The nomenclature for foods that are lower than usual in calories and/or fat has been changing. But is that because the food industry is following consumers’ desires – or shaping them?
That’s one of the questions addressed in a fascinating article in Bon Appétit by Alex Beggs. It’s a long piece and I can’t do it justice in a blog post, but I’d like to concentrate on one aspect: the transition from “diet” to “wellness” as a marketing strategy.
Beggs lays out how in the 1980s, government and other authorities started warning about the harmfulness of fat, cholesterol, sugar and salt. Diet foods suddenly swamped the supermarkets. Diet Coke, Tab, Lean Cuisine, Weight Watchers and similar products appeared, all catering to the massive insecurities raised by fat phobia; according to a 1983 poll by Glamour cited by Beggs, 76% – seventy-six percent – of the women who responded said they were “too fat.”
Then a shift came around. Beggs identifies one bellwether event as the introduction of Healthy Choice frozen meals by ConAgra Foods (as it was then called). She writes: “Healthy Choice stood out because it wasn’t marketed as a weight-loss solution the way Weight Watchers’ frozen dinners were. The focus was on ‘healthy.’”
Beggs goes on to argue, convincingly, that “health and wellness” has dethroned “diet” as the term of choice for marketing to consumers who are concerned about their weight. But it’s really the same wine in another bottle – or (almost) the same diet soda marketed as Coke Zero instead of Diet Coke. She refers to “Anti-Diet,” a book by a dietitian named Christy Harrison: “In her book, Harrison writes about how the wellness industry seems to be selling overall health, but it can’t exist without making you fear being unhealthy, which most Americans still associate with fatness.”
To me, the transition from “diet” to “wellness” had always seemed like a natural one. Healthy eating is something that should be practiced year around, not just when you’re “dieting.”
But Beggs’ article gave me something to think about. Yes, it’s healthier for the consumer to seek good nutrition as the norm. But that approach also opens the door for “healthy” or “better-for-you” processed foods to be consumed year-around, instead of during diets.
That’s just good marketing, I suppose. But there’s something slightly sinister about it. It amounts to an acknowledgement that our collective anxiety about our health and, especially, appearance will never really go away. It must be constantly kept at bay by foods that we once associated with periods of self-deprivation, which isn’t a very cheery prospect.
As Beggs eloquently writes:
Food companies are responding to the demands of the marketplace, and those demands reflect all of our inner demons: body insecurity, food guilt, wanting to be a “better” person, a willingness to trade off flavor for perceived nutrition, never-ending confusion over what “healthy” even means, feelings of utter lack of control in a chaotic world, fear of death. So we end up volleying these anxieties back and forth at each other from behind the frosted freezer doors.
