Part of the Taste and Interdisciplinary Food Studies Network at Westminster seminar series
Over recent years, the NOVA framework has exploded in popularity, both in mainstream nutritional sciences and amongst the public. Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs) – representing the highest degree of industrial processing in the framework – have swiftly become demonised, despite unresolved debates and scientific uncertainty around the concept. Academic and popular media discourses that insist UPFs are ‘not food’, but instead a sort of food-like slop, evoke disgust among consumers, who in turn engage in UPF reduction and elimination as a personal project. This serves to distract from and conceal deeper social inequality, increase stigma, and flatten the complex reasons why people eat these foods. Policy recommendations to reduce UPF consumption almost always hinge on increasing foodwork at the individual level. This in turn risks deepening nutrition disparities via the unequal distribution of gendered, classed, and racialised foodwork. Through engaging with a variety of popular media and scientific discourse, this talk aims to reveal some of the ideology underpinning how we relate to the concept of UPFs.
Location
Room Regent Street 352, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2HW.
Nearest station: Oxford Circus
About the speaker
Dr Laura Thomas
Dr Laura Thomas (PhD, RNutr, PGDip) is a weight-inclusive registered nutritionist, host of Can I Have Another Snack? and author of two books, Just Eat It (2019) and How to Just Eat It (2021). Laura is particularly interested in the ways we talk about ultra-processed food and how the framing of these discussions entrenches expectations around gendered, racialised, and classed foodwork, particularly when it intersects with intensive mothering culture and the increasingly demanding pressure to feed kids ‘perfectly’.
