‘A holistic approach’: incorporating sustainability into biopedagogies of healthy eating in Sweden’s dietary guidelines

Abstract

Dietary guidelines can be considered a pedagogical tool, designed to promote healthy eating at the population level. In this study, we critically examine the biopedagogies implicated in Sweden’s official dietary guidelines. Published in 2015, these guidelines take a potentially innovative ‘holistic approach’ to food and eating, addressing the challenge of formulating dietary advice that considers both human health and environmental concerns. Applying Bacchi´s ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ approach, we interrogate how the guidelines frame the interplay of public health concerns and environmental concerns in making food choices. We find that the biopedagogies of sustainable eating, as presented in these guidelines, implicate the subject position of the ideal eater. The ideal eater values sustainability, has high cultural capital, and draws on both taste and nutritional knowledge to make good food choices. However, while the ideal eater is expected to be aware of environmental issues, these are incorporated into the ideal eater’s choices only in addition to the primary concern of health. Thus, although the guidelines frame a ‘holistic approach’ as the solution to both health and environmental concerns, in cases where health and environmental priorities conflict, the guidelines’ biopedagogies of sustainable eating align with earlier biopedagogies of healthy eating.

An incongruous intervention: Exploring the role of anti‐institutionalism in less‐educated individual’s limited uptake of nutrition information

“…Nutrition information provided by institutions mainly populated by more‐educated individuals is therefore likely to be perceived by less‐educated individuals as an attempt to force them to adopt elements of a highbrow lifestyle (Bergman et al, 2020 ), in line with so‐called ‘civilizing offensives’ common in Dutch history (Van den Berg & Duyvendak, 2012 ): “Deliberate, conscious attempts of powerful groups, including a historically paternalistic state, at altering the behaviour of sections of the population and inculcating lasting, ‘civilized’ habits” (Powell, 2013 , n.p.). The feelings of misrecognition and subsequent anti‐institutionalism this fuels can affect the uptake of nutrition information from institutional sources.…”

Receptive to an authoritative voice? Experimental evidence on how patronizing language and stressing institutional sources affect public receptivity to nutrition information

“…Indeed, the former often have a greater appreciation of individual liberties and self-actualization ( Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002 ; Houtman et al, 2011 , 2021 ) and may therefore detest being told what to do – especially if this is done in a manner that is so simplified and direct that it implies they lack the relevant knowledge. Moreover, indications in previous studies that less-educated individuals especially feel patronized by (health) professionals and institutions ( Bergman et al, 2020 ; Noordzij et al, 2021b ) might be due to very different factors than the type of language. Future research could shed light on this.…”

“…Indeed, it is argued that initiatives by a dominant group that seek to ‘edify’ the dominated have an aura of power dynamics, with the former being accused of believing that they have the moral superiority to decide what is best for the latter ( Jackman, 1994 ; Veldheer et al, 2019 ). These power dynamics are also very much in play in health inequalities ( Bergman et al, 2020 ; McCartney et al, 2020 ) and have a role in conflicts between educational groups ( Stubager, 2009 ). When the language in information that already condemns certain lifestyle elements is also patronizing, it probably increases the perception that the behavior is regarded as morally wrong, reflecting the stigmatization that less-educated individuals already feel.…”

Health beyond medicine. A planetary theory extension

“…If we furthermore find that this three‐dimensional ‘healthicisation’ is currently being expanded beyond the human organism, psyche and person and applied to ‘the’ environment of individual humans or humanity (Bergman et al., 2020; Herrick, 2020) up to the point where we find sufficient momentum for the launch of a journal such as ‘The Lancet Planetary Health’, then we are clearly confronted not only with potential excesses of bio‐political interventions or claims (Hamilton, 2018) but also with several serious challenges for the social‐theoretical conceptualisation of health and illness.…”