System-practice entanglements and the harms of Ultra-Processed Foods

Abstract

The increased consumption of Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs) represents one of the greatest public health challenges of the current era, feeding into prevailing and accelerating health problems. This paper brings together social science and food science concepts to develop a conceptual synthesis of the entanglements of everyday food practices and broader social, political, and economic systems. Drawing on social science theories of practice and advances in new materialism, we make a case for attending to the distributed causation of harm within evolving system complexity. This should supplant the often-unhelpful focus on isolated responsibility, whether placed on individual actors/actants or even food sectors. We in turn argue that identifying potential leverage points to secure better health outcomes will rely on navigating this complexity, including addressing current practices of misattribution and obfuscation, and comprehending responsibility in terms of relative power to enact change. Considering the harms of UPFs through the lens of system-practice entanglements suggests new points of interest and intervention among researchers and policymakers, alike.