The Medicalization of Food: A Christian Reconsideration of Healthy Eating
Devan Stahl, PhD, Baylor University
Diet and nutrition have long been recognized as essential components of health, and certain foods can also be medicinal. Advances in nutritional science have enabled modern people to understand more about their food and diets than ever before, but as people become more distant from the production of the food they consume, it becomes increasingly difficult for the average person to distinguish healthy from unhealthy foods in an expanded marketplace of consumer products. Growing suspicion of the government and the regulatory industry has increased many people’s uncertainty about whether they are eating well. Wellness influencers and food scanner apps have stepped into these spaces of uncertainty, offering tips, warnings, and even scientifically informed rankings of popular food items, all in the name of health. New buzz words, including “natural,” “superfood,” and “clean,” as well as “processed,” “ultra-processed,” “chemicals,” and “toxins,” are used to distinguish healthy from unhealthy foods, but these terms are often vague and undefined. Alternatively, food apps offer scores for food items based on scientific studies that the average consumer would otherwise struggle to interpret. For certain (middle-class) consumers, a trip to the grocery store now includes scanning food products to check their health scores.
Taking charge of our diet in the name of health may seem wise, but the scrutiny and datafication we apply to food have the potential to medicalize it, reducing food to yet another source of individual health. But surely food is more than this. In the Christian tradition, Christ is called the bread of life, food becomes sacrament in the Eucharist, and shared meals are occasions for community building and care. For Christians, food is not merely a tool for health, but a means of worship and communion. There are good reasons for Christians to eat healthy foods, including an obligation to care for our bodies, but an overemphasis on the benefits of individual health may obscure other goods that food offers. Moreover, focusing on “healthy” eating may conceal other ethical responsibilities Christians have related to food, including obligations to care for the poor and the non-human created order.
This presentation will offer a Christian ethical evaluation of the increasing medicalization of food in American culture. (By medicalization, I mean the process of treating nonmedical behaviors as medical problems.) I will first provide a vignette in which a man becomes engrossed in the latest trends in wellness culture to lower his cholesterol through diet and exercise rather than medication. Although his intentions were laudable, these modifications quickly came to take over his daily life, causing him to spend an inordinate amount of time and money to maximize his health at the expense of his family life and other communal commitments. Drawing upon anthropological resources, I will then briefly explain the rise of wellness subcultures that have influenced the man in my vignette and why they have become so influential in the American market. Next, I will offer an alternative assessment of the goods of food, found within the Christian tradition. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, foods are associated with holiness and unholiness, gift and forbiddenness, and even life and death. Such associations are rarely concerned with individual health, but rather the health of a community and its connection to God. Food in the Christian tradition is not only for health, but also a means of communal engagement, enjoyment, and sacrament. I will conclude with prudential ethical guidance for how to balance healthy eating with the other goods of food, which may run counter to our individual “health” as it is conceptualized in modern medicine. “Health” for Christians should not be an individual endeavor, but rather one that encompasses our communities as well as the broader creation. Food (both its production and consumption) is a way in which Christians practice justice, care, and vocation.
Taking charge of our diet in the name of health may seem wise, but the scrutiny and datafication we apply to food have the potential to medicalize it, reducing food to yet another source of individual health. But surely food is more than this. In the Christian tradition, Christ is called the bread of life, food becomes sacrament in the Eucharist, and shared meals are occasions for community building and care. For Christians, food is not merely a tool for health, but a means of worship and communion. There are good reasons for Christians to eat healthy foods, including an obligation to care for our bodies, but an overemphasis on the benefits of individual health may obscure other goods that food offers. Moreover, focusing on “healthy” eating may conceal other ethical responsibilities Christians have related to food, including obligations to care for the poor and the non-human created order.
This presentation will offer a Christian ethical evaluation of the increasing medicalization of food in American culture. (By medicalization, I mean the process of treating nonmedical behaviors as medical problems.) I will first provide a vignette in which a man becomes engrossed in the latest trends in wellness culture to lower his cholesterol through diet and exercise rather than medication. Although his intentions were laudable, these modifications quickly came to take over his daily life, causing him to spend an inordinate amount of time and money to maximize his health at the expense of his family life and other communal commitments. Drawing upon anthropological resources, I will then briefly explain the rise of wellness subcultures that have influenced the man in my vignette and why they have become so influential in the American market. Next, I will offer an alternative assessment of the goods of food, found within the Christian tradition. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, foods are associated with holiness and unholiness, gift and forbiddenness, and even life and death. Such associations are rarely concerned with individual health, but rather the health of a community and its connection to God. Food in the Christian tradition is not only for health, but also a means of communal engagement, enjoyment, and sacrament. I will conclude with prudential ethical guidance for how to balance healthy eating with the other goods of food, which may run counter to our individual “health” as it is conceptualized in modern medicine. “Health” for Christians should not be an individual endeavor, but rather one that encompasses our communities as well as the broader creation. Food (both its production and consumption) is a way in which Christians practice justice, care, and vocation.