Ó Springer 2006
Agriculture and Human Values (2006) 23: 143–162
DOI 10.1007/s10460-005-6098-1
Victual vicissitudes: Consumer deskilling and the (gendered) transformation
of food systems
JoAnn Jaffe1 and Michael Gertler2
1
Department of Sociology and Social Studies, University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; 2Department of Sociology,
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Accepted in revised form February 27, 2005
Abstract. A considerable literature addresses worker deskilling in manufacturing and the related loss of control over
production processes experienced by farmers and others working in the agri-food industry. Much less attention has
been directed at a parallel process of consumer deskilling in the food system, which has been no less important.
Consumer deskilling in its various dimensions carries enormous consequences for the restructuring of agro-food
systems and for consumer sovereignty, diets, and health. The prevalence of packaged, processed, and industrially
transformed foodstuffs is often explained in terms of consumer preference for convenience. A closer look at the social
construction of ‘‘consumers’’ reveals that the agro-food industry has waged a double disinformation campaign to
manipulate and to re-educate consumers while appearing to respond to consumer demand. Many consumers have lost
the knowledge necessary to make discerning decisions about the multiple dimensions of quality, including the
contributions a well-chosen diet can make to health, planetary sustainability, and community economic development.
They have also lost the skills needed to make use of basic commodities in a manner that allows them to eat a high
quality diet while also eating lower on the food chain and on a lower budget. This process has a significant gender
dimension, as it is the autonomy of those primarily responsible for purchasing and preparing foodstuffs that has been
systematically undermined. Too often, food industry professionals and regulatory agencies have been accessories to
this process by misdirecting attention to the less important dimensions of quality.
Key words: Consumer deskilling, Consumerism, Food system, Gendered relations of consumption, McDonaldization,
North America, Provisioning
JoAnn Jaffe teaches rural, environmental, and development sociology, the sociology of gender, and theory in the
Department of Sociology and Social Studies of the University of Regina.
Michael Gertler teaches rural sociology, the sociology of communities, and the sociology of agriculture in the
Department of Sociology at the University of Saskatchewan. He holds a cross appointment in the Centre for the
Study of Co-operatives.
Introduction
Capitalism is often cast as a democracy in which consumers ‘‘vote’’ with their currency in the marketplace to
‘‘elect’’ the kind of products they want and, concomitantly, the kind of lifestyle and food system development
they prefer. Leaving aside the important limitations of a
model that equates ‘‘consumer’’ with personhood – as
opposed to a broader conception of ‘‘citizen’’ that captures
the multiple private and communal interests and responsibilities of the whole person – this model of marketplace
democracy still has serious problems (Gabriel and Lang,
1995; Lang and Gabriel, 1995). There are serious limits on
the range of real choices available to the average person
seeking to express his or her identity and values through
purchases. There are also great inequalities with respect to
voting power, and more fundamentally, with respect to
control. The slate of ‘‘choices’’ is circumscribed and not
selected by a process that is even remotely democratic (see
Schmookler, 1993). One decision taken by a store manager or food company executive cancels out the ‘‘votes’’
of many thousands of atomized consumers.
A central issue for this paper is the concern that consumers do not have – and are systematically deprived of –
the information, knowledge, and analytical frameworks
needed to make informed decisions that reflect their own
‘‘fully costed’’ interests. This paper argues that, without
deliberate steps to counter this process, consumers become progressively less ‘‘skilled,’’ in absolute and relative terms, as they become increasingly distanced (in time
and space and experience) from the sites and processes of
production. The agro-food industry has spent billions on
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marketing campaigns to persuade and re-educate consumers for its own purposes while claiming to respond to
public demand. The resultant consumer deskilling carries
enormous consequences for the restructuring of agro-food
systems and for consumer sovereignty, diets, and health.
The twentieth century has spawned many revolutions
in food production and distribution – transformative
changes that dwarf all developments since the beginning
of agriculture. Foods and food production have been
relentlessly rationalized according to a capitalist commercial logic. Whereas in 1900 over 60% of the North
American population lived on farms, today that number
is closer to 2%. By the late nineteenth century, largescale industrial food processing was a significant factor
for sugar, flour, powdered milk, and canned goods
(Goodman and Redclift, 1991). Today, the majority of
the North American food supply is produced or controlled by a relative handful of transnational firms that
occupy the dominant positions in all the important subsectors (Winson, 1993; Heffernan, 2000). A small number of grocery products manufacturers, fielding dozens of
brand names each, and their counterparts, the giant retail
chains, exercise overwhelming control in their specific
markets. For example, in the US, Campbell’s controls
76.5% of the canned soup market; Coke and Pepsi together share 74% of the soft drink market; Kellogg’s,
General Mills, Post and Quaker Oats jointly control 84%
of the market in breakfast cereals (Cooper, 2000).
Agriculture depends on complex biological processes
to produce a commodity – food – that retains a uniquely
intimate and essential character (Winson, 1993). Food
literally fuels the mental and material processes of the
body. Despite the ecologically embedded character of
agriculture, and despite the prominence of discourses that
highlight environmental issues in agriculture, purely
commercial rationalities have driven the restructuring
and transformation of the agro-food system. Food processing and manufacturing conglomerates have reconfigured processes, products, and whole sub-sectors to
gain greater ‘‘flexibility’’ and control. They have sought,
above all else, to wrest a dominant share of the market in
order to extract themselves from competitive conditions
and to reap super profits. Access to the high rent real
estate represented by prime frontage on supermarket
shelves gives dominant retailers and grocery product
manufacturers tremendous leverage in shaping the whole
food system. Consumers are observed, analyzed, managed, and manipulated all with an eye to modifying
behaviors and creating new desires.
Food skills and deskilling
Hegemony in North American capitalism is based upon
creating a ‘‘consumer’’ captivated by promises of ful-
fillment via unlimited opportunities for consumption.1
Other identities, for example producer or worker, are
made increasingly subordinate to consumer identities.
The Fordist compromise linked mass production and
mass consumption, with complacent workers committed
to progress (defined as enhancing labor productivity
through the application of technology) and the capitalist
status quo (Lipietz, 1997). This form of hegemony
helped to construct a new conception of economic man,
and woman, backed up with a parallel culture/habitus and
set of beliefs. This homo economicus was one-dimensional, a being whose entire human needs and psyche
could be captured in the phrase ‘‘utility maximization’’
(Polanyi, 1944). Moreover, this automaton had only a
narrow band of options for achieving optimum utility – a
mono-mania for consumption as the answer to all needs
and desires.
One important component of this hegemony has been
an ongoing trend towards McDonaldization, a process of
labor rationalization based on Taylorized logic (Ritzer,
1993, 1998).2 Every dimension of work is reorganized to
be more efficient, predictable, and calculable.3 The process of McDonaldization results in a system of impersonal labor control in which internalized cultural systems
and structures largely replace direct coercion by management. This process is, however, not simply a microlevel phenomenon. It is also a macro shift in the culture
of North America, and increasingly the rest of the world,
in that practical knowledge, norms, and values come
more and more to reflect McDonaldized social relations
and expectations as efficiency and instrumental economic
rationality become the measure of all worth (Ritzer,
1998: 62).
McDonaldization also affects relations around provisioning in the home. Processed foods are developed to fit
the same logic of standardization that is displayed in fast
food restaurants. The consumer can expect a consistent
product that has been engineered to cook, bake, microwave, and taste exactly the same each time. It results in
an entirely predictable outcome as long as the consumer
follows the directions on the package, which are precise
in terms of timing, ingredients to be added, and processes
to be used in taking products from package to table.
This is not entirely new, although the process has
accelerated and deepened in recent decades. Many
households embraced the ideals of efficiency and costsaving that dominated the workplace early in the transition to processed foods. For example, The Campbell
Soup Company advertised their products in the 1910s
saying ‘‘that condensed soups were two soups in one...
that canned soups cost less than homemade...based
on...the amount of time that homemade soup took to
prepare, the lack of waste, and cooking costs’’ (Parkin,
2001: 58). Campbell’s soups were promoted as being
superior in quality and more hygienic than that which
Consumer deskilling and transformation of food systems
could be produced at home thanks to the advanced production methods used in the industrial soup factories
(Parkin, 2001).
Braverman’s (1974) concept of deskilling is as much
about the degradation of the quality of work, and reduced
control by workers over the labor process, as it is about
their loss of pure knowledge and skills.4 Deskilling also
speaks to the ability of workers to comprehend the total
process of production. In Braverman’s formulation,
capitalist efforts to control the workforce and reap
maximum profits leads to a deskilling bias in technological change that was best exemplified by the separation of ‘‘conception’’ from ‘‘execution’’ in the labor
process. Labor is introduced as an abstract, objective
element in the production process, and thus becomes an
adjunct to technology. This allows management – the
conceivers – to have more power over the work done by
labor – the executors. This implies a class relation in
deskilling in which those who are farther down the
hierarchy bear the brunt of routinized control.
Given the increasing application of science and technology to food production, one might question whether
the average person preparing food in their home is
deploying less skill than previously. Referring to factory
labor processes, Braverman argues that,
the phrase upon which the issue turns is ‘‘average
skill.’’ Since... the labor processes of society have come
to embody a greater amount of scientific knowledge,
clearly the ‘‘average’’ scientific, technical, and in that
sense ‘‘skill’’ content of these labor processes is much
greater now than in the past. But this is nothing but a
tautology. The question is precisely whether the scientific and ‘‘educated’’ content of labor tends toward
averaging, or, on the contrary, toward polarization...
The mass of workers gain nothing from the fact that the
decline in their command over the labor process is more
than compensated for by the increasing command on
the part of managers and engineers. On the contrary, not
only does their skill fall in an absolute sense (in that
they lose craft and traditional abilities without gaining
new abilities adequate to compensate the loss), but it
falls even more in a relative sense. The more science is
incorporated into the labor process, the less the worker
understands of the process; the more sophisticated an
intellectual product the machine becomes, the less
control and comprehension of the machine the worker
has. In other words, the more the worker needs to know
in order to remain a human being at work, the less does
he or she know. This is the chasm which the notion of
‘‘average skill’’ conceals (1974: 424–425).
With regards to home food production, the problem
likewise is not only absolute deskilling, but relative
deskilling as well. As manufactured food production has
significantly replaced ‘‘cooking from scratch,’’ food has
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become increasingly subject to industrial and scientific
processes. This is true, however, for raw food, as well.
The sources of food are remote and ever changing, and
the route from field or factory (or lab) to table grows ever
more complex and opaque – even where there is a tendency to simplify some of the individual steps in production. There is a growing gap between what consumers
may know and the information that is possessed and
processed by the leading actors in the food chain. This
translates into a growing gap in power and a growing
capacity on the part of manufacturers and retailers to
manipulate tastes and buying behavior.
The links between the deskilling of workers in the
capitalist industrial workplace, and the deskilling of
consumers (who are typically also workers), are worth
considering. At an earlier stage of North American history, ‘‘producer and consumer were virtually identical’’
(Braverman, 1974: 272) but gradually people lost the
capacity to be self-provisioning. Braverman briefly discusses the ‘‘deterioration of skills’’ (p. 256) and the
‘‘atrophy of competence’’ (p. 281) that tend to drive
individuals and households to greater dependency on
goods and services provided by capitalist firms. The
industrial production of foodstuffs is predicated on the
expansion of markets into spaces hitherto at least partially insulated from commercial relations. The profitable
employment of wage labor is based, in part, on the ability
to turn workers, and their families and neighbors, into
new kinds of consumers – those who invest a minimum
of time and effort in their food. This leaves more time for
wage work, but also more time for other (more profitable) kinds of consumption. Prepared foodstuffs are
created for sale to all strata of the segmented market,
from the affluent to the impoverished. There are profits to
be made at all levels, but in the process tastes, preferences, and traditions must be overthrown and reworked.
People must learn to accept, and then to prefer, the look
and taste of industrial foodstuffs – unless they are so rich
that they can afford the handcrafted products of the
artisanal, gourmet foods market.
The employment regimes that predominate in current
capitalist labor markets also tend to reinforce the need for
workers who are ‘‘flexible consumers.’’ What gets labeled flexible production derives much of its flexibility
from a casualization both of work and of workers (Lash
and Urry, 1987; Harvey, 1989; Gray, 1995). Not only are
several household members likely to be employed in one
or more jobs, but they are frequently involved in shift
work, split shifts, overtime, standing by on-call, commuting, long-distance travel, and other unpredictable (or
all too predictable) aspects of contemporary working life.
Even those lucky enough to hold good jobs find they
have to devote much more than 40 hours a week to work
and work-related activities (Bluestone and Rose, 1997).
Eating is done at odd hours, on the run, and often alone.
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All of this reinforces dependence on eating quickly at
cafeterias and fast food restaurants, or on ready-to-eat
and quickly prepared foods when at home. The nuclear
family itself, the mythic and to some degree real foundation of the home cooked family meal, has given way to
many other family and quasi-family forms. Even where a
father, a mother, and offspring are present, one might
sometimes be tempted to apply the label ‘‘post-nuclear’’
family because so much time is spent apart, in work,
study, travel, or recreation. The family comes together
only infrequently and even then is typically under severe
time pressure (Mackenzie, 1993; Neumark-Sztainer,
2003). The chance that other relatives may also be
present to share a home-cooked meal is likewise
increasingly remote given geographic mobility, family
breakdowns, smaller families, and general ‘‘busyness.’’
One reason that this may be a concern is that studies have
shown a strong association between the frequency of
family meals and the quality of dietary intake among
children and adolescents (Gillman et al., 2000; NeumarkSztainer, 2003).
Part of what the industry wants in a ‘‘flexible consumer’’ is a willingness to try new products or to accept
modifications that reflect the priorities of manufacturers
and their engineering and marketing divisions. In spite of
the oft-repeated ideology that the ‘‘customer is king,’’
much of what gets produced and sold in the food system
reflects only the quest for market dominance and enhanced profit-potential in individual product lines (Heffernan et al., 1999; Hendrickson et al., 2001; Cook,
2004). This has been particularly pronounced for products that are the outcome of an intensive process of longterm investment, such as those that result from genetic
engineering. The development of agricultural biotechnology has called for major investments. Since there was
no significant return from this activity up until at least the
mid-1990s, corporations have campaigned to accelerate
the introduction of their genetically engineered (GE)
products to the market. In many cases, consumers and
farmers have had to be convinced that they need these
products, in spite of their significant shortcomings
(Magdoff et al., 2000). In some cases, the strategy has
been more stealth than promotion: GE ingredients have
been added to grocery products without fanfare or even
notification. In other cases, as with milk from cows
treated with recombinant bovine growth hormone
(rGBH), it was necessary to confront consumer resistance
through a range of initiatives, including government
lobbying and legal battles against labeling.
The processes involved in the deliberate or inadvertent
deskilling of employees have been described and debated
at some length elsewhere (see especially Braverman,
1974; Burawoy, 1979; Noble, 1984). In a society where
private accumulation has been given free reign, the
struggle for control over production processes, and the
wealth created, has had predictably perverse outcomes
with respect to human development and social life. While
a new kind of dependent consumer was being created,
those working in the agri-food chain were also losing
their independence. This is true of chefs and cooks, many
of whom have been replaced by less skilled machineminders in fast food restaurants (Reiter, 1991). Those
who still cook or perform functions that might correspond to the title of chef rely increasingly on prepared
foods: frozen main courses, frozen desserts, prepared
sauces, soup mixes, and so on. The story continues with
butchers, bakers, and confectioners, and every category
of skilled food craftsperson. These are not, however, the
only agri-food sector workers who have lost control,
freedom, and autonomy. ‘‘Independent’’ commodity
producers (farmers), who grow or raise the commodities
we eventually eat, have found themselves taking on
technologies and marketing arrangements that obviate or
supplant traditional agronomic and mechanical skills,
and lead to greater dependence on ‘‘black box’’ technologies – mechanical, electrical, chemical, and biological (Diaz and Stirling, 2003). Consumers who lack the
ability to discern true quality, freshness, or the genuine
article with respect to flavor, texture, look, and smell are
not likely to be of any assistance to farmers involved in
this struggle. Along with many producers, they have
come to accept the bland and shelf-stale products of the
industrialized food chain and to see these as normal.
The transformations that have occurred in diets, food
preparation, food processing, and farming are strongly
linked (Goodman and Redclift, 1991). The conversion of
the food-eating public into amorphous consumers who
earnestly seek the illusions of choice, quality, service,
and economy, contributes to transformation of the
working conditions and industry structure of the food
wholesaling and retailing sectors, as well as the hotel,
restaurant, and institutional food service sectors. Consumers who are unaware of, or unconcerned about, the
multiple dimensions of quality, are in no position to
demand better food or foodstuffs. The consequences for
farmers and farming, as has been suggested, are equally
serious. The growing distance and separation between
producer and consumer means that farmer-producers receive information on ‘‘what the consumer demands,’’
only via food processors, manufacturers, and retailers.
This filter biases information flowing in both directions.
Those who must shop to eat end up with a very cloudy or
partial picture of growing conditions and production
practices as well as farm economics and farm structure.
Perhaps some farmers come to prefer it this way, convinced that consumers could not really stomach a fuller
dose of the realities of livestock production, pharmaceutical and pesticide use, corporate ties, and the working
conditions of migrant farm workers. In the end, these
farmers are content to hide behind the facade of ‘‘Old
Consumer deskilling and transformation of food systems
Macdonald’s farm’’ fantasy, rustic images that are dished
up to urban consumers by the advertising industry. All
conspire in the (self) deception. On the other hand,
farmers who might chose alternative production practices
that are safer for the environment, for farm workers, for
livestock, and for consumers, find that they face an uphill
battle contacting and educating potential patrons.
The agro-food system has become so complex that
even some actors in the chain have little understanding
of what other parties are doing. Principals of Calgene,
the producers of the Flavr Savr tomato, for example,
were convinced that the benefits of somewhat longer
shelf-life and improved flavor (as compared to greenpicked) would enable them to capture the winter, fresh
tomato market. They, therefore, decided not only to
market the intellectual property related to their genetic
innovation, but to market the fresh tomatoes themselves. Calgene, however, was not able to turn a profit
on its tomato. With minimal experience in that business,
the corporation was unable to control costs or to adequately meet market requirements for volume or quality.
They had estimated that the genetically engineered trait,
reduction of polygalacturonase enzyme (PG) in tomato
fruit, would have a much more dramatic effect in
keeping vine-ripened tomatoes firm for shipping (Martineau, 2001). The engineered trait turned out to be of
marginal economic value to the fresh market tomato
business. The ignorance of Calgene managers about the
details of tomato production and transportation led to
some red faces as the first bulk shipments of tomatoes
arrived as mush fit only for the dumpster (Martineau,
2001). Many players in the agro-food system perceive
that capturing large profits hinges on the key innovation
that will distinguish their product from the multitude of
similar or substitutable goods. This engineering mentality typically ignores the health interests of consumers,
the bio-physical conditions and social relations of the
food chain, and the real tradeoffs in food quality and
eco-social risk.
Food production processes are labor processes. One
essential component of the deskilling of labor is the
division of tasks and the movement of many of the
components of these processes out of the home and into
the corporate workplace. This can be understood by
looking more closely at two related dynamics. The first
dynamic involves the subsumption of household labor
processes by corporate capital. This is a historical process
with a timeline that begins with canned soups and
breakfast cereals, and continues with pancake flour,
OreosTM, mayonnaise, frozen vegetables, cake mixes,
VelveetaTM, TV dinners, Hamburger HelperTM, packaged
cookie doughs, instant waffles, and frozen scrambled
eggs. This timeline includes commodities like SpamTM,
which was first produced in 1937, and was a prominent
feature of allied military rations in World War II.
147
Corporate capital is constantly seeking new opportunities, finding new products and activities, and colonizing
existing non-capitalist spheres of production. The second
dynamic involves the gendered construction of consumption, and the redefinition of relationships within the
household by a particular version of consumerism. The
development of relations of consumption has reorganized
the content of gender, especially the identities and roles
of men and women. Food becomes something that is
prepared using the labor-saving technological products of
industrial capitalism.
Food production has traditionally been learned
through apprenticeship, with children learning first-hand
while their mothers cook.5 These skills are sentient,
practical, and in some senses non-discursive forms of
consciousness, with the learner acquiring a knack, or a
feel, that comes with the continual engagement with the
physical and sensual qualities of food. (This is exemplified in the experienced cook’s instructions to add a
pinch of this or a smidgen of that, or to knead until the
dough is elastic.) It requires a fine-tuning of all the senses
– a good cook knows how things ought to taste, smell,
look, feel, and sometimes even sound through different
stages of the cooking process. She recognizes off-notes
and textures. Cooking involves body knowledge, such as
the movement required to whip an egg, knead biscuit
dough, or skillfully cut a chicken. Putting together a meal
involves juggling several tasks at once.
Once the skills of food production, such as breadmaking, have been culturally excised and devalued, there
is an opening for a new range of consumer durables (e.g.,
bread-making machines). (This is not always a bad thing.
For example, with the bread machine more people may
be making bread at home and understanding what the
made-almost-from-scratch product tastes like. On the
other hand, many people buy bread mixes made for bread
machines that essentially mimic the taste and ingredients
of packaged bread.) Technology, deskilling, and new
food products co-evolve in a dialectical fashion. When a
skill is lost or displaced, it is often replaced by a machine. The creation and installation of new kitchen
appliances opens up opportunities for the introduction of
new products. Of course, once the skill has been erased,
it is very hard to get back. Speaking about the emergence
of a culture of non-cooking in the United Kingdom, Tim
Lang notes,
Food processors are delighted to see a growth in the
number of homes in which people have never really
cooked, with the result that children’s role models don’t
teach their children how to cook. If you think of the
evolution of cooking skills over the last 10,000 years,
an immense cultural shift is taking place in decades.
Schools and the state are colluding in this process,
teaching computer skills, but not life skills...We no
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JoAnn Jaffe and Michael Gertler
longer teach cooking skills to our children. They are
taught a theoretical exercise of designing a snack bar,
with the emphasis on packaging; thus a practical issue
becomes a matter of theoretical culture (1999: 223).
When we speak of consumer deskilling, what dimensions of this phenomenon are most significant? In what
aspects of food lore and culture may contemporary
consumers lack, lose, or fail to acquire requisite skills or
practical knowledge? The overlapping domains of
interest include selection of foods and particular products
(e.g., informed shopping), food storage and preservation,
and cooking and related activities of food preparation.
Gaps in these areas of consumer knowledge and knowhow impinge on the cost of eating, on nutrition, on
health, and on the environment. They also increase the
negative social impacts of food consumption and decrease the aesthetic and cultural enjoyment of foods.
Consumers may have lost much of the ability that their
fore-bearers possessed with respect to the use of food and
drink for purposes such as healing, relieving symptoms
of illness, or for improving emotional states.
The skills involved are of course multi-dimensional.
Some are practical skills (e.g., the know-how to make a
cake from scratch). Some involve the possession of
knowledge that would facilitate more discerning food
selection choices, knowledge that pertains to the many
substantive dimensions of quality. Other skills relate to
the uses of foods for purposes that go beyond sustenance,
as medicinal products, as carriers of culture and heritage,
as focus for social intercourse and celebration. The skills
required are not easy to enumerate, nor can they be
identified as if there were one universal set appropriate to
every consumer and every circumstance. Their measure
pertains to efficacy and empowerment when it comes to
making real choices and to extracting real value from
money spent on food. As technologies change, as the
food system becomes more industrialized and complex,
the information needed to be an ‘‘informed consumer’’
also changes. As processing and labeling practices
evolve, consumer literacy will imply new abilities to
decode, decipher, and discern. While there are certainly
contradictory tendencies in evidence, there is still a
strong likelihood that the gap between needed skills and
those actually possessed and practiced by consumer
continues to grow.
There is prima facie evidence that consumers are
deskilled or, at the very least, that they lack the
knowledge and know-how to defend many of their
fundamental interests with respect to provisioning
activities. The most glaring evidence is the choices that
are made at the supermarket and in the food service
sector. Consumers are selecting foods and drinks that
contribute to increased morbidity and mortality for
themselves and their families. According to the US
Department of Agriculture (Putnam, 2000; Gerrior and
Bente, 2001), the major sources of calories in the
American diet are white bread, rolls, buns, and other
products made from white flour; sugar and soft drinks;
whole and low-fat milk; shortenings, margarine, and
other oils; ground beef; and American cheese. The results of this diet are seen in rising rates of obesity and
the growing incidence of diabetes and other diseases
related to the over-production of insulin. Moreover,
teenagers are now being diagnosed with diseases of the
circulatory system, including heart disease, whose onset
was formerly thought to be a hazard of the middle-aged
(Sanchez, 2000).
Domination and the gendered arts of consumption
While it is commonplace to speak of production and
consumption, it is important not to fall unconsciously
into a dichotomized framework for discussion of the
social relations surrounding food. To start with, this lens
artificially categorizes activities into different substantive
relationships with the (political) economy. On the one
hand, there is the supposed value adding activity of the
farmer, processor, grocery products manufacturer, shopkeeper, restaurant owner, caterer, and institutional food
service provider. On the other, lumped into consumption,
are the supposedly value absorbing, consuming, or
destroying activities of the shopper, homemaker, and
hungry eater. This dichotomization is problematic on a
number of levels, not the least because it is replete with
gender bias. Spheres of activity largely controlled by
men are automatically evaluated as production while
arenas of activity that are the primary responsibility of
women are allocated to the loss or liability side of the
ledger in this classic bit of double entry accounting. This,
not coincidentally, overlooks all the creative and value
generating work that may go into shopping for quality in
its various dimensions, learning and modifying recipes,
and preparing meals that are appropriate to the different
dietary needs of infants, children, sick people, old people, those with allergies and intolerances, those on special diets, and so on. It recognizes neither the various
forms of work involved in keeping household members
healthy and happy, nor the contributions made to the
social reproduction of the family group through foodcentered social interaction. Most astonishingly, it ignores
the biological reproduction of people through the (multidimensional) nurturing of children. This is production by
any other name.
This dichotomization into production and consumption
also masks a much more complex reality with respect to
the shifting of food procurement and preparation activities
into the capitalist sphere. Production for exchange supplants production for use, and profits can now be derived
Consumer deskilling and transformation of food systems
from activities and processes that have been ‘‘appropriated’’ from the household sphere (Goodman and Redclift,
1991). Where once women worked under their own surveillance in the kitchen and garden, they now become the
waged labor force for factories and industrial kitchens,
restaurants, and supermarkets. Of course, there were (and
still are) class and race/ethnic hierarchy realities to the
social relations of food work in the home kitchen as well.
Many of the female domestic servants who worked there
in large numbers prior to the advent of labor displacing
electrical appliances and multiple forms of packaged and
prepared foods were drawn disproportionately from the
ranks of immigrants, minorities, and families of modest
means. These women were also among the first to be
drawn into new capitalist workplaces that expanded to
take advantage of profit opportunities in the production
and distribution of consumables – though sometimes the
industrial workplace was dominated, numerically as well
as otherwise, by males.
As industrial capital gained control over the production
of food, home food provisioners lost control over food
production processes. The fundamental reorganization in
food production and in the conceptualization of food
production constituted a discursive shift, in that it involved redeployment of power, with changes of practices,
institutions, cultures, and identities. Production came to
be defined exclusively as what happens upstream in the
food chain in farms, factories, and food service kitchens.
What housewives/homemakers/consumers did in shops,
restaurants, and homes became defined as consumption,
not production. This discursive shift was (and is) quintessentially gendered and normalizing. With the displacement of this household labor process, women producers
became women consumers. This has strong implications
for how women’s subjectivity and womanhood have been
reconstructed. It involved the deployment of discourses of
science that positioned (especially) home economists and
nutritionists as (puppet) authority/powers in the new food
consumption order. This paralleled women’s loss of
autonomy via discourses of science in medicine and
birthing (c.f. Martin, 1992; Duden, 1993). Home economists and nutritionists created the ‘‘healthy’’ menus and
dishes that good, ‘‘normal’’ housewife-mothers would
feed their families. Cookbooks, written by home economists and other food professionals, displaced the authority
of wives and mothers in the kitchen. Cookbook writers
dismissed ordinary women’s knowledge about food as
‘‘old-fashioned,’’ unscientific, and unhealthy. New recipes and menus were offered with the promise to turn
women into ladies. They helped to promote a standardized
diet and were intended and used to assimilate new
immigrants into mainstream North America.6
By the 1920s, professional home economists, who
controlled nutrition education in schools and colleges,
were more or less co-opted by processors (Levenstein,
149
1993). Food processors provided major funding for the
American Home Economics Association, publisher of
the Journal of Home Economics. Industry provided
employment for a large number of ‘‘professional dieticians,’’ the term used for home economists working with
food (Levenstein, 1993). They worked to promote standardization, sanitary packaging, and brand names under
the guise of good domestic practices (Peiss, 1998). ‘‘The
advertising industry, the manufacturers of household
goods, the food companies, the women’s magazines, and
the schools all shared in the task of creating a woman
who could discriminate among canned soups, but who
wouldn’t ask too many questions about the ingredients:
neither angel nor scientist, but homemaker’’ (Shapiro,
1986: 221–222). Industry joined the state and universities
in modernizing women as part of a deliberate development strategy based upon the shared assumptions of
housewifely backwardness.
The growth of consumer capitalism in the 1920s and
1930s was built on investing patriarchal authority in
industrialists, enabling them to instruct families in
‘‘proper living,’’ including appropriate patterns of consumption (Ewen, 1976). Some liberal thinkers saw this as
an opportunity to break the bonds of female servitude to
domestic chores. At the same time, this transformation of
the family into a consuming unit was an opportunity for
industry to resocialize women into capitalist femininity.
Advertisements of the era spoke of women’s freedom –
to buy, and to have rights to leisure and happy homes!
This created a need for new sources of information, a role
that could be assumed in part by mass circulation magazines. Women’s magazines such as Ladies’ Home
Journal, McCall’s, and Good Housekeeping linked
femininity, wifely duties, and respectability with brand
name, packaged products. This was a time when most
groceries were unbranded and sold in bulk quantities
(Peiss, 1998).
In 1900, a typical North American woman spent
44 hours a week preparing meals and cleaning up after
them (Bowers, 2000). Food was cooked on coal and
wood stoves – wood had to be cut and coal shoveled.
Few houses of the day had indoor plumbing, so water for
cooking had to be pumped and carried in from outside.
Most food was prepared from scratch. In the cities, one
could buy bread from bakeries, but in rural areas it was
still baked at home. Trips to the market were frequent, as
most food was purchased fresh and kept in ice boxes, or
cooled by springs. Even so, food supply and utilization
data compiled and published by USDA’s Economic Research Service indicates that vegetable and fresh fruit
consumption was higher in the early 20th century than it
is today (Putnam, 2000). Many women gardened and
canned – especially on the farm, but in the cities, too.
By 1900, over 20% of all American women – over
5% of married women – worked outside the home.
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JoAnn Jaffe and Michael Gertler
Women continued to engage in many forms of household
production process even as they joined men in leaving
the house to engage in paid work. Nevertheless, the
process of transformation was largely completed before
most women left the home to work. In fact, the stripping
away of economically and socially important activities in
the house and yard set the stage for increased consumption and media watching and also removed one
important rationale for not leaving the house to engage in
wage work. While many of the innovations in technology
were welcomed by women who were overburdened with
physical labor, processed foods made their way into
women’s homes by playing on women’s insecurities and
subordinate position in the home. One Campbell’s soup
ad in 1936, called ‘‘Wife Beaters,’’ implied that women
could be in physical danger if their husbands did not
enjoy their food (Parkin, 2001). Makers of processed
foods followed nutritionists and home economists in
denigrating women’s cooking knowledge as being traditional or injurious to health (Levenstein, 1993; Roth,
2000) and appealed to their maternal feelings for the
well-being of their families.
Some middle class women embraced processed foods
as a solution to the social transformations that meant that
they no longer had servants. Food manufacturers and
advertising agencies gave form to white middle class
nostalgia in brands and ads featuring black (usually female) servants, such as Aunt Jemima, whose powers
could be harnessed by using the new products (Beck,
2001). New industrial foods were embraced as a mark of
distinction for people recently released from peasant or
working class status. They enabled one to eat the imagined diet of the wealthier home, a diet free of seasonality
– standardized and processed to reduce the unpleasantness of organic variation, impurities, or spoilage, and
‘‘refined.’’ The very term conjures up gentility and
privilege. Ironically, refined and processed food became
the mainstay of the middle classes, while they remained
beyond the reach of the very poor and were voluntarily
shunned (at least part of the time) by the affluent.
In the past, a woman’s reputation could be enhanced or
hurt by her food-making abilities. Once women left the
home for the paid labor force, proficiency in cooking
indicated that a woman continued to take her gender
identity and responsibilities seriously. In an ironic turn,
skill in the kitchen continued to be regarded as a measure
of a woman’s worth, even as prepared foods made home
cooking less necessary and appliances made it less laborintensive. Each new technology, however, has raised
expectations for the cook (McFeely, 2000).
Expectations notwithstanding, the foods most commonly eaten for lunch and dinner in North America are
hamburgers, pizza, ham sandwiches, hotdogs, cheese
sandwiches, spaghetti, and macaroni and cheese (NPD
market research group, cited in Mintz, 1996). These
foods are typically pre-prepared, either partially or fully.
With the small minority of families being of the traditional two parents, dad working and mom staying at
home variety, the rush to convenience has been the primary way that families have fed themselves. The average
family rarely sits down to eat together (Gillman et al.,
2000; Neumark-Sztainer, 2003). Mom is still responsible
for food provisioning, but she may be at work, or just
arriving home when it is time for supper. The kids are
busy, with after school activities, or just in front of the
TV or computer. It is a post-nuclear family in which
individual family members are often responsible for
getting their own meals. With a full freezer and a
microwave, even children can get their suppers without
help from mom (Neumark-Sztainer, 2003).
Along with the industrialization of the ‘‘home
cooked’’ meal, more meals are eaten outside the home,
typically at fast food restaurants (or in the car). In 2000,
Americans spent more than $110 billion on fast food,
more than on higher education, personal computers,
computer software, or new cars. Every day one-quarter of
the adult population eats food from a fast food restaurant.
Every month about 90% of American children under the
age of 10 eat at McDonald’s; the average American eats
three hamburgers and four orders of french fries every
week (Schlosser, 2001).7
While good eating has been redefined as industrial
food fresh from the corporate take-out window, eating
and drinking have been subverted and subordinated to
commercial goals much earlier in life. From the 1930s,
the coincidence of scientific discourse with the rising
corporate hegemony in food production advanced the
view that industrial, scientifically prepared infant formula
was ‘‘best for baby,’’ and besides, more convenient and
modest. The idea that the truly caring mother was one
who offered her baby formula rather than breast milk
dovetailed with the emerging ‘‘liberated’’ view that
breasts – especially nipples – were organs best saved for
sex play, and otherwise best kept out of sight.8 Although
there was resistance by some doctors to the popularization of bottle feeding in the 1950s and 1960s, as infant
feeding became more medicalized, most went along with
the promotion of formula (Van Esterick, 1997). This led
to drastic declines in the rates of breastfeeding in North
America – a decline that is only today beginning to be
reversed through concerted educational efforts, political
action, and progressive scientific research. While it is
against the WHO International Code of Marketing of
Breast-milk Substitutes, many hospitals continue to offer
a small ‘‘free’’ supply of infant formula in their discharge
packages.9 Despite the WHO’s recommendations to
breastfeed for at least 2 years, only two-thirds of all US
mothers breastfeed their newborns at all, with only 27%
of all mothers and under 10% of black mothers still
breastfeeding at 6 months. These figures drop to
Consumer deskilling and transformation of food systems
approximately 12% and 3%, respectively, in 12 months
(Ruowei et al., 2003). In the United States it is minority
and disadvantaged children who are most likely to be fed
a diet of artificial breast milk substitutes. The United
States government’s food program for Women, Infants
and Children (WIC) serves the nutritional needs of lowincome women and children and is the single greatest
purchaser of commercial infant formula. WIC provides
free infant formula to 37% of all infants born in the
United States at a cost of almost $600 million annually
(Granju, 1998).
In Canada there is a particularly low incidence of
breastfeeding in Newfoundland, the poorest province. It is
especially low in the more remote outport communities.
In fact, it is the exception rather than the rule. According
to a study released in 1995, women view it as inconvenient and embarrassing. (Matthews et al., 1995) The loss
of breastfeeding knowledge and skills, then, is the most
fundamental aspect of consumer deskilling. A superior
and economical food source, with multiple associated
benefits for the family unit, is discarded in favor of the
packaged product. This is the first and most injurious step
towards a lifetime of dependence on packaged and processed foods where homemade products would fill the
same need, but more economically and satisfactorily from
the point of view of nutrition and health. Pop-tarts and
highly processed cold cereals replace home-prepared
oatmeal or locally made high quality bread.
Producing the deskilled consumer
North Americans have a longstanding concern with
nutrition and food safety (Roth, 2000). As the sources of
food became increasingly distant, consumer concerns
about the safety and wholesomeness of the food supply
have helped to shape North American food discourses.
US consumers also harbor a continuing unease and distrust related to the industrialization of food (Roth, 2000).
They are increasingly concerned about contamination,
pesticide residues, and hormones (Brewster, 1998). It
appears, however, that consumers fall short in terms of
knowledge related to common food threats. ‘‘In a study
that tracked how consumers reacted to a recall of food
contaminated with Salmonella bacteria that had sickened
an estimated 224,000 people, consumers weren’t any
more likely to have thrown away the product. More than
25% thought the product was still okay, and 31% who
had heard the warning and still had the product simply
ignored the warning and ate the food anyway’’ (USGPO,
1999: 6).
The scientization of nutrition has not equipped consumers to cope with the growing complexity of the food
system. In fact, its impact has been to deskill and confuse. One could argue that in a more transparent and
151
sustainable food production system, most healthy consumers would do well to follow a few simple precepts,
such as ‘‘moderation in all things,’’ and ‘‘eat a wide
variety of foods.’’ As was the case in the early years
when home economics and nutrition began to comment
on household foodways, discourses of nutrition have
shifted the locus of power with respect to who has a right
to define what is ‘‘nutritious.’’ Many nutritionists dismiss
critics who question the present system of food
provisioning. Much nutrition research is still directly in
the service of industry. Furthermore, this discourse,
which has focused on chemical properties of particular
ingredients in food in isolation from other properties or
functions, has had several important consequences.
Industry has been able to focus on a narrow range of
concerns, for example to point to vitamin fortification in
processed grains and breakfast cereals, and call them
‘‘healthy.’’ The genetically engineered ‘‘golden rice,’’
which contains small amounts of beta carotene (the
precursor to vitamin A), is a recent example of this
trend.10 Golden rice, which some anti-GE activists view
as a ‘‘Trojan horse’’ because of its potential to legitimize
biotechnology, is a narrowly construed solution to the
problem of malnutrition caused by poverty and by the
previous destruction of agricultural biodiversity due to
the Green Revolution.
While potentially an important tool for consumers (if
they are able to understand it), nutritional labeling has allowed the food industry to narrowly define the legitimacy
of issues and the area of appropriate consumer interest and
intervention. For example, foods produced by conventional means and by the use of GE inputs are considered
substantially equivalent if they contain the same profile of
protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and a limited number of micronutrients. This is the reason that the US Food
and Drug Administration guidelines do not permit the
labeling of dairy products regarding their rGBH content
unless there is an accompanying statement that states that
there is no substantial difference between milk from cows
that have been given rGBH and milk from untreated cows.
This is also the rationale used to justify trade action against
countries that wish to identify GE products through the use
of consumer labeling. Consumers find nutritional labels
difficult to interpret, not the least because both industry and
the scientific establishment have frequently changed their
nutritional prescriptions, highlighting fiber one season,
sodium another, and cholesterol the next. One outcome has
a corporal dimension. Over 40% of Americans surveyed
by researchers at the USDA overestimated the quality of
their diets (Shim et al., 2000). While North American
women’s knowledge is increasing vis-à-vis current nutritional recommendations, they still are likely to have substantively more nutritional knowledge related to body
conformation than to the relationship of nutrition to general or specific health issues (Frederick and Hawkins,
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JoAnn Jaffe and Michael Gertler
1992; Roos et al., 1998). In other words, their nutritional
knowledge is related to their concerns with meeting social
expectations and fashion norms with respect to the gendered body.
While the food industry has responded to consumer
interest in issues of freshness and nutrition, they have
generally done so by emphasizing the more superficial
aspects of this fundamental dimension of quality. Produce is drizzled with ‘‘rain’’ on the supermarket counter
(while a thunderstorm is simulated complete with flashes
of light and the boom of thunderclaps), bread is baked
(from mixes) in the store in order to fill the area with the
aroma of fresh baking, and so on. Meanwhile these same
baked goods are designed for long shelf life by the
addition of hydrogenated or saturated oils. This is true
even for premium cakes that are displayed in refrigerated
cabinets. At the same time, consumers do not know much
about how to store foods so as to reduce nutrient loss or
spoilage; items are kept too cold or too hot, in the wrong
kinds of containers, exposed to light, and sometimes for
far too long. Consumers keep a large array of packaged
goods on their shelves, but very few are fresh. Some are
spoiled, but consumers may not know how to recognize
clear signals such as the smell or taste of rancid oils.
The food industry has a complicated and somewhat
contradictory reaction to consumer demands for information, and their ‘‘right to know.’’ One tactic is to
overwhelm citizens with detailed information that is, in
the end, difficult even for experts to interpret. Another
tactic is to provide carefully packaged ‘‘information’’ that
raises doubts about the claims of food industry critics,
and draws false analogies regarding the sources of risk,
hunger, and environmental impacts (Raven and Lang,
1995). The agro-food industry has also successfully
encouraged the passage of ‘‘food disparagement’’ laws in
13 US states, which allow agro/food industry interests to
sue critics for damages suffered as a result of claims
about perishable agricultural products not grounded in
‘‘reasonable and reliable scientific inquiry, facts, or data’’
(Chartoff and Colby, 1994: 16). A more positive strategy
is to provide consumers with information that highlights
certain attractive attributes of foods and products.
Examples of this kind are to be found in the consumer
magazines that have been offered by such chains as
Super Value, Safeway, and Costco. This glossy information helps consumers to gain a certain familiarity with,
and pseudo-sophistication about, products. However,
these consumer-oriented publications leave the reader
without much information that is absolutely critical to
judging quality and the acceptability of the socio-economic and ecological conditions that surround production. Given their interest in successfully introducing
novel products (e.g., exotic fruits), retailers have also
added labeling that explains, at least superficially, how to
recognize, assess, and use the item (Cook, 1994).11
All of this effort with respect to (dis)informing the
public pales in comparison to the enormous amount of
talent, resources, and money that go into advertising.
This is a truly gargantuan social project that focuses
particularly on the foods and beverages that provide the
highest returns. Recent estimates by the US Department
of Agriculture suggest that the food and restaurant
industry in that country spends approximately 36 billion
dollars annually on advertising. In 1996 and 1997, some
publicity campaigns for single items (such as a new soft
drink or a new style of hamburger) exceeded 50 million
dollars (Lieberman, 2000). These campaigns typically
‘‘inform’’ consumers by selling an image, or by focusing
attention on trivial, but possibly exciting, distinguishing
features. In 2000, Campbell fielded an advertisement
called ‘‘Talking Pasta’’ in which animated spaghetti
strands extolled the ability of Prego sauces to cling to
pasta (Thompson, 2001).
The complex and often ambivalent ways in which the
food industry reacts to consumer ‘‘demands’’ for information reflects the complexity and contradictory characteristics of this demand. On the one hand, there are the
vociferous demands for safety, transparency, accountability, and social and environmental responsibility that
emanate from a relatively small percentage of consumers
and consumer organizations. On the other hand, there is
the more latent ‘‘demand’’ that is reflected in the potentially positive response that can be elicited when food
industry actors appear to share information with consumers. Given consumer concerns about diets and food
related risks, information and the manner in which it is
seen to be offered can translate into increased sales or
improved corporate image. Industry insiders often appear
to feel that consumers suffer from exposure to distorted
or incomplete information and labor under huge amounts
of misinformation that ranges from ‘‘old wives’ tales’’ to
‘‘urban myths.’’ They complain that consumers are
unrealistic in their demands, spoiled, and lazy about
following instructions (Mitchell, 1991). On the other
hand, the food industry is concerned – with reason – that
consumers would react negatively if they had a more
complete and realistic picture with respect to production,
processing, and marketing practices.
While structuralist studies of consumerism stress the
‘‘consumer as dupe’’ perspective, and the post-structuralist or post-modern position emphasizes the creative
readings that consumers make of product messages
(Lupton, 1996), a review of the marketing literature
suggests that neither view is fully accurate. According to
marketing literature, at point of purchase, most food
buying decisions in North America are ‘‘low involvement’’ decisions – meaning that the consumer does not
consider the product sufficiently important to her belief
system to think about or be influenced by advertising, nor
does she strongly identify with the product. Low
Consumer deskilling and transformation of food systems
involvement decisions are also commonly based on habit
(Assael, 1984).
Where many common food items are concerned,
most consumers exhibit little brand loyalty, preferring to
buy on the basis of price if the product seems comparable in other ways (Brewster, 1997). For grocery
product manufacturers, however, cutting prices to boost
market share may be an unattractive option. Dominant
firms in highly concentrated subsectors such as breakfast cereals, canned soups, or packaged juices prefer to
compete via product proliferation and minor changes to
packaging or product characteristics. Smaller firms that
fail to follow their price leadership can be subject to
severe market discipline if they provoke a price war.
Larger companies can use cross-subsidization12 to win
back market share via couponing, price breaks, or other
promotional strategies. Smaller, weaker firms are liable
to finish with both financial injuries and diminished
market share. Paradoxically, while low involvement
consumers have been shown to be passive and haphazard in their assimilation of information, they are also
susceptible to low content advertising that appeals to
sentiment rather than depending on rational thought
(Assael, 1984). Generally, consumers respond to food
based on affective (emotional/physiological response)
orientations, although in some cases they may also be
concerned with the physiological consequences of eating particular foods, functional benefits, or the symbolic
aspects of food (Dubé et al., 1996). Despite the complex and somewhat unpredictable responses of consumers, food manufacturers have found convincing
evidence to justify spending heavily on advertising – at
least for certain products. Advertising has been an
important tool for promoting the cultural shift involved
in accepting highly processed foods. Advertising has
also been important in building brand recognition and
loyalty for those products that have proved susceptible
to this kind of campaign, beer and coffee, for example
(Assael, 1984).
In its attempts to create interest, appetite, and commercially useful distinctions, the food industry has
increasingly emphasized the status aspects and aesthetic
meanings of particular foods. Each new meaning and
each new consumer subgroup created signifies a new
market and enhanced possibilities for successful selling.
Consumers have been encouraged to assert both their
similarities and their differences through the consumption of particular items. They may express their
belonging to a particular group or signify their status by
eating – or avoiding – particular foods. Consumers may
also express their political identities in much the same
way. This may be a dialectical dance with industry, in
which ‘‘making the product ‘right’ for the consumer requires continuous redefinition and division of the groups
in which he [sic], as an individual consumer defines
153
himself. The deliberate postulation of new groups – often
divisions between already familiar categories, as ‘preteens’ were created from ‘teenagers’ and younger children – helps to impart reality to what are supposedly new
needs’’ (Mintz, 1982: 158, quoted in Mintz, 1996:
120–121).
The food sector is large and growing, but many parts
of it are ‘‘mature,’’ in the sense that they offer little
potential for above average returns or for rapid expansion
of markets. The food industry has addressed its accumulation challenges by creating and targeting niche
markets, even while it continues to pursue mass markets
for staple commodities. The food industry continually
seeks opportunities to make profitable investments in
new products and processes. For example, it has attempted to capitalize on, or to co-opt, health-related
concerns surrounding food. Foods touted as lean, heartsmart, calcium-added, or high fiber are examples of the
resulting products and product lines. In this case – as in
so many others – companies with the most money, and
the most label space, are best positioned to make these
claims. Tropicana orange juice is able to claim that its
product is a significant source of potassium, which is
helpful in lowering blood pressure, even though many
fresh foods, such as melons and potatoes, have higher
levels of potassium. Fresh melons and potatoes, however,
do not have the packaging or the advertising budget that
Tropicana has and, thus, cannot easily communicate the
kinds of nutritional claims that Tropicana can make
(Tufts University, 2001).
Consumers are targeted by the food industry according
to demographics, region, ethnicity, and class. We are
sorted and re-sorted into market segments for purposes of
marketing, product positioning, and product development. Two of the most important segments targeted by
industry in terms of size of market and potential growth
are children and teenagers. The average North American
teenager is estimated to eat four servings of snack foods,
such as potato and tortilla chips, between the time she
gets out of school and supper time each day (Prepared
Foods, 1998). Today, sugar accounts for 20% of an
average US teenager’s daily calories and fats account for
50% (Simontacchi, 2000). Many supermarkets have
programs for their ‘‘shoppers in training,’’ complete with
kid-sized shopping carts for early introduction to the arts
of consumption (cf. http://www.storeequipment.com/
browse/man/technibiltkc.shtml). Manufacturers recognize and use the influence that children exert over their
parents with respect to what their parents buy. They also
recognize children as an economic force in their own
right, with their own discretionary income estimated to
be an average of $10/week in the early 1990s (Cutler,
1992). One advisor to the food industry has suggested the
five rules to bear in mind when marketing food products
to children.
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JoAnn Jaffe and Michael Gertler
1. Learn to see food the way kids do. Kids have their
own four basic food groups – hand food, noisy food,
fast food, and funny food... 2. What might have been
outrageous when you were a kid must be far wackier
today... 3. If it can’t be found in nature, it’s good to eat.
Half the fun of eating for kids has to do with improbability... 4. The more purple, the better. Kids like food
that you can see from halfway across the room... 5.
Food should talk to kids, not parents (Cutler, 1992:
48–49).
Advertisements reinforce the idea that the household
exists to be a place of consumption, not of production
(Willis, 1991). Food preparation is represented as the
incidental byproduct of the use of labor-saving commodities, if it is shown at all. In this case, deskilling is
presented as a positive condition since families pressed
for time can be happy as they reach for the convenience
of a prepared or ‘‘cook by numbers’’ meal. When so
many families have two parents that work, or are headed
by a single parent, the ability to put food on the table in a
way that ‘‘even Dad can do it’’ is a real selling point.
Susan Willis (1991) provides an interesting popular
cultural analysis of consumer deskilling in the food
system. Her work reflects the critical view that capitalism
is based upon the alienation of labor, which results in a
separation of producer and consumer. In this view, the
development of capitalism entails the division of mental
and manual labor, with the progressive reduction of most
labor to the manual type. Labor becomes increasingly
abstracted, or reduced to a standard, interchangeable
form (known as labor power). Commodity fetishism –
inevitable under capitalism – means substituting consumption for the satisfaction to be gained through creative production and social relations, and deflecting onto
consumption powerful emotions and desires. According
to Willis, the combination of alienated, abstracted labor
and fetishistic desire is used to great effect in our
everyday arenas of consumption. She makes a connection between the staging of work in upscale supermarkets
and in theme parks. ‘‘Where the supermarket most closely replicates the historical theme park is in its presentation of labor. The current practice in many
supermarkets is to put a theatrical form of production on
display, while the real work that goes into maintaining
the store is either hidden or made to appear trivial because of deskilling’’ (Willis, 1991: 17). While it creates
desire in the consumer, the aesthetic display of work
hides the abstracted character of supermarket labor, as
well as the deskilling process embodied in its products.
‘‘As if to compensate for the marginalization, and in
some cases the erasure, of productive labor, the supermarket offers an array of theatrical labors, whose
importance has more to do with the spectacle they create
than the actual services they render’’ (Willis, 1991: 17).
It has thus become common to see a supermarket worker,
dressed in the costume of a baker, unwrapping and
baking frozen bread dough while other workers busy
themselves grinding coffee or peanut butter, or juicing
oranges in front of the customers.
One can regard the representation of food production
in advertising in a similar vein. A typical device used by
advertisers to hide the real nature of the production
process is to present idealized, stereotypical images of
some imagined rural past, or of romanticized ethnicity. In
this way, small, family farms with a few chickens, dairy
cows, corn, sunflowers, home gardens, and so on are
represented as producing the crops and livestock bearing
the logos of ConAgra, General Foods, Tyson, and
Cargill. This imagery is intended to introduce a sense of
trust, connection, and authenticity – and to lead us to
believe that this food was produced by caring human
hands, rather than by the industrialized processes of
highly capitalized agriculture and food processing plants.
Similarly, food from the Third World – when pictured at
all – is falsely represented as deriving from a romanticized production process. The symbol of Colombian
coffee, Juan Valdez, appears as a simple, happy, natural
peasant, rather than in his real condition as an exploited,
coffee picking, migrant child laborer or semi-proletarian.
These representations of rural production effectively
deskill the consumer by substituting prettified images of
products and production in place of their more challenging realities. Other products – particularly but not
exclusively those that are heavily dependent on the
chemist’s test tube and industrial manufacturing (e.g.,
novel snack foods, children’s breakfast cereals, dessert
mixes, drink mixes, and sodas) – are presented as if they
never had a connection to any agricultural labor process.
They have no history or origin at all, appearing to have
materialized from the advertisement, or at the point of
sale (Willis, 1991). While some products come to us
disembodied, as if they were spontaneously generated on
the supermarket shelf, others are delivered with much
fanfare but with a phony biography and a falsified pedigree. Their bogus aura of wholesomeness is the product
of the copywriter and the image consultant.
A frequently heard argument is that consumers may
have lost a depth of knowledge as they have abandoned
certain skills and traditions, but they have gained a
broader acquaintance with ethnic foods and new varieties
of fruits and vegetables. A more likely interpretation of
this process is that consumers are now superficially
familiar with many more kinds of foods, but knowledgeable about very few. The food industry has been
eager to co-opt and water down the cuisines of many
countries and ethnicities (Gabaccia, 1998). There has
been, in a sense, a ‘‘dumbing down’’ of ethnic ingredients and tastes to make them more acceptable to large
number of people who were previously unfamiliar with
Consumer deskilling and transformation of food systems
them. This process has become generalized throughout
the processed food spectrum. Industry offers – and many
people now choose – foods dominated by undistinguishable tastes of salt or sugar. The object is to develop
and sell foods with no objectionable tastes, rather than to
produce foods characterized by strong flavors that may
only appeal to a limited segment of the market. The result
is the widespread consumption of bland-tasting fast
foods, which people buy because they are safe, predictable, and convenient (Levenstein, 1993).
In most grocery stores in North America, there is a
great diversity of fruits and vegetables available. It appears, however, that most people are eating a very narrow
range of what is offered. Much of the fruit eaten is citrus,
and much of that is sold as packaged juice (Putnam,
2000). In the case of apples, there may appear to be more
cultivars available on the shelves than in previous years
(although, at least in Western Canada, the most frequently found apple cultivars in the supermarket – the
gala, fuji, and red delicious – are all variations of the
delicious apple), but it is unusual to find varieties with a
specific purpose, or sold by particular characteristics.
Generally, all supermarket apples are eating apples. Most
are large and polished, and sold by the piece. There is
very little to distinguish them, except color, shape, and
size. Variable margin pricing, which often raises the
relative price of low cost goods, may make it harder to
identify which variety is locally produced. Thus, one
cannot really know what is local, in season, or a good
buy. Furthermore, when so much of what is offered tastes
similarly bland and nondescript, consumers become easy
to mold. Food manufacturers, advertisers, and supermarkets use subliminal seduction to entice consumers.
More fundamentally, consumers no longer have memories of how various apples can taste and, likewise, do not
know how tomatoes, strawberries, chicken, or even eggs
can taste. They therefore do not know what they are
missing. They do not demand something different, and
few can discern or develop loyalties to quality.
In the average grocery store in the 1950s and 1960s one
could find poultry of many types – fryers, broilers, roasters,
stewing and soup hens, and capons. Buyers used to purchase the whole bird, so they had to know how to cut up the
chicken, how to process the organs, etc. They might have
made soup with the bits and pieces that remained after the
chicken was prepared for cooking. (Soup is an especially
good example of the use of by-products, leftovers, or low
cost ingredients to make high quality food – or to make
high-profit, processed, canned product in the case of
manufactured soups.) Today, one can find fryers – whole or
in pieces, with the bone or without, with skin or skinless –
and the occasional roaster. They can also be purchased
‘‘pre-seasoned,’’ meaning that the barbecue sauce, seasoned salt, or Shake ‘n BakeTM was added in the store,
rather than at home. Consumers can also purchase frozen
155
pre-prepared breasts, wings, and chicken fingers. Finding a
soup hen will, however, be difficult if not impossible.
One reason consumers may embrace processed food is
precisely because it allows distancing from the organic
character of food, including the fact that it once was a
living, breathing animal and that it may be subject to
putrefaction, attack by insects, etc. For many people,
food was all too inescapably organic and the packaged
product beckoning from the shelf was welcome relief
from the drudgery and psychological pain that went with
preparing food from scratch – starting with catching and
killing it, uprooting it, or cutting it. Western societies
have long had a contradictory, ambivalent relationship
with meat – evidenced today in the strongly contrasting
views regarding its nutritional value (Lupton, 1996) and
the increasing tendency for butchering, and even tablecarving, to be moved off-scene (Visser, 1986). In this
case, consumers may have made the ‘‘choice’’ to become
deskilled.
One measure of consumer skill is the ability to make
shopping selections so as to minimize the cost of a given
array of desired foodstuffs, or to achieve a goal of
healthy eating while avoiding paying excessively for the
privilege. In 1999, Americans spent 10.4% of their
household disposable personal income on food – 6.2%
for food at home and 4.2% for food away from home
(USDA, 2001). Many if not most American consumers
have lost (or never acquired) the skills needed to make
use of basic commodities in a manner that allows them to
enjoy a high quality diet while simultaneously eating
lower on the food (marketing) chain, and for less money.
In this matter, shoppers are certainly not aided by
retailers or the food industry. In 1999, the average
American supermarket contained 49,225 products – more
than three times the number in 1980, but just a fraction of
the over one million items on the market. In the same
year, the food industry introduced 9,664 entirely new
products, and 16,544 new flavors, colors, or varieties of
products already on supermarket shelves (Food Marketing Institute, 2001). In the expanding universe of proliferating products, shoppers carry around a tremendous
volume of information about brands, logos, new merchandise, and variants on these commodities based on
minor but ceaseless manipulations of formats, packaging,
ingredients, and image. The result is that typical store or
restaurant patrons possess a superficial knowledge about
a wide array of foodstuffs, but rarely know very much
about any one product. They lack useful, in-depth
understanding that would allow them to take discerning
choices reflecting nutritional or health implications,
equivalents or alternatives, and ecological or social
implications. While patrons know something about typical or normal prices for some items, new products and
their predictable mutations totally overrun the ability of
even the most engaged consumer to continue to
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JoAnn Jaffe and Michael Gertler
differentiate and weigh the options presented. Bombardment with new options and derivations eventually
outstrips everyone’s capacities to remember prices, make
comparisons, and chose wisely.
Grocery stores generally compete aggressively on only
a few hundred items for which people more typically have
price information. Examples include bread, bananas, oranges, eggs, butter, milk, pop, tuna, sardines, hamburger,
chicken, and hotdogs. In general, however, supermarket
pricing policies are confusing. Variable margin pricing in
which different kinds of goods – or even different varieties or brands of the same family of goods – receive a
differential markup, render it harder to discern what is
really plentiful or local or in season. In many instances,
retailers use shadow pricing rather than cost-based pricing. They pay more attention to the relevant competition
than they do to the margin. All of this is designed to
extract the maximum that ‘‘the market will bear.’’ Consumers are the ones who ultimately pay the costs of
expensive retail palaces, huge inventories, mind-boggling
variations, advertisement, and underemployed staff.
How are we to judge what is a fair price even if we
have some idea about the origins of the product and the
key ingredients? By the time the package is reconfigured,
new ingredients added, and others removed, who can say
what is a fair price, and what really constitutes value
added? It is not easy even for the dedicated professional
to make these distinctions and evaluations. The average
consumer is further challenged by the widespread use of
synthetic substitutes with names that sound very much
like the original, natural ingredient – the synthetic flavoring vanillin, for example. The gap continues to grow
between what a typical consumer possesses by way of
information and what one would need to know in order
to analyze, in a meaningful way, the choices available
and the cost trade-offs involved.
While it is easy to blame all of this on food manufacturers and retailers, it must be recognized that the
conspiracy is much wider. Other actors in the food chain
are enlisted and their silence and acquiescence guaranteed, in part, (but likely only in part), because of the
market power of dominant players (Raven and Lang,
1995). Farmers and processors rely on grocery product
manufacturers and on retailers for market access. They
are unlikely to want to risk being shut out of the market
by complaining publicly about pricing policies, shoddy
practices, or unhealthy ingredients. Marketing boards and
similar marketing organizations may also be part of the
tacit collusion to keep consumers in the dark and to
charge them dearly for the privilege of eating in ignorance. In Canada, for example, the price of fresh market
eggs subsidizes the cheap sale of eggs for breaking/
industrial purposes. The end effect is to make processed
products look less expensive. State-mandated grading
systems likewise can have negative implications for the
competencies and sovereignty of consumers. Food
graders and inspectors typically measure quality primarily in terms of color, size, tenderness, and ‘‘acceptable’’ levels of filth and toxic residues. The standards are
most often silent with respect to flavor, vitamin and trace
mineral content, or other key determinants of nutritional
value. In many jurisdictions, taxpayers pay the lion’s
share of grading and inspection costs, with the food
industry defraying only a small fraction of the bill. Are
consumers well served and are they adequately informed
in the process?
The ambiguous role that has sometimes been played
by home economists, dieticians, and nutritionists has
already been raised. This is especially evident when such
professionals are in the direct employ of the industry, but
is not necessarily limited to such instances. Consumer
groups often reflect dominant expert opinion and, under
such leadership, do less than they could to defend the
interests of consumers in learning the real story with
respect to quality or the tradeoffs involved in industrial
production methods. The hand of food system professionals is also evident in the judging standards used at
agricultural fairs. In fruits and vegetables categories, for
example, prizes are awarded based on relatively superficial criteria for quality such as uniformity, color, and
size. Nor does the consumer receive much help from the
mass media. Newspapers and other outlets are largely
silent about systemic problems in the agri-food sector, or
they provide only a shallow analysis of the issues. This is
perhaps related to the size of the advertising budgets of
food manufactures and retailers. To this long list must be
added restaurant chains and hotel and cooking schools.
Many bear some responsibility for deskilling of consumers and food service professionals. There is a frequent tendency to emphasize service, presentation, and
image, but relatively little attention is given to maintaining the health of the eater or of the ecosystem.
Deskilling and the prospects for sustainable
consumption
The inability to make discerning choices while walking
down the market aisle ends up costing affluent customers
a surtax on their grocery bill – and perhaps some unwanted pounds. For others, especially those whose finances and/or health are marginal, the consequences can
be considerably more drastic. The impact is especially
pernicious in the Third World where local diets and
foodstuffs are displaced and forsaken in favor of relatively expensive or unhealthy, imported and manufactured products. The results go beyond loss of indigenous
knowledge and skills. In many instances the repercussions include worsened nutritional status and greater risk
of degenerative disease (Shell, 2001).
Consumer deskilling and transformation of food systems
With respect to food and product selection, most
consumers lack the scientific and practical knowledge to
make choices that reflect their fundamental interests in
health, longevity, and obtaining value for money. Thanks
to the pervasive meta-narrative in consumer advertising,
we may also lack the orientation or presence of mind to
think of foods and food choices as something we can use
to exercise real influence with respect to our own family’s health and the health of the planet. We are unlikely
to be thinking about implications for hunger, for the
distribution of power and control in the food chain, for
local and international development, for animal welfare,
or for the ecological impacts of provisioning activities.
These kinds of concerns are systematically purged from
our consciousness as we are schooled to focus on more
superficial issues such as the ‘‘bite’’ of a root beer or the
‘‘crunch’’ of a snack food or breakfast cereal.
For some groups, deskilling around food takes on an
additional cultural dimension. For the Inuit and other
Aboriginal peoples inhabiting the Canadian North, for
example, the activities and skills involved in hunting,
gathering, and preparing wild foods are integral and
central to the reproduction of culture, social life, and
identity. When these skills are lost or fail to be passed on
due to settlement in towns, schooling, or destruction of
the food source, the damage can include malnutrition,
loss of connection to the land, and loss of key components of the culture. The relationship between youths and
adults is ruptured. Family life is undermined. In some
instances, the central importance of ‘‘country foods’’ in
diets, and in social and economic life, means that
indigenous peoples will continue to eat fish, sea mammals, and other game despite dangerously elevated levels
of heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, or other
contaminants. Maintaining skills that are at the center of
the cultural complex implies taking severe health risks
thanks to the pollution that is imposed, in part, by the
atmospheric transport and local deposition of pesticides
used in Southern agro-food systems. Given the high
levels of pesticides and other industrial toxins that are
concentrated in breast milk, the most basic act of nursing
a baby becomes an occasion for doubt, stress, and fear
(see Powell and Leiss, 1997).
A pertinent and poignant example can be seen in the
Mohawk Nation of Awkwasasne along the St. Lawrence
River.13 In the late 1980s, exposure assessments of
Mohawk women showed a positive association between
lifetime exposure to PCBs from the consumption of local
contaminated fish, a traditional high protein staple, and
PCB concentrations in their breast milk. This association
was no longer observed among women who gave birth
after 1990, as their fish consumption had declined dramatically due to the success of hazard warnings in
shifting people away from this culturally important food
source (Myers et al., 1995). Examples such as these
157
illustrate the processes that undermine food security and
food sovereignty. First, deskilling or, in this case, the
subverting of self-provisioning systems and the knowledge base that goes with them is often not voluntary.
Rather, autonomy in provisioning is undermined by
decisions made by other, more powerful actors or by
forces that appear to be impersonal due to distancing in
time and space. Second, deskilling occurs in the context
of other powerful processes of restructuring of social,
economic, and technical relationships that impinge upon
personal choices, empowerment, and control.
The McDonaldization literature suggests that progressive deskilling will make it difficult for most consumers to recognize and respond to challenges presented
by an increasingly industrialized and corporatized food
system. On the other hand, one cannot review the origins
and dimensions of deskilling processes without also
noting the many forms and sources of resistance. Food
arouses deep passions and is a powerful symbol around
which to organize. Moreover, myriad minor quotidian
acts of resistance can be chronicled in the new foods
people try, the ethical choices they make, the skills and
tastes they pass on, and in the resolutions that they make
with respect to eating more wisely.
The potential for effective resistance around reskilling
and food sovereignty is increased by the links that exist
between branches of this broad struggle – food security,
anti-hunger, fair trade, urban gardening, and community
kitchen projects, for example. There are also strong links to
other growing movements to protect biological diversity,
water quality, and wildlife habitat; movements with respect to vegetarianism and animal welfare; and many
forms of anti-corporate and anti-globalization initiatives.
This food-centered political project also has potentially
strong links to movements for female liberation and for
reassertion of consumer control in the health system. In
fact, the growing crisis in the health of both affluent and
impoverished populations suggests that there is going to be
more, not less, attention given to the food-health nexus.
Links between two other closely related initiatives
provide particular hope. These are the locally resurgent
movements to control food distribution via health food
co-operatives, and the burgeoning worldwide movement
towards organic agriculture. While the record of mainstream co-operative retail outlets has been mixed with
respect to the empowerment of patrons through promotion of deeper and fuller forms of consumer literacy, the
logic and principles of co-operative food distribution
argue in favor of conspiring with, rather than against, the
member-customer (Gertler, 2001). As demonstrated by
the food co-operatives that were first spawned by the
alternative food movement in the 1970s, such organizations can grow and develop in many directions. They can
become one of the important initiators in new relations
between rural and urban-based people who need each
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JoAnn Jaffe and Michael Gertler
other in order to catalyze a new regime of sustainable
livelihoods and sustainable consumption.
Whether these activities represent principled and
conscious resistance or lean more to accommodation
and cooptation remains to be seen, however. Much
effort is focused on marketing new products or on
changing the characteristics of existing commodities.
These efforts frequently stress only a small subset of
food sovereignty issues and tend to isolate consumption
from the rest of the system of agriculture production.
Some activists’ efforts focus on the commodity and not
on reconstructing or challenging the food system by
rethinking the social relationships of production and
exchange. While this makes accomplishing the objective feasible, because it means just changing what
someone buys, in many cases this amounts to the
swapping of one type of commodity for another
without changing the orientations or behaviors of
consumers. Many activists were hopeful that the organic movement would provide a springboard from
which to remake the agro-food system. Unfortunately,
this example can also be used to show how difficult it
can be to move beyond the dominant trajectory in
agriculture. ‘‘Organic’’ is now an official designation
that has been legally codified in the US and elsewhere.
For the most part, it has come to mean the absence of
pesticides, rather than a more holistic approach to
environmental and social challenges. This narrowing of
the focus of organic is a reductionist move that makes
it possible for transnationals like Cargill and ConAgra
to adopt the green mantle by offering an organic line of
products. Not incidentally, it also allows them to exploit a niche market with high profit potential. In the
process, agribusiness domination of the food system is
extended; small farmers continue to be undermined and
consumers remain disenfranchised. Post-Fordist possibilities are re-constituted in essentially Fordist structures that fail to challenge relations of power and
control (Guthman, 2004).14
Whether one reads recent developments as reasons to
be cautiously optimistic or increasingly alarmed, the
struggle for control over the food system will continue to
hinge in large measure on the awareness and mobilization of consumers. To the degree that eating can become
a political act linked to the development of a deeper
literacy about food and to the degree that the many
(dis)interested parties can find reasons to coalesce around
shared interests in a just and ecologically sound provisioning system, there is reason for hope. Struggles
around deskilling and reskilling in both production and
consumption remain critical. The contest around access
to and control of information, and over the framing of
debates and perceptions about agriculture and food,
continue to be a high stakes game. Those who make it
their business to share knowledge and to empower
themselves and other people involved in production and
consumption represent a challenge to dominant development trajectories and to conservative doctrines of
necessity and inevitability. In an information economy,
the struggle over relevant knowledge and know-how is
key. Skilled consumers will be vital to the positive
transformation of food systems. Deskilled consumers
will be their own worst enemies and will undermine
possibilities for progressive change up and down the
food chain. Those who hope to re-form agri-food systems
by educating consumers, by social marketing, or by
lobbying for clarity in labeling should not underestimate
the ‘‘communications’’ capacity of the industrial agrifood complex and its allies. The budgets and manpower
deployed to disseminate the corporate line dwarf the
combined resources of the groups now lining up to
contest control of diets and foodways. Only by the
broadest of mobilizations will such a barrage of halftruths, obfuscations, and misrepresentations be answered
and rendered harmless.
Acknowledgements
We wish to acknowledge and to thank Michael Mehta,
Brett Fairbairn, Bob Stirling, and several anonymous
reviewers for useful challenges, additional suggestions,
and examples. They do not share responsibility for any
remaining errors or ambiguities. An earlier version of this
paper was presented at the Annual Meetings of the
Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society in Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 2001. We benefited from the
feedback we received from the participants in the session.
Notes
1. Hegemony is here used in the Gramscian sense in which
‘‘dominant groups in society, including fundamentally but
not exclusively the ruling class, maintain their dominance
by securing the ‘spontaneous consent’ of subordinate
groups, including the working class, through the negotiated construction of a political and ideological consensus
which incorporates both dominant and dominated groups’’
(Strinati, 1995: 165).
2. F. W. Taylor advanced the view in Scientific Management,
published in 1911, that factories should be managed
through scientific methods rather than by use of the
empirical ‘‘rule of thumb.’’ One of the key ideas of scientific management is the concept of task allocation or
breaking a task into smaller and smaller tasks, which allows the task to be performed most efficiently. Some other
elements of Taylorism are time studies, functional or specialized supervision, standardization of tools, implements
and work methods, a separate planning function, the use of
time-saving devices, the use of the ‘‘differential rate’’ and
bonuses for performance, and modern costing systems.
Consumer deskilling and transformation of food systems
3. ‘‘The jobs tend to involve a series of simple tasks in which
the emphasis is on performing each as efficiently as possible. Second, the time associated with many of the tasks is
carefully calculated and the emphasis on the quantity of
time a task should take tends to diminish the quality of the
work from the point of view of the worker. That is, tasks
are so simplified and streamlined that they provide little or
no meaning to the worker. Third, the work is predictable;
employees do and say essentially the same things hour
after hour, day after day. Fourth, many non-human technologies are employed to control workers and reduce them
to robot-like actions... Finally, the rationalized McJobs
lead to a variety of irrationalities, especially the dehumanization of work’’ (Ritzer, 1998: 60).
4. As such, it bears a clear relation to Marx’s multi-dimensional concept of alienation.
5. We do not mean to imply that the female gendering of
cooking is complete. Not all women cook, and some men
have always cooked, even if only for themselves when
women were not present. Thanks to Brett Fairbairn for
reminding us of the scene in ‘‘The Godfather’’ where one
Mafioso shows the other how to make tomato sauce!
6. An example par excellence is The Settlement Cookbook,
compiled by Mrs. Simon Kander. The Settlement Cookbook’s subtitle is ‘‘The Way to a Man’s Heart.’’ It presented ‘‘tested recipes from the Milwaukee Public School
Kitchens Girls Trades and Technical High School,
Authoritative Dietitians and Experienced Housewives’’
(Kander, 1947: iii). It instructed its readers on household
rules – including setting the table, directions for serving,
and care of appliances and tableware – and nutrition for
each member of the family. One of its primary targets was
immigrant women, who needed instruction on the arts of
the American kitchen. In addition to its many recipes for
‘‘American cuisine,’’ it offered standardized renditions of
some of the most popular foods of the ethnic groups who
would be using the cookbook.
7. Restaurant visit data was compiled by Schlosser (2001: 3,
47, 275) based upon National Restaurant Association data;
hamburger and French fry consumption figures are computed by Schlosser (2001: 277) based upon data contained
in the article ‘‘Hamburger consumption takes a hit, but a
reversal of fortune is in the offing,’’ National Provisioner
(1999) and in the USDA Economic Research Service’s
(2000), ‘‘Potatoes: U.S. per capita utilization by category,
1991–1999.’’
8. It is important to note that even well before the 20th century breast-feeding had been unpopular with many wealthy
women, hence the long-standing occupation of wet-nurse.
Wealthy women have a lengthy history as status objects for
men. Formula became one more way for poor or middleclass women to imitate the refined lifestyle of the rich.
9. Article 5.2 of the WHO Code states ‘‘Manufacturers and
distributors should not provide, directly or indirectly, to
pregnant women, mothers or members of their families,
samples of products within the scope of this Code.’’ Article
6.2 states ‘‘No facility of a health care system should be
used for the purpose of promoting infant formula or other
products within the scope of this Code.’’ Articles 6.6 and
6.7 state ‘‘Donations or low-price sales to institutions or
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
159
organizations of supplies of infant formula or other
products within the scope of this Code, whether for use in
the institutions or for distribution outside them, may be
made. Such supplies should only be used or distributed for
infants who have to be fed on breast milk substitutes. If
these supplies are distributed for use outside the institutions, this should be done only by the institutions or
organizations concerned. Such donations or low-price sales
should not be used by manufacturers or distributors as a
sales inducement. Where donated supplies of infant formula or other products within the scope of this Code are
distributed outside an institution, the institution or organization should take steps to ensure that supplies can be
continued as long as the infants concerned need them.
Donors, as well as institutions or organizations concerned,
should bear in mind this responsibility’’ (WHO, 2003).
‘‘Assuming that the bioavailability of the beta-carotene in
the GE rice would be as high as in vegetables and fruits,
then (in accordance with the new US National Academy of
Sciences Institute of Medicine recommendation): A woman
would need to consume 3.75 kg GE rice per day (i.e.,
around 9 kg of cooked rice), 6.375 kg per day when breast
feeding, in order to get sufficient vitamin A if the GE rice is
the only source of vitamin A and provitamin A. A two year
old child would need to eat 3 kilograms of GE rice a day
(i.e., around 7 kg of cooked rice). So, if a female would
consume 300 g of (uncooked) GE rice per day (three
servings of 100 g), and no other vitamin A-rich food she
would only obtain 8% of the recommended daily intake of
vitamin A. If she is breast-feeding she would obtain only
4.7% of the recommended daily intake. A two-year-old
child would get 10% of the recommended daily intake
when eating 300 g of rice’’ (Greenpeace, 2001). Furthermore, beta-carotene can only be converted to vitamin A in
well-nourished bodies and needs the concomitant consumption of oils to be absorbed. In the south, poor people’s
diets are often deficient in fats and oils.
Of course, supermarkets are interested in knowing about
consumer preferences. They have achieved their dominance in the food system in part through competitive
practices designed to capture consumer dollars. One
important recent development has been the use of computerized surveillance technologies aimed at the consumer,
such as membership cards, to allow the retailer to finely
tune its product line and marketing pitch to smaller subgroup of consumers.
In this case, cross-subsidization refers to the use of resources, revenues or profits generated by one product or
service to fund other (temporarily less profitable) products
or services supplied by the same firm.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this example.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this point.
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Address for correspondence: JoAnn Jaffe, Department of
Sociology and Social Studies, University of Regina, Regina,
Saskatchewan S4S 0A2, Canada
Phone: +1-306-585-4198; Fax: +1-306-585-4815;
E-mail: [email protected]