This study employs Michel Foucault's conceptualization of governmentality, or dispersed rationalities that seek to calculate and maximize the health of the population, to study how eating regimes of truth influence how individuals relate to their bodies and each other. Importantly, the study of eating regimes elucidates how food rules are portrayed in the discourses, institutions, philosophical and moral propositions, administrative measures, and technologies (what Foucault refers to as societal apparatuses of power, or dispositifs) that address what and how to eat. In this dissertation, I specifically analyze dispositifs that promote certain foodstuffs as devotional objects that can be utilized as forms of pleasure and/or self-control. I conceptualize artificial sweeteners as ingestible stores of self-control and biopower, arguing that they provide a lens through which to view how mealtime rituals, temporalities of eating, and the intersubjective perceptions of the relationship between food consumption and the ideal healthy body have transformed in the face of discourses that emphasize the need to strip food of carbohydrate- and calorie-loaded consequences.
The dissertation analyzes how contemporary dietary discourses in the United States encourage individuals to view freedom of food choice as a binary selection between binge and restrict eating practices. I argue that this notion of dietary balance is part of what I refer to as the neoliberal binge-restrict eating regime. I analyze the binge-restrict eating regime on three different yet supplementary registers: 1) that of neoliberal discourses of dietary balance, which are premised on logics and technologies of rigid, machine-like correction and anticipatory compensation through carefully planned periods of restriction and healthy eating followed by food binges, or periods where an individual indulges in seemingly unhealthy foodstuffs; 2) that of discourses that encourage the individual to consume endlessly but not allow signs of "excessive" consumption to develop in the body; 3) and that of edible instantiations of the binge-restrict eating regime, with a particular emphasis on artificial sweeteners. The dissertation concludes that the contemporary notion of dietary balance as "binge-restrict" is informed by a popular interpretation of food rules as rigid, algorithmic truths and contributes to a loss of embodied knowledge regarding how to eat well. / Doctor of Philosophy / This study provides an analysis of forms of dietary advice and food rules that problematize the use of individual dietary discretion, prompt individuals to rely on systems of dietary advice, and present certain foodstuffs, such as artificial sweeteners, as ingestible stores of self-control. I argue that certain accepted ways of understanding, categorizing, and portraying food knowledge mold and shape how individuals experience reality, and that these ways of understanding can be referred to as regimes of truth. The study examines how eating regimes of truth, or ways of portraying food knowledge that influence how individuals define and categorize normal and abnormal eating behaviors, can be discerned across diet manuals, advertisements for diet products, life insurance pamphlets, governmental documents, and weight loss technologies from the 17th century to the present in Western Europe and the United States. More specifically, I analyze how food rules are increasingly shaped by advertising media that portray food knowledge as an object of expert control since food selection is perceived to be an increasingly risky activity. Given the extensive ingredient lists on food labels, along with the shifting regulatory and scientific statements that characterize how foodstuffs are grown or produced, prepared, packaged, labeled, and sold, embodied relationships to food remain difficult to cultivate given that the lines between natural, artificial, toxic, and safe ingredients and foodstuffs have been blurred. Even the consumption of seemingly "natural" products must constantly be monitored, since grocery store produce items often contain lead, arsenic, cadmium, and other synthetic materials that are portrayed as being dangerous to the health of consumers. Through advertising and digital technologies, food rules are portrayed as rigid algorithms that must be rigorously and rigidly applied to one's food selection and eating habits.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/115051 |
| Date | 15 May 2023 |
| Creators | Cutter, Linea Lee |
| Contributors | Political Science, Debrix, Francois, Gill, Bikrum Singh, Lahne, Jacob, Labuski, Christine |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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