When walking through the grocery store you see all sorts of words and colors flashing out at you from the shelves. All those words, all those colors- they are for you; the beloved customer. Each label is an advertisement. When searching "food" on the News search engine from Google, the following ads showed up: Sabra Hummus- Easy and Delicious, Cooking Recipes, Easy Homemade Desserts, Delicious Cooking Recipes, Quick and Easy Cooking Recipes, Next Iron Chef on Food Network, and New York Food- Authentic Coffees, Bagels, Cheeses, and Gift Baskets. I italicized certain words to see if there were patterns in the advertisements. Easy, Delicious and Authentic are the main words that popped out to me. This relates to two different subjects; one, being the dominant discourse of food and two, being the foodways of our country. Companies put hundreds of thousands dollars towards market research. Ads cost a lot these days and they need every word that is bringing the reader in to count. These ads show that some aspects of the dominant discourse of food are easy foods and delicious foods. This relates to american foodways because the dominant discourse is related to foodways; what people want is what people will eat. People want their foods to be fast or at least simple to make and want them to taste good at the same time; but does this make them healthier?
Recently there has been an organic surge in America. "Did you try this organic baby food?", "I only eat organic foods; it makes me feel healthier". When searching the phrase "organic food" in Google News, the first group of articles that show up are about Kirstie Alley and how she lost 50 lbs. through an "Organic Liaison diet". None of the articles were from reliable sources so instead I went to NYT where I came across this article. The title is "Doctor’s Orders: Eat Well to Be Well". The article focuses on Dr. Preston Maring, a doctor in Oakland, CA, who has started a farmers market right outside of the hospital he works at. Green markets are rapidly popping up all over America; they are the new way to spread fresh produce to the customers; green markets are generally organic; no preservatives etc.
"Food is at the center of health and illness," stated the doctor. This relates to something Andy referred to in his post for this assignment. How the dominant discourse focuses around food and health and food and illness. The article makes it clear that the doctor believes that obesity is one of the leading health threats of America. But what makes Dr. Maring qualified to say these things and have them published in an article? Is it his 30+ years as a surgeon? Or maybe it's the label on his name, "Dr.".
The New York Times seemed to be a good resource for information so I stayed on there and searched "obesity". One quote from that page, "Overweight and obese patients prefer that their doctors use the terms 'weight' and 'BMI' rather than 'large size,' 'excess fat,' or 'fatness'". This is directly relating to dominant discourse; the words large and fat seem to make people uncomfortable; what ever happened to bigger is better? I noticed that the same name kept on popping up on my screen: Emily B. Levitan ScD. First thought, "What is an ScD?", I click on the hyperlinked name, and up comes this page. Her Bio: "Dr. Levitan received masters and doctoral degrees in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. She then completed a research fellowship in cardiovascular epidemiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Levitan joined the faculty at UAB in 2009. Her primary research interests are the relationship between diet, lifestyle, and cardiovascular diseases and the application of epidemiologic and statistical methods to address public health questions".
I really struggled with this post....I was stuck and unsure what I should really do.
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