I eat healthfully but I am not a freak. Consumers’ everyday life perspective on healthful eating

• Published in: Appetite 2009-12, Vol.53 (3), p.390-398
• Main Authors: Bouwman, Laura I., te Molder, Hedwig, Koelen, Maria M., van Woerkum, Cees M.J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; adults; Aged; attitudes and opinions; behavior change; Biological and medical sciences; community; consumer attitudes; consumer behavior; diet; diet counseling; diet therapy; dietary change; dietary recommendations; Discourse analysis; eating habits; Everyday life; Feeding Behavior - psychology; Feeding. Feeding behavior; Female; food choice; food choices; food intake; Food Preferences - psychology; fruit; functional foods; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Health Promotion; health status; Healthful eating; human health; human nutrition; Humans; Interviews as Topic; lifestyle; Male; Medical sciences; Metabolic diseases; Middle Aged; Netherlands; nutrition education; nutritional adequacy; nutritive value; Perception; perceptions (cognitive); Personalized nutrition advice; promotion; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; psychosocial factors; script formulations; social-context; vegetable consumption; Vertebrates: anatomy and physiology, studies on body, several organs or systems
• ISSN: 0195-6663; 1095-8304
• DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2009.08.005

The gap between the awareness and understanding of healthful eating on the one hand and actual eating practices on the other has been addressed in several ways in the literature. In this paper, we consider it from an everyday life perspective. Using discourse analysis, we analyse how Dutch consumers account for their everyday food choices. We show how Dutch consumers use three interpretative repertoires to confirm the importance of health, while not portraying themselves as too self- and health-conscious eaters. The first repertoire associates healthful eating with common knowledge and ‘scripted’ actions, thereby suggesting that such eating is self-evident rather than difficult. The second repertoire constructs eating for health and pleasure as uncomplicated, by emphasizing consumers’ relaxed way of dealing with both. The third repertoire constructs unhealthful eating practices as naturally requiring compensation in the form of certain products or pills. We discuss how the use of these repertoires may pose socio-interactional barriers to the pursuance of healthful eating behaviour. The depiction of one's eating habits as uncomplicated, self-evidently healthful and – when bad – easy to compensate for, does not seem to provide a basis for critical considerations about these eating habits. If structural change in eating practices is to be achieved, nutrition promotion must invest in creating a new social standard that both avoids ‘overdoing’ bio-medical health and challenges people's construction of their eating habits as naturally healthful.