Health Without Bodies
Author | : Kim Hendrickx |
Publisher | : Springer Nature |
Total Pages | : 197 |
Release | : 2023-11-22 |
ISBN-10 | : 9789819949502 |
ISBN-13 | : 9819949505 |
Rating | : 4/5 (02 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: Health Without Bodies invites readers on an ethnographic exploration of the boundary between food and medicine. Food-related health claims are governed in the EU as voluntary statements on food labels to help consumers make ‘informed choices’. This poses an interesting problem: when claims refer to health, one can no longer ignore that consumers have bodies. Asking how these claims have become possible as a new kind of truth-statement on the market, this book reveals the contours of a fundamental tension between what is expected from consumers in a liberal market economy, and how food and the body come to trouble those expectations. In doing so, it illuminates why the difference between food and medicine is such a sensitive issue, and why seemingly trivial health claims have been subject to so much debate and political control.