This is or is not food: Framing malnutrition, obesity and healthy eating

Abstract

A lot of ethical research on food and agriculture focuses on distribution, responsibilities, access and impacts that harm others. However not much reflective analysis is done with respect to ontological assumptions of food and food production which are world disclosing views. They are not only perceptions, but ways people act upon an event that is seen as food, built networks of food, solve problems and connect food with other events. Cases of framing comprise malnutrition, obesity and healthy eating. Strategies of supplementation and biofortification frame 'malnutrition as a health problem', and propose health strategies with drugs or crops with added on drugs or vitamins. Their solutions underestimate the agricultural complexity of malnutrition and deliver only temporary relief. Framing the problem as a agricultural problem would imply taking into account the reduction of micronutrients during the post-harvest phase. Secondly, ethics of obesity assumes the 'definition of obesity as the unbalance between energy input (food) and energy output'. This seemingly neutral definition is framed because many put emphasis on the first term, the input, and require people to eat sober and in particular to restrain oneself in the things one likes to eat. One should measure the things one is eating, weigh oneself every day and eat alone, not to be distracted by social gatherings. However, framing food as a pleasurable and social event, direct solutions of obesity to eating only the food one likes together with others. Finally, 'nutrigenomical healthy eating assumes that one shouldn't put trust in one's own body', but in biomarkers. Their quantitative outcomes are presented as moralizing directions what to eat. Healthy eating differently framed as a strategy of learning to trust one's body, and to understand the signals that it gives together with the collective responsibilities for a meal, is outframed by this assumption. These cases will serve as a basis for generalizations on the functions of ontological, world disclosing assumptions and their ethical analysis. Food is the famous elephant in the room and has all characteristics of a multi-complex wicked problem with multi-meaning frames. Frame analysis should therefore in explicating frames strive for a transparent cooperative deliberation between them.