Let’s pause for a second … We are all busy with work, family, friends, and fun activities, but whatever we do, the need to eat, relatively regularly, with more or less interest or gusto, is inevitable. If we live in a fairly developed country and our income allows us to make comfortable choices regarding what to consume, endless possibilities lie in front of us. However, in light of economic and social constraints, we may struggle to get enough nutritious and healthy food on a daily basis. In fact, many factors influence our decisions: financial circumstances, social status, ethical concerns, or simply a desire for a pleasurable eating experience. On any given day, we could decide to go to a supermarket that provides year-round access to fresh fruit and vegetables, as well as packaged products from all over the world. If the budget is a bit tight, we can opt to go to a big-box or discount store; discounts, buy two, get one free offers, and coupons to save some money are everywhere. If we so choose (and our finances allow for it), we can instead enjoy a stroll at a farmers’ market and buy fresh, organic produce, possibly from the persons who grew it. Those of us who prefer a more hands-on approach can join a community garden and grow our own food, even in the middle of a city; we can decide to drive out to the countryside and purchase food directly from producers or become members of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) initiative.
In a splurging mood, we could visit a gourmet store and indulge in a slice of our favorite imported cheese: more expensive than your run-of-the-mill dairy, but oh, so good! And it comes with a story: real people made it, in a specific place that is different from any other place, with its own landscape, history, and traditions. While working with the cooperative Junta Local in Rio de Janeiro in its bimonthly market, I found myself selling roasted sweet potatoes and learned so much—not only about the producers and the products, but also about the consumers who came to enjoy the relatively cheap treat. If we get out of work late and we don’t feel like shopping or cooking, we can have dinner at a restaurant, choosing from establishments that include fine dining, local farm-to-table eateries, hipster cafes, diners, or mom-and-pop holes-in-the-wall, depending on the spur-of-the-moment choice, our budget, and our location. We can choose comfort staples, ethnic cuisines, or just what we grew up eating as children; of course, each of us has experienced a different upbringing, with different availability and accessibility of food, geographical provenance, exposure to different culinary traditions, and various degrees of—or absence of—privilege.
A takeaway shop or a fast food joint is usually at hand, and it’s convenient to order over the phone for delivery. Actually, if we don’t want to talk to anybody, we could use an app to place our order, even adding the tip to the credit card payment so that all interactions with other human beings are avoided—and at times, we all feel like that. If we’re in a cooking mood instead, we can flip through our favorite cookbooks, go online and browse for recipes, or just prepare those surefire dishes that we may have learned from family members, friends, or our favorite TV chefs. And if deciding what to eat and shopping for ingredients is too stressful, we can order a meal kit, with all the necessary ingredients neatly packaged, refrigerated, and delivered to our door.
Of course, all these opportunities are available to us if we reside in a location where a variety of services exist and so long as we have money to pay for it (or we have good credit). As citizens of modern, developed, and more or less affluent postindustrial democratic societies (frequently referred to as the Global North), when it comes to shopping, we have so many choices that buying what we want when we want it at affordable prices is almost experienced as a right. These opportunities are increasingly available—although still limited in number and variety—to middle-class, educated dwellers of large metropolises in the Global South, such as Bangkok, Accra, or Bogotá.1 In fact, access to value-added food and leisure activities related to eating has become an indicator of upward mobility.
Those who do not enjoy the same level of privilege as their peers, due to social or economic circumstances, may feel like second-class citizens. The scenario changes completely. Depending on where they live, these persons may have access to a soup kitchen or a pantry that can provide food in case of emergencies, temporary lack of cash, or unemployment. They may also count on forms of support provided at the local, regional, or national level, such as free food for children and pregnant women, free lunches at school for students, food distributions, or financial aid to ensure sufficient nutrition for them and their families. They may have recourse to forage, hunt, or garden to supplement their diet. They may rely on their social and family networks to get extra food when needed, or they may have credit in the stores where they regularly shop. If they are members of an immigrant community, they may enjoy resources and solidarity that, although limited, can push them through a rough patch. At times, none of that may be available. Hunger and less extreme—but not less damaging for that—forms of food insecurity are not a rare occurrence, even if in the Global North they too often remain invisible or ignored.
Political dynamics that negotiate personal, communal, national, and international interests and priorities are also relevant in determining food environments. Attempts to introduce labeling regulations on foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which would allow consumers to express their preferences through their shopping choices, have been defeated in the United States. The justification against labeling is that such norms would impose a financial burden on producers, who ultimately would pass it on to consumers in the forms of higher prices. In the European Union (EU), citizens instead have expressed strong opinions against the production and consumption of GMOs, despite their governments’ more flexible positions. Such consumers’ preferences have a direct impact on the agricultural policies elsewhere. Pressure from international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), nonprofit organizations, and the EU have led most African governments (with the exception of South Africa, Egypt, and a few others) to avoid or at least limit the introduction of GMO crops.
Personal choices and the responsibilities that come with them are often mentioned when state or national governments try to impose controls, restrictions, or taxes on what its citizens may buy in an attempt to limit the consumption of items that are likely to have a negative impact on public health. In the United States, proposals to tax sugared drinks have been met with objections against the “nanny state,” based on the argument that everybody should enjoy the freedom to make their own decisions and that such taxes would heavily hit low-income populations who may appreciate sugared drinks as one of the few pleasures they can afford. Furthermore, such attempts may be criticized as efforts by well-meaning but often elitist reformers to interfere with other people’s lifestyles. In other countries, such as Japan, China, India, or Italy, citizens instead tend to expect their governments to take the lead in such matters, which are widely considered a responsibility of public authorities. As in the GMO case, the influence of the food industry in the political debate is easy to detect.
Food is more than just a way to provide fuel to our bodies, especially in the consumer culture in which we are increasingly enmeshed.
As remote from us these political issues may seem, they actually reach all aspects of our lives, whether we realize it or not. Food is more than just a way to provide fuel to our bodies, especially in the consumer culture in which we are increasingly enmeshed. Although obviously crucial for survival, eating cannot be considered only as an expression of biological necessities and a natural, trivial aspect of our daily routine. Even the most cursory exploration of our habits and preferences as consumers prompts us to realize that food is complicated. It is profoundly entangled with economic dynamics, social structures, and power negotiations that determine where our products come from, how they get to us, why we have access to those and not others, and where they end up if we don’t buy them or throw them away. Undoubtedly, food has an immediate and unavoidable impact on who we are and how we live. My daily food choices as an Italian living in the United States are likely to be at least partly different from those of my peers in my native Rome, despite our shared background. They are also definitely different from those of past generations of less privileged immigrants that left Italy in search of a better future in the United States, Venezuela, or Australia.
We embrace food as a constitutive element of our cultural and social identities as individuals and community members, wherever we live and whatever our access to food may be. We can and do use food consumption to express the traits that define our personalities and distinctiveness; one can, say, be white, conservative, gay, obsessed with exercise, eager to avoid gluten, or ready to gobble down Mexican food while asking for a higher border wall, in all sorts of combinations. Although self-asserting, the emphasis on these attitudes also make us easier targets for the focused marketing of companies that are increasingly interested in satisfying our inclinations while giving us the illusion of being unique in our tastes and choices—at a cost, of course.
The elements that determine consumers’ preferences and behaviors are numerous and interwoven in interesting and unexpected ways, depending not only on free will but also on large, more complicated structural issues. Whether we want it or not, whether we are aware of it or not, by simply shopping, cooking, and eating, we connect ourselves to complex supply networks, institutions, and organizations that extend well beyond our families, our immediate communities, and even the countries in which we reside. We may feel increasingly detached from traditions and local customs as we become exposed to values, practices, and material objects from every corner of the world. These processes of globalization, experienced as progressively faster and uncontrollable, generate a sense of both freedom and anxiety. We enjoy having easy access to sushi and tacos, but we may fear losing ourselves and our culinary identities. This tension is frequently used for political goals: in 2011, in Italy, an anti-immigrant party printed posters that proclaimed “No to couscous—yes to polenta,” while distributing huge quantities of the corn-based dish on the street as an expression of local identity, in opposition to the food of the North African and Middle Eastern immigrants.2 In 2015, in Poland, despite the great success of foreign restaurants among the population, from pizza to kebab, a former politician was accused of elitist cosmopolitanism and lack of national pride for consuming octopus, a foreign and unusual food for most Poles, during a high-profile dinner.3
Consumption is an intensely social practice, and although it is based on individual behaviors, it is not limited to them. The environments in which we are raised, with their biases, prejudices, taboos, and partialities—due to a multiplicity of factors, including religion, ethnicity, class, and education—profoundly influence our preferences, our actions, and the way we think about what’s good to eat. Social status and financial security also impact not only what we eat, but also how we think about it. Food can reflect different, even opposing values and priorities. For food scholar Margot Finn, for instance, the more liberal portion of the professional middle class in the United States expresses its preferences through what she defines as “the ideology of the food revolution,” built around the four axes of sophistication, thinness, purity, and cosmopolitanism.4 In other words, favorite foods in this worldview tend to be “gourmet,” relatively difficult to acquire and definitely different from mass-produced fare; healthy and conducive to avoiding obesity; natural and free from scientific manipulations perceived as dangerous, from pesticides and fertilizers to genetic engineering; and authentic, reflecting other cultures and practices that are at the same time appreciated for bringing new flavor to mainstream habits and considered available to various degrees of appropriation and exploitation, including “slumming” to ethnic restaurants and neighborhoods. Although Finn’s analysis focuses on the United States, similar attitudes can be observed among the upwardly mobile middle classes of Western Europe, Brazil, or India, among others.
In Finn’s opinion, these ideals often reflect the not always overt but determinate attempt of the “food elites”—from affluent consumers to media influencers and marketers—to promote and at times to impose categories of taste, forms of selectivity, and practices of self-restraint that not everybody may subscribe to. Although it cannot be denied that at times the efforts to change food systems have recognizable class undertones, individuals and communities of all social backgrounds may choose to work toward greater health, purity, and cultural diversity in what they eat due to their own concerns. Engagement with food politics is not the exclusive domain of those with certain levels of education, social clout, or financial affluence. In Gaza, urban gardening is supported as a tool to reduce dependency on external aid.5 In Cape Town, municipal land has been made available to low-income women to grow their own food.6 In Detroit as in Manila, in São Paulo as in Mumbai, efforts to create community gardens, enhance food access, and improve children’s nutrition are not uniquely the reflection of elite priorities but have been at the forefront of social and political action among groups that have suffered long-lasting disadvantages because of gender, race, and ethnicity.
The growing complexity of the social dynamics determining food choices makes the job of marketers and advertisers increasingly more difficult. In the past, mass production allowed for accessibility and affordability of products, as well as their wide distribution, and was embraced as a sign of progress. Nowadays it is increasingly replaced by the fragmentation of consumers among smaller and smaller segments that are supposed to reflect personal predilections. Everybody feels different and special and expects products catered to his or her inclinations. In reality, these allegedly individual preferences end up overlapping with emerging, temporary, always fluid, almost tribal formations congealing around cultural sensibilities, social identifications, political sensibilities, and dietary and health concerns. Personal stories connect with larger narratives to generate new identities. These consumer communities transcend national boundaries, feeding on global and widely shared repositories of ideas, images, and practices. Brooklyn-style cafés may be found in Warsaw, Rio de Janeiro, and Mumbai, with similar designs and menus, despite local variations. Instagram and other social media are shaping expectations about what good food and nice restaurants should look like, making them less diverse, regardless of their geographical location. Such dynamics complicate any definition of a “developing” or “developed” society, as class, ethnic, and racial distinctions may be as relevant as residence in a specific country. Middle-class youth around the world embrace occupations, from butchering to liquor distillation, that until recently would have carried a working-class stigma but are now given new prestigious status as forms of artisanal creativity. Wine enthusiasts share a complex vocabulary that transcends languages. These actors share with other food lovers around the world a common approach and homologous categories of taste, made exclusive and relevant in terms of status and expertise and experienced in appropriate environments and among peers who share the same outlook on food and its sociocultural relevance, regardless of where they live.
In such an interconnected landscape, a marketing campaign can be appreciated by some and loathed by others. In 2011, many Italians were horrified when the late Gualtiero Marchesi, a chef widely considered one of the fathers of contemporary Italian cuisine, teamed up with McDonald’s to create sandwiches that showcased Italian products, with the blessing of the minister of agriculture.7 When R&B sensation Mary J. Blige appeared in a television commercial for Burger King, singing about fried chicken wraps, the campaign was criticized for playing into racist stereotypes and was quickly taken off the air.8 Even the political inclinations of the CEOs of food companies may influence product perception among shoppers. Which party do they support? What are their positions regarding important social and cultural issues? The American fast food company Chick-fil-A has provoked the indignation of liberals because of its leadership’s opposition to same-sex marriage. Amazon recently acquired the upscale Whole Foods Market grocery store chain, creating confusion and discomfort in many of the chain’s clients who had embraced its social and sustainability priorities, even if it meant paying premium prices. Technology is increasingly central to marketing efforts. The Internet of Things (IoT)—the connection of devices exchanging data through the internet—is expanding. Home security systems can be controlled through cell phones, and voice-activated “virtual assistants” routinely help to send emails and regulate heating systems. IoT innovations could improve the efficiency of food distribution networks, enhance product traceability, and establish connections among cooking appliances, refrigerators, and food vendors. By monitoring these flows of data, including those online purchases made through specialized websites, and mining web search histories through cookies, marketers receive a constant flow of information about the choices and behaviors of individual customers, for whom they are able to tailor personalized communication and advertising. Food production is trying to appear less an industrial and mass-oriented outcome of factory labor and more the result of labors of love, more local than global. Consumers’ satisfaction is made to appear as a priority for food businesses. However, you only need scratch the surface to realize that the main goal of food businesses is still profit.
The fragmentation of interests and preferences among consumers is both reflected and amplified by the relevance food has acquired in contemporary media over the past two decades. Formats like Master Chef and Top Chef have colonized TV in many countries, with very little change from place to place. Food films have become a successful genre in the United States, Japan, India, France, Spain, and Brazil, to mention just a few.9 Food has invaded the internet through specialized websites and social media platforms that allow users around the world to post information and pictures about their meals and the dishes they cook, exchange tips about restaurants and stores, and discuss food-related issues.
All over the world, these media interactions are largely dominated by what is sometimes referred to as food porn: a set of visual and auditory strategies—shots, camera movements, slow motion, lighting, sound, and editing—that aim to offer images of food so pleasurable and attractive that viewers lust after it, even when they are excluded from consumption. Just as in pornography, graphic, acoustic, and narrative components are meant to reproduce the physical acts of eating and savoring for spectators, often achieving comparable levels of excitement—without actual satisfaction. Media also provide a perfect environment for global food fads to emerge, develop, and whither, from diets with little or no scientific base to moral panics and trends regarding ingredients, dishes, and techniques. The marketability of food, its pervasive and lucrative representations on television and in magazines, advertising, literature, and a plethora of self-help and recipe books, suggest that narratives about cooking, eating, and—more recently—producing food constitute a highly charged arena in which cultural, social, economic, and political tensions converge.
Although food has historically been used as a tool to exert influence and power and to distinguish ethnic and religious belonging, as well as social class and wealth, it was not a common topic for public debates or even polite conversations and educated discussions. Among the exceptions were small circles of culinary professionals, bohemians that enjoyed exploring cheap and exotic establishments (often run by immigrants), and gourmets—a category that was often the target of ridicule and pointed critique. When Alexandre Grimod de la Reynière singlehandedly invented a new genre by writing his Almanach des gourmands and his commentaries about restaurants and stores in Napoleonic Paris, he raised quite a few eyebrows among his peers. Similarly, when the New York Times decided to hire Craig Claiborne in 1957 as its first full-time, all-expenses-covered food critic, it took some time for him to gain the respect of his colleagues. The cosmopolitan and educated upper and middle classes around the world are now comfortable showing off familiarity with the newest superfoods, discussing the advantages (or drawbacks) of different nutrients, products, and diets. They brag about the last visit to a trendy up-and-coming restaurant and are proud of being chummy with a celebrity chef or famous food producers. Taking pictures of what is cooked or eaten and dissecting the latest episode of a favorite cooking show (which are often global formats) are acceptable activities across classes. Hollywood celebrities are not immune: Gwyneth Paltrow ventured into food and eating with her upscale company Goop, while Mark Wahlberg launched the Wahlburgers chain of restaurants. Food has moved from a crucial necessity and a fundamental economic resource that used to run almost invisibly in the background—except in the case of crisis—to the forefront of media and popular culture, social movements, and political considerations.
Food’s newly central presence in all sorts of everyday conversations is intensified by the fact that because everybody eats, we all consider ourselves experts. Precisely for this reason, this book will tackle the sprawling topic of food from a consumer’s standpoint, starting from our own everyday experiences and then following the connections that tie us through wider and wider networks to the food system at various scales—from the local to the global. We will see that we can be much more than consumers: we can reclaim our role as citizens.
Without realizing it, a child that unwraps her favorite chocolate candy, anywhere in the world, is unknowingly entangled in intricate and wide-reaching linkages that connect her to stores, distributors, manufacturers, food scientists, nutritionists, food importers and exporters, crops producers and agrobusinesses, agronomists, botanists, biologists, and, lately, climatologists. That’s not all: tax and custom agencies, all levels of government, international organizations, and many other actors, more or less invisible to the average consumer, influence the shape and the nature of the networks in which they participate. In the case of the chocolate bar, all these stakeholders determine where the cocoa is grown, in what varieties, and by whom; how much farmers are paid and in which conditions they work; how cocoa beans are bought, transported, and distributed across the globe; who turns the cocoa into chocolate and how; how the chocolate is manufactured, packaged, marketed, and distributed; who has access to it and at what price it is sold: in other words, who wins and who loses, who profits, and who is exploited in the food system.
Of course, nobody particularly wants to think about all that when they just want to enjoy some chocolate, especially if the candy satisfies a craving or it is a gift from a loved one. Moreover, consumption of sweets may come with heavy emotional luggage due to health or body image issues. Understandably, we tend to focus on the product at hand and the pleasure that it brings us. There’s nothing wrong with that! However, being aware of the dynamics that support the food system can empower us, not only as individual consumers but also as citizens and members of all sorts of social formations that range from the local to the regional, national, and international. Looking at the bigger picture is likely to help us make better-informed decisions in terms of not only personal preferences and political outlooks, but also more active social participation. If we acknowledged that our purchasing choices (“voting with our wallets”) are not enough to solve all issues, we would probably be more amenable to taking collaborative actions, beyond our personal spheres. Understanding the present could help us determine which future we want to live in, one that better reflects our preferences but also responds to the needs of larger segments of the world population.
The goal of this book is to identify the aspects of food systems that have great impact on our everyday lives, whether we are aware of it or not. In fact, many central and critical issues in the contemporary food system remain largely invisible to the public at large. They are harder to grasp because they are systemic, often originate in long-term historical dynamics, and have global ramifications that require familiarity with the complexities of international affairs to be fully understood. Our desire for convenience and access to cheap food may have unwanted consequences in terms of how supply chains and distribution networks are structured, influencing what’s grown, how it’s grown, and how it gets to us. For this reason, the book will take readers beyond experiences that directly and obviously affect them, to highlight more intricate connections that may not be immediately evident, in part because some involved parties—usually those with financial and political power—have an interest in hiding their actions and their interests.
Our desire for convenience and access to cheap food may have unwanted consequences in terms of how supply chains and distribution networks are structured, influencing what’s grown, how it’s grown, and how it gets to us.
Each chapter highlights tensions and contradictions that underlie current discussions about food, as well as their consequences for us as consumers and citizens, even when the issues may appear distant and unrelated to everyday life: the connections between climate change and agriculture; the impact of technology and intellectual property; the financialization of food commodities and its consequences on worldwide food crises; the expansion of biofuel manufacturing, with the possible reduction of land available for food production; and land acquisitions in developing countries. Such aspects of the food system cannot be dealt with from just a local or national perspective because they touch on issues ranging from planetary environmental changes to international trade and economic development—which in turn are closely connected with political debates about nationalism, populism, identity, and migrations.
One of the core arguments of this book is that the food system is increasingly global. However, we inevitably look at it from a specific location, which in my case and in the case of most readers is the Global North. It is not an easy task to define the consumer from whose point of view this book looks at various aspects of food experiences. The role of consumers, their identity, and their participation in the food system vary greatly from place to place and from moment to moment. Beyond the growing segmentation of the market, consumers differ in terms of sex, gender, age, location, culture, education, ethnicity, religion, income, and social status, to mention just a few differentiating factors. Even taking into consideration the obvious differences, however, when it comes to preferences, categories of taste, and expectations, now widely shared through travel, media, and direct contact, a middle-class shopper in Bangalore may have more in common with her peers in Lima, Athens, and Lagos than with individuals from lower-income groups living in her city.
It was necessary to make choices in writing this book; taking position and embracing a point of view is inevitable. The book is written for readers who—wherever they are located—are at least moderately invested in what they eat from the point of view of price, convenience, sensory qualities, connection to one’s preferences, and health. Such individuals, although more focused on their personal actions and choices and not particularly concerned about the confusing economics and politics of the food system, are likely to be at least somewhat troubled by issues of environmental sustainability, labor exploitation, hunger, ethics, and justice, especially when they realize that their behaviors and personal decisions have direct and indirect consequences.
In other words, this book is for readers who may not always be thinking about social and political issues, but who still want to make choices without renouncing their roles, rights, and responsibilities as citizens. We can decide to be spectators or to embrace more active, hands-on attitudes in building a future we may be happier to live in—a future in which we have a greater say about what is grown and produced and how, making sure that land, water, and air remain clean and fruitful for generations to come; in which hunger is a bad memory and everybody has stable access to healthy and nutritious food; and in which technology works for everybody’s well-being, rather than turning into a tool for few to become richer and more powerful.
In democratic societies, we tend to believe that we hold the power to impose our preferences on product manufacturers and service providers. We are convinced that we vote with our wallets and that our votes count. The apparent impact of social media and consumers’ outrage on the marketing decisions of large corporations increases this sense of agency. When we are unhappy with any aspect of what we eat, where we buy our food, and how much we pay, we focus on personal choices and their impact on the market, believing in the effectiveness of the law of supply and demand. We all have a stake in food, but we are often wrapped in illusions about what we can do as individual consumers to achieve a better, healthier, more sustainable, more just food system. Moreover, not all consumers are in a position to assert their choices through the market. As a matter of fact, millions are victims of global dynamics in which they have no say. Understanding how food is produced, processed, distributed, marketed, consumed, and even wasted or disposed of has never been more important. Thinking critically about the present inevitably leads us to question the status quo and to imagine different scenarios. The future of the food system is in our hands, not only as consumers but also as citizens.