found a manner of successfully converting a reality, that initially perverted Korean cuisine and caused a profoundly traumatic memory, into a chance of reevaluating and defining Korean culture in terms of national pride. Thus, the consumption and extensive promotion of budaejjigae in contemporary South Korean society become a culinary discourse of overcoming traumatic memories of war.

This chapter presents the results of the analysis of how Romanian online media communicate about alerts on the recall of products infected with Listeria Monocytogenes, Salmonella, E. Coli or containing substances/foreign bodies. The research methodology was a content analysis of articles identified in online media. We selected all items containing information about alerts targeting products marketed in urban stores. In the analysis were included articles published between 1 January 2019 and 1 January 2020. The analysis grid was structured to allow the identification of information on media type, time interval, sources of information, type of information communicated, information on symptoms, information on health consequences, risk population categories, recommendations on consumer protection measures and the categories of people who communicate about alerts (experts, doctors, store representatives or institutions supervising the quality of products).

Recent years have seen a great deal of academic interest in the study of food literacy. A range of definitions for the concept has been advanced, including a variety of different core elements. This chapter reports on a systematic review conducted to identify all the academic articles proposing key conceptualizations of food literacy published between 2001 and 2019. The chapter provides new information regarding the way food literacy has been defined so far and argues for a broadening of the definition of the concept to include media and digital skills. To our knowledge, this is the first study to identify gaps in literacy skills included in existing food literacy definitions.

Campaigns against risk factors for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) caused by an unhealthy diet and excessive salt consumption have become common since the WHO declared ischaemic heart disease and stroke as “the world’s biggest killers.” In Bulgaria, a public campaign against excessive salt consumption was launched in 2012 as a consequence of low levels of nutrition literacy demonstrated in surveys and a stable percentage of deaths attributed to cardiovascular diseases. This chapter compares the potential of a public health campaign broadcast on public television with the more unconventional approach of a medical drama produced by a commercial TV channel. The latter appears to be more competitive in a media environment saturated by food advertisements, although it lacks the strategy and factual information of the public campaign.

The food consumption behaviour is determinant, as it impacts directly on human health. Paradoxically, modern people consume large quantities of food, but predominantly of poor nutritional value, instead of the recommended balanced diet. The young generation is the key for the health and well-being of the society, and therefore, this chapter relies on a survey applied on 2378 students in 7 university centres from Romania, Bulgaria and the Republic of Moldavia and focuses on revealing some decisive aspects of their food consumption behaviour in connection to their lifestyle trends, culture and traditions, common values, and economic and societal changes. On an overall basis, university students in this study display excessive consumption of refined carbohydrates, meat and unhealthy fats. A relationship was established between the culinary traditions of these countries, the unfavourable economic environment and students’ food consumption habits. Moreover, their food consumption behaviour aligns to a generalized international trend of fast and cheap eating.

The main objective of this chapter is to determine the existence of a relationship between eHealth literacy and self-regulation in eating behaviour in young people. To achieve this goal, it was necessary to develop a confirmatory factorial analysis to determine the goodness-of-fit of the instruments utilized. The method included the administration of the eHealth Literacy Scale (eHEALS) and the self-regulated eating habits (SEH) to 1057 university students in the city of Tijuana Mexico followed by the calculation of Pearson’s product-moment correlation matrix. Results indicated that both instruments obtained acceptable goodness-of-fit. Thus, a correlational analysis was feasible. Results from the Pearson analysis indicated a correlation between eHealth literacy and the self-regulation of eating behaviour. In conclusion, this research demonstrated the viability to administrate the eHEALS and the SEH scale. Furthermore, this research provides empirical evidence regarding the relationship between eHealth literacy and self-regulation as a novel approach in health research.