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Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore how stakeholders in the food and nutrition field construct and conceptualise “appropriate” national dietary advice.

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 40 voluntarily written stakeholder responses to updated official dietary guidelines in Sweden were analysed thematically. The analysis explored the logics and arguments employed by authorities, interest organisations, industry and private stakeholders in attempting to influence the formulation of dietary guidelines.

Findings

Two main themes were identified: the centrality of anchoring advice scientifically and modes of getting the message across to the public. Stakeholders expressed a view of effective health communication as that which is nutritionally and quantitatively oriented and which optimises individuals’ capacities to take action for their own health. Their responses did not offer alternative framings of how healthy eating could be practiced but rather conveyed an understanding of dietary guidelines as documents that provide simplified answers to complex questions.

Practical implications

Policymakers should be aware of industrial actors’ potential vested interests and actively seek out other stakeholders representing communities and citizen interests. The next step should be to question the extent to which it is ethical to publish dietary advice that represents a simplified way of conceptualising behavioural change, and thereby places responsibility for health on the individual.

Originality/value

This research provides a stakeholder perspective on the concept of dietary advice and is among the first to investigate referral responses to dietary guidelines.

We examine public trust and distrust in governmental food and nutrition authorities, through analyzing 727 letters sent electronically to the Swedish National Food Agency by lay people. Using thematic analysis, four themes were developed, defining public expressions of trust and distrust in official dietary advice. Trust was expressed as (a) seeking to confirm and clarify dietary advice, or (b) seeking official arbitration between competing dietary advice. Distrust was expressed as (c) questioning and scrutinizing dietary advice, or (d) protesting and resisting dietary advice. Notably, expressions of distrust employed discursive practices that both mirrored authoritative discourses and subverted official advice, by appealing to scientific language and 'alternative' evidence. All letters positioned the agency as the ultimate authority on healthy eating; notwithstanding whether the agency’s advice was to be followed or resisted. Thus, the letters revealed how the same authoritative discourses can simultaneously be a site of public trust and distrust.

This article analyzes lay people’s use of nutritionistic discourse in written correspondence with the Swedish Food Agency, an authority responsible for dietary advice. Examining 60 food related written digital messages, we apply a critical discourse analysis to parse the terms and grammar people use when constructing “food” in scientific terms. Findings show that message writers place nutrients at the discursive center and frequently use terms that indicate preciseness, such as numbers and amounts, reinforced by modality (auxiliary verbs) and transitivity (nominalizations). Messages therefore emphasize the what, but not the how, of eating, implying a focus on food as subject to regulation and control. As such, eating is discursively reduced to an act of ingesting nutrients that can be decontextualized and managed in isolation – as entities to increase or avoid separately. These discursive features preclude the conceptualization of food choice and eating as subjective experiences of feelings, taste, and tradition.

Dietary guidelines can be considered a pedagogical tool, designed to promotehealthy eating at the population level. In this study, we critically examine thebiopedagogies implicated in Sweden’s official dietary guidelines. Published in2015, these guidelines take a potentially innovative ‘holistic approach’ to food andeating, addressing the challenge of formulating dietary advice that considers bothhuman health and environmental concerns. Applying Bacchi´s ‘What’s theproblem represented to be?’ approach, we interrogate how the guidelines frame theinterplay of public health concerns and environmental concerns in making foodchoices. We find that the biopedagogies of sustainable eating, as presented in theseguidelines, implicate the subject position of the ideal eater. The ideal eater valuessustainability, has high cultural capital, and draws on both taste and nutritionalknowledge to make good food choices. However, while the ideal eater is expectedto be aware of environmental issues, these are incorporated into the ideal eater’schoices only in addition to the primary concern of health. Thus, although theguidelines frame a ‘holistic approach’ as the solution to both health andenvironmental concerns, in cases where health and environmental prioritiesconflict, the guidelines’ biopedagogies of sustainable eating align with earlierbiopedagogies of healthy eating.