Factories of Food

Factories of Food

By Janine Evans

Blog Week 8: 

The salacious content of pop videos is a way of selling the product and corporate brand of the recording companies.  Sex sells, as they say.  My network is moderated and very rarely is there images that could cause offense.  As I have blogged before, it is a mutually respectful environment between users.  However, I don’t have to stray far on the internet through links to find the type of material associated with vehicles.  Predominantly marketed to men, cars and bikes are often photographed and displayed with semi naked women, usually caucasion and often blonde.  The stereotype of what men desire reminds me of the food that is marketed to us.

Patel (2007) writes about apples, prompting us to think that, ‘the choice is restricted to half a

dozen varieties’ (p. 1).  Purple carrots are hard to find but their heirloom variety has been changed to orange to make them more appealing to the customer.  Why?  ‘Because they’re pretty’ (Patel, 2007, p. 1).  Kuttainen, (2013) states the internet is seen a ‘democratic’, but she goes on to say that this is an ‘illusion’, that we are subject to surveillance (flaneur like) by the corporations and their marketing is then targeted to us in a way that seems innocuous.  There is, however, an unequal power balance.  ‘Guided by profit motive, the corporations that sell our food shape and constrain how we eat, and how we think about food’ (Patel, 2007, p. 1).

When women are portrayed in narrow ideals of attractiveness the consequence can sometimes lead to body image problems, poor self esteem or worse, as well as unhealthy relationships between men and women.  When corporations control our choices in food the result is also unhealthy.  ‘The sum of these choices has left many stuffed and many starved’ (Patel, 2007, p. 18).

References:

Patel, R. (2007). Introduction, in Stuffed and starved: The hidden battle for the world’s food system (pp. 1-19). Toronto, Canada: Harper Perennial.

Kuttainen, V. (2013). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, Lecture 8: Food [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http: learnjcu.edu.au

Image Source:

Purple Carrots. Retrieved from: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnhQ6MMXEChfr5DpUzSyaIxhzooTAgAJP3KcGhFLBShyphenhyphens0BUtCHuoBN03PrMnEuVuEvi4jnsARgRhSlXIObc3r3GG4OtrWP4uqLqihsJbjhQDi4kc2EvwFf-AibUcbvVY-_LFV3AnmMZw/s320/purple-carrot.jpg