European Researchers’ Night: Communication on Healthy and Sustainable Foods Project
To mark European Researchers’ Night, I wanted to write a little post on my current research project and share some images to explain a little more about the project.
For the past two years, I have been part of the FoodKom research group based at Örebro University. Our project ‘Communication on Healthy and Sustainable Foods’ explores how healthy food discourses are conveyed through food packaging and advertising. We are particularly interested in how food companies are able to circumvent legislation by using the meaning potentials of image, colour, typography and texture, rather than written language, to communicate with consumers and promote their products as health choices.
My role in the group is to offer a historical perspective on the topic. More specifically, I trace many of these so-called contemporary practices to the late 19th and early 20th century and use a combination of multimodal critical discourse analysis and archival research to tease out buried ideologies. A key part of my work has been drawing parallels between past and present marketing strategies and building guidelines to help make consumers more aware of these subtle techniques and make informed choices when shopping.
Past topics that I have explored include: - Pure foods
- Nerve foods - Protein-enhanced foods - Pineapple and celery as historical status symbols - The glamorisation of traditional peasant foods (kale, seaweed) - Mindful eating
With my colleague Prof. Göran Eriksson, we are currently researching the commercialisation of radium products in Sweden in the early 20th century.
I am also investigating how public health discourses were promoted by food companies during the 1918 flu pandemic.
Below is a fun quiz through which you can learn a bit more about our research and its main themes. Why not have a go? (scroll down for answers)
Questions
1. Prior to the 1875 Sale of Food and Drugs Act, what percentage of foods were adulterated in Britain?
2. “Pure food” became a term used to convince consumers that foods were unadulterated. Who was the first company to use the term?
3. What was nerve food?
4. What brought an end to the popular nerve food market in Britain?
5. In the 18th century, how much did a pineapple cost in modern money?
6. What two traumatic events in British history led to mass consumption of seaweed?
7. Who invented the concept of “mindful eating” and when?
8. When was the first protein-enhanced food launched onto the British market?
9. Many products in the early 20th century contained radium, which was marketed as a “wonder cure” for pain and illness. Can you name any products?
10. Like today’s coronavirus pandemic, the 1918 flu pandemic led to a spread in misinformation. What theories were put forward by the popular press for the spread of the flu?
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Answers
1. A shocking 40%! Borax, creosote, red tar dye, picrotixins, lead, alum, sawdust, burnt rags, earth, acorns, chicory and gum were all added to foods. Not only were they poisonous, but also contributed to such diseases as tuberculosis, scarlet fever, diphtheria, cholera, diarrhoea and dyspepsia.
2. Cadbury’s. Cadbury’s purged their product range of any adulterated lines and advertised them under the strapline “Absolutely Pure, therefore Best”. They also got sales representatives to deliver samples to doctors, which resulted in official medical endorsements by The Lancet, British Medical Journal and The Medical Times.
3. Nerve food was essentially just a product made of powdered milk protein diluted with water. However, it was marketed widely as a food that helped combat anxiety. It was even promoted as a cure for shellshock during World War Two!
4. There were many factors: the founding of the National Health Service in 1948, the 1959 Mental Health Act, which kickstarted changes in attitudes and care for people with mental health problems, and the 1968 Trade Descriptions Act which prohibited false advertising.
5. A pineapple cost a whopping £5,000! They were extremely challenging to cultivate, which meant that they were displayed rather than eaten. Many people carried pineapples under their arms as they walked down the street, pineapple rental shops opened across the Britain and there are even cases of pineapple thieves transported to Australia.
6. Despite seaweed’s status as a hipster food, it actually has long associations with peasantry. It was eaten by displaced Scots during the Highland Clearances (1790-1820) and the starving Irish during the Great Famine (1845-49). It was very much a last resort food.
7. It was a man called Horace Fletcher in 1913. Fletcher argued that “head digestion” (a person’s emotional state when eating) played a significant role in their food choices and that chewing each mouthful of food 32 times would improve physical and mental well-being.
8. Surprisingly, it was as early as 1900! Following the invention of the milk separator, many companies developed “proteid foods” aimed at building body strength and promoting a healthy lifestyle.
9. Quite worryingly when looked at from our modern-day perspective, consumers could eat radium breads and chocolates, wear radium jewellery, clothing and glasses, keep clean with radium soaps, shampoos, creams and toothpastes, and buy everything from radium-infused cutlery, fertiliser and fishing gear to compresses, suppositories and condoms! They could even use a household device which charged water with radium emanation over a 24-hour period.
10. The Times stated that the flu was caused by “war weariness”, while John Bull claimed that the flu was, in fact, swine fever spread by infected bacon. Others argued that the flu was circulated through aspirins produced by German pharmaceutical company Bayer, was an “ingenious attempt” to sabotage the forthcoming general election or even “a punishment from heaven” for those who sang lewd songs.
How did you get on? Let us know in the comment section below or on social media @laurenohagan91 with the hashtags #EuropeanResearchersNight and #ERN20
Further Reading
O’Hagan, L.A. Forthcoming. Fleshformers or Fads? Historicising the Contemporary Protein-Enhanced Food Trend.
O'Hagan, L. A. 2020. Packaging inner peace: A sociohistorical exploration of nerve food in Great Britain. Food and History 17(2).
O'Hagan, L. A. 2020. Pure in body, pure in mind? A sociohistorical perspective on the marketisation of pure foods in Great Britain. Discourse, Context and Media 34.
O'Hagan, L. A. 2020. Forget fast cars and shiny Rolexes – rich people used to show off their wealth with pineapples and celery. The Conversation 2020 (2 Jan)
O'Hagan, L. 2019. Celebrity greens kale and seaweed were long considered food of last resort. The Conversation 2019 (Nov 21)
O'Hagan, L. A. 2019. Mindful eating: the Victorian food trend that could help you lose weight and transform your health. The Conversation 2019(Feb 6)