paleo diet blogs and commodity fetishism

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WMST6903 GENDER, MEDIA AND CONSUMER SOCIETIES | ASSIGNMENT 3 – CASE STUDYALLISON JONES | 310268141

Paleo diet blogs: A case study of how commodity fetishism manifests in a diet subculture

“A lot of people on here are living the Paleo myth and that's fine, if it's

working for you: namely, you are truly maintaining good health. The

problem with myths is that they can fail you and you are so submerged in

them (like the fish scientists) that you can't see beyond them. There is at

least a comfort that comes from the certainty they provide.

Now I've got to tell you. I have been seduced by the Paleo narrative, but

it's time to throw it off. I have fared dismally on the Paleo diet. Mind

you, when I began this experiment I was not overweight. I have eaten

healthy for a long, long time, so I did not come to this screwed up from a

SAD diet. However, the negative results from this diet (for me, I

must qualify) have been dramatic. Despite having come to this

conclusion about two weeks ago, when I think about it, sometimes a voice

whispers to me, "...what would your Paleolithic ancestors have done?" “

(user “Thomas Seay” on PaleoHacks.com)

Introduction

In the Western world, the past decade in particular has seen an apparent

gastronomic fixation emerge, both reflected in and propelled by, different forms

of media, specifically television programs such as Masterchef, Two Fat Ladies

and Nigella Bites and their spinoff books and websites. The proverbial

watercooler at work, the Twitter feed and the Facebook wall are not immune

from the influence of this obsession with food, its provenance and its role as

WMST6903 GENDER, MEDIA AND CONSUMER SOCIETIES | ASSIGNMENT 3ALLISON JONES | 310268141

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lifestyle accessory. Movements or trends such as Slow Food1, locavorism2 and

community gardens are gaining increasing amounts of media attention, entering

the lexicon and taking on significance within a growing anti-consumerist3

context.

Concurrently, more significant trends impact the context that these consumption

trends have emerged within: the startling rates of chronic illness rates in

developed nations such as the United States4 , healthcare systems that are

overstretched5 and the increasing use of the Internet as a source of health

information6 by lay people. The authors of Macrowikinomics believe that the

traditional health care paradigm of patients as passive health-care receivers and

doctors as the all-knowing provider is being challenged, a challenge facilitated by

the collaborative communication model of particular types of community

websites:

“And, just as journalists now coexist with a much broader ecosystem of

knowledge producers, self-organising patient communities and a greater

emphasis on education and preventative medicine are beginning to

augment conventional health care”.

1 Slow Food is an international movement, originally from northern Italy with a manifesto as follows:

“Slow Food's approach to agriculture, food production and gastronomy is based on a concept of food quality defined by three interconnected principles:

GOOD a fresh and flavorsome seasonal diet that satisfies the senses and is part of our local culture;CLEAN food production and consumption that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health;FAIR accessible prices for consumers and fair conditions and pay for small-scale producers.”http://www.slowfood.com/international/2/our-philosophy?-session=query_session:7CA8B9CD0ef1b0A4E8QLVX46AFA9

2 A “locavore” is defined as “a person whose diet consists only or principally of locally grown or produced food.”http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/locavore?region=us

3 Binkley (2008) identifies a growing anti-consumerist theme to modern consumption practices, which has become an almost de rigeur lifestyle choice for many consumer sectors rather than simply intellectuals and radicals.

4 Data from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention states that about 133 million Americans—nearly 1 in 2 adults—live with at least one chronic illness: http://www.cdc.gov /chronicdisease/resources/publications/AAG/pdf/chronic.pdf

5 According to Armstrong et al, “...advances are now under threat as our health system is stretched by an ageing population, the growing burden of chronic illness, and the increasingly outmoded organisation of our health services.” (2007)

6 Research by The Pew Internet and American Life Project (Fox and Jones: 2009) reports that 74% of American adults use the Internet and that 83% of them look online for health information (regardless of whether they have a chronic disease or not).


http://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/publications/AAG/pdf/chronic.pdf

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(Tapscott and Williams, 2010: 26)

This societal context of intersecting trends and an undercurrent of discontent

and impending crisis, is the focus for this paper which will explore the hypothesis

that specific forms of digital media both reveal and drive the commodity

fetishisation of food through their content and production models. A case study

of two different Paleo diet websites – Nom Nom Paleo and PaleoHacks - will be

used to illustrate this hypothesis, with emphasis on the forms this fetishisation

takes. The significance of the growth of these types of movements in relation to

late capitalism will also be examined.

The Paleo diet: eat like a caveman

The Paleo diet, or ‘caveman’ diet, is one that purports to be a return to a style of

eating prior to the agricultural revolution and our modern day diet with its

abundance of processed, convenience foods. As such, the diet revolves around

fresh, unprocessed food - specifically meat, seafood, poultry, nuts, seeds,

vegetables and fruit. Professor Loren Cordain, one of the foremost Paleo

proponents, writes in The Paleo Solution of

“...the remarkable good health of our Paleolithic ancestors, and how that

health changed with the transition to agriculture and a diet dominated by

humanity’s “double-edged sword” – cereal grains.”

(Wolf, 2010: 9)

It is important to note that Paleo is considered ‘alternative’ as it sits outside of,

and in opposition to, the more common ‘SAD’ (Standard American Diet) which is

endorsed by various government agencies and promoted with such devices as

the Food Pyramid. The influence of SAD permeates different areas where power

is enacted: the medical profession, via nutritionists and health authorities, and

academia, in the form of the syllabus content all the way from early education to

tertiary education.

Paleo stands alongside more overtly anti-consumerist movements, such as strict

veganism and raw foodism, that are opposed to elements of mass food

production associated with late capitalism: factory-farmed animals, heavily

processed and marketed foods, exploitation of impoverished producers, and the

high “food miles” food often takes from farm to plate. It is an attempt to return


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to a way of eating supposedly closer to our evolutionary genetics, however most

adherents are not attempting to re-create the Paleolithic lifestyle as such. There

is emphasis placed on the provenance and production of food, for example the

encouragement to eat grass-fed rather than grain-fed beef, and wild, rather than

farmed, seafood.

An observation of the two sites examined for this paper reveals that people are

drawn to the diet and its attendant media (books, videos, websites and a newly

launched magazine) for a variety of reasons: the primary ones being the

management of, or hope of reversing, a chronic illness; a simple desire to be

healthy; weight loss goals, and physical and mental fitness. Since the diet is a

significant shift from the dominant “SAD”, Paleo media is consumed in order to

understand its finer details, to access creative food ideas and to communicate

with fellow Paleo adherents in supportive, collaborative environments.

The Paleo movement has spawned a niche market in specially-formulated

products that adhere to its dietary commandments and encourage people to stay

on the diet, with an implicit message that Paleo foods can be fun, attractive and

convenient - albeit expensive. These niche products serve to naturalise and

endorse the Paleo diet along with Paleo media and the scientific and medical

professionals who support it.

Figure 1: Paleo products. Source: nomnompaleo.com


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Commodity Fetishism: religious fervour in late capitalism

In citing Jhally, who wrote of Marx’s conception of the ‘commodity fetish’, Coles

and Crang outline that “as consumers, we usually know little about where the

goods we consume come from, of exactly what they are composed, under what

conditions they came to be...” (2010: 3). Jhally places the practice of advertising

as a central technique for inscribing meaning in goods where it had previously

been stripped from it during the production process (2000). The process of

commodity fetishism involves “imaginary/symbolic relations to be injected into

the construction of meaning at a secondary level” (2000:73). Since Paleo is an

emerging niche market, and Paleo foods are generally non-packaged and non-

branded compared to those that make up the SAD, I argue that in the Paleo

movement, blogs and other media replace advertising in Jhally’s model as the

source of the “magic” that fetishises commodities.

Paleo may be viewed as a form of post-modern “religion”, along the lines of an

emergent “neo-tribalism” whereby those with “shared lifestyle expressions” form

communities of shared interests (Maffesoli and Bauman, cited in Slater, 2005: 9).

The Paleo religion has its sacred texts, high priests, ex-communicated members,

commandments and a grand story that romanticises the lifestyle lived by our

Paleolithic ancestors.

Central to any religion, and to commodity fetishism, is the creation of meaning.

Paleo texts, specifically websites and blogs that are constantly revised, create an

evolving meaning of what Paleo is and is not. Meaning is created with language

in different ways – language that positions Paleo in the context of greater

consumption, in opposition to other ways of eating, and through debate within

the Paleo community.

In regards to the’symbolic value’ of the commodity that Baudrillard identified in

extending the Marxian concept of the commodity fetish (Koch and Elmore, 2006),

food for Paleo adherents becomes representational of something more than fuel

for the body. It becomes a political and social statement, representative of the

values and tastes of both individuals and the group that adheres to the diet. It

becomes entertainment - the more obscure the ingredients and nutritional

breakdown, the better.


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Nom Nom Paleo

In an examination of programs on the Food Network in the US, Cheri Ketchum

believes that commodities are so central and ’magical’ in consumer societies due

to their “promises of both psychic and physiological pleasure”. They are “thought

to stimulate and satiate”, a belief that is supported by “the public discourse in

our media” (Ketchum, 2005:221).The magical aura of food commodities in Paleo

can be clearly seen in the blog Nom Nom Paleo.

Nom Nom Paleo (www.nomnompaleo.com) is the popular personal blog of “M”, a

Northern California hospital shift-worker and mother of two small children. The

relatively new blog is characterised by its frank humour, daily updates featuring

M’s attractively styled Paleo cooking adventures, and rich detail in the form of

explanatory text framed by seductive professional-quality photographs where

the food almost leaps out from the screen, begging to be savoured. Nom Nom

Paleo is akin to healthy food porn for the Paleo community - its addictive

qualities encourage readers to live their Paleo consumption vicariously, with an

expectation of new, exciting content a result of the blog’s regular updates and its

promise of intimacy7.

The blog is aspirational, yet similar results are unattainable for most Paleo

adherents since M is privileged by the unique combination of specialist kitchen

equipment, a chef sister, healthy income and access to the plethora of gourmet

Paleo-friendly foods available in Northern California. Although M professes to be

“all about the lazy” in regards to cooking Paleo meals, there is ample evidence to

suggest otherwise, with most meals featuring very specific equipment used with

very specific ingredients. The audience may feel compelled to compete on this

uneven playing field, falling prey to the aspirational manipulation inherent in

publishing these types of blogs. In this way, Nom Nom Paleo works in a similar

way to the Food Network, becoming a “utopian fantasy” about Paleo food,

feeding our desire to work on our selves as a project with “commodities and

knowledge of food” (Ketchum, 2005:231). The blog is fantasy because the

reader is unaware of the financial cost and long hours that must be required to

maintain such regular, high-quality posts.

PaleoHacks

7 The intimacy of the Nom Nom Paleo blog provides a window in to the world of M, with many posts making specific references to her job, day to day life, the participation of her children in Paleo cooking and the cancer treatment of her mother in law.


http://www.nomnompaleo.com/

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Like so many other online communities, PaleoHacks (www.paleohacks.com) has

a collaborative production model of content made for joint consumption, rather

than the more traditional sender/receiver model of older forms of media.

PaleoHacks is a community forum that features a voting system whereby

members “upvote” or “downvote” the contributions of fellow members in terms

of quality. Based on this acquired reputation, badges are awarded to all

members with a heirarchical system. The site’s purpose is inspired by sites such

as Lifehacker which aim to provide tips for improving different aspects of daily

life. Members are encouraged to submit questions about their own

circumstances with the aim of having fellow members “hack” the

question/problem with constructive suggestions. Examples include thread titles

such as: “Healthy way to decrease sleep hours”, “personality changes from

doing paleo?” and “Fallen off the paleo bandwagon, how to re-motivate and eat

healthy again?” Many of the individuals with the highest reputation level on the

site possess medical or scientific qualifications, with which they can expound

their thoughts in a sophisticated and authoritative manner.

Figure 2: Paleo Hacks homepage. Source: paleohacks.com

The PaleoHacks site is relevant to an examination of commodity fetishism in that

it displays what Gyorgy Scrinis has identified as “the ideology or paradigm of

nutritionism” that is characterised by a reductionism “with respect to nutrients,

foods and diets” (2008:40). Scrinis believes that the nutritionism paradigm

“obscures the broader cultural, geographical, and ecological contexts in which

food, diets and bodily health are situated” (2008:40). It is this reductionism WMST6903 GENDER, MEDIA AND CONSUMER SOCIETIES | ASSIGNMENT 3ALLISON JONES | 310268141

http://www.paleohacks.com/

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which leads to the connection I make here: that nutritionism is a unique form of

commodity fetishism. The authentic meaning of foods has been removed by the

processes of capitalism, and a new meaning is ascribed to the commodity in the

form of nutritional information provided in responses to questions on the site.

Some examples of this emphasis on nutritional data of thread titles from

PaleoHacks are as follows:”Nutrition facts of camel meat?”, “partially grass fed

beef; better of two evils?”, “Frozen (wild) salmon - Chum Salmon fat content?,

and “Rank the sugars in order from most to least harmful”.

The Paleo diet media builds a fantasy of the perfect self with perfect physical and

mental health. All Paleo media affirms these ideas constantly, although

PaleoHacks, being a community site, does have some dissenting voices.

Dissenting voices, however, seem to be effectively silenced by a majority of

participants who cling tightly to the Paleo ideology. The authoritative voices on

the site have the effect of promoting nutritional reductionism as the community

as a whole feel ‘safe’ in the knowledge that there is ‘expert guidance’ available.

Paleo and the implications for capitalism

Although it appears to be a critique of the fetishism of food, in encouraging

adherents to become more aware of their food’s provenance, Paleo poses no real

challenge to capitalism and is indeed a continuation and diversification of

commodity fetishism. It is simply a new manifestation of the fetishisation of

commodities - a fetishisation based on the ‘goodness’ of foods, which are

concurrently reduced to their nutritional value, as ascertained by the Paleo

‘authorities’, and idealised as a way of reaching the fantasy of the perfect self.

Returning to the definition of festishism which holds that the conditions of

production are removed from the object, the majority of Paleo adherents are no

closer to knowing the conditions of production of the foods they consume. Those

Paleo adherents that are more enlightened are lucky enough to be growing their

own produce or in close proximity to farms where they can engage with the

producers themselves. Based on observation of PaleoHacks, these people would

be in the minority. Fetishisation therefore remains a key, inescapable part of

Paleo consumption. Nom Nom Paleo displays this fetishisation in its utopian food


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fantasies, and PaleoHacks does this by way of endless debate about the

nutritional value of different foods.

Conclusion

Rather than being a rejection of fetishisation and a return to a more ‘authentic’

consumption practice, Paleo blogs and online communities simply form new

expressions of commodity fetishisation. The presence of newer forms of

authority in the form of Paleo bloggers and esteemed community members,

means that consumers are as vulnerable to fantasy as ever, if not more so,

within a movement such as Paleo that has strong fetishistic elements and is

heavily mediated.

It would be naive to suggest that anti-consumerist movements will have

significant impacts on late capitalism, since it is so firmly entrenched. But,

together these movements may gradually impact on some pockets within

capitalist society such as the syllabus at medical schools, farming practices, and

shopping habits.


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REFERENCES

Armstrong, B. et al (2007) ‘Challenges in health and health care for Australia’ in eMJA, 2007; 187 (9): 485-489 Accessed from: http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/187_09_051107/arm11047_fm.html Last accessed: 5 June 2010

Binkley, S. (2008)’Liquid Consumption’, in Cultural Studies, 22:5, 599-623

Coles, B. and Crang, P. (2010) ’Placing Alternative Consumption: Commodity Fetishism in Borough Fine Foods Market, London’ in Lewis, T. and Potter, E. (eds)(2010) Ethical Consumption: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge

Fox, S. and Jones, S. (2009) The Social Life of Health Information Accessed at: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/8-The-Social-Life-of-Health-Information.aspx Last accessed: 5 June 2011

Jhally, Sut. “Advertising as religion: The dialectic of technology and magic” in Cultural Politics in Contemporary America, ed. Lan Angus and Sut Jhally. New York: Routledge, 1998. 217-229. Reprinted in Advertising & Society Review 1 (1) 2000.

Ketchum, C. (2005)The Essence of Cooking Shows: How the Food Network Constructs Consumer Fantasies, Journal of Communication Inquiry, 29:3, 217-234

Koch, A. And Elmore, R. (2006) Simulation and Smbolic Exchange: Jean Baudrillard’s Augmentation of Marx’s Theory of Value, in Politics and Policy, 34:3, 556-575

Scrinis, G. (2008)’On the ideology of nutritionism’, in Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, 8:1, 39-48

Slater, Don. “The Sociology of Consumption and Lifestyle” in The Sage Handbook of Sociology, ed. C. Calhoun, C. Rojek and B. Turner. London: Sage, 2005. 174-187.

Tapscott, D. and Williams, A. (2010) MacroWikinomics : Rebooting business and the world, New York : Portfolio Penguin

Wolf, R. (2010) The Paleo Solution: The original human diet,Las Vegas: Victory Belt Publishing


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