ESSAY WRITING
FOOD MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS AMID COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a new era for restaurants, retailers, and manufacturers. It has changed consumer preferences, needs, and expectations, pushing the food industry to pivot its marketing and communications strategies in order to address the evolving demands. In light of health and safety concerns, businesses have developed campaigns centered around the immune-boosting benefits of their food products and the stringent hygiene standards in their food preparation and handling. The crisis has also laid bare the larger injustices and flaws within the food system, rallying businesses to do good by offering emergency relief to vulnerable populations and ramping up their sustainable food practices. Hence, while the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced unprecedented challenges for the food industry, it has also opened windows of opportunity for food businesses to think outside the box and contribute to a healthy, safe, equitable, and sustainable food system.
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YOGURT AND THE CONTROL OF FEMALE BODIES
Presentations of yogurt in the media evince broader societal concerns about the need to discipline the female body. In particular, marketers of this seemingly innocuous substance, through advertising and storytelling, use yogurt as a means to not only assert control, but also perform work on women’s bodies. Specifically, the gendered marketing of yogurt as a medicinal solution for gastrointestinal problems promotes digestive regularity as an important factor of ideal femininity; the sexist branding of yogurt as a weight loss tool reinforces Western standards of female body weight, shape, and size; and the pervasive reputation of yogurt as an easy remedy for vaginal yeast infection reinforces expectations of women to manage their own health. As a result, yogurt does not exist in a vacuum only to serve as a delectable sweet treat that just so happens to be good for the gut. In reality, it carries urgent and often grave messaging about how women should navigate patriarchal constructions of femininity pertaining to their bodies.
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THE SUPERFOOD DISCOURSE: ON THE IDEALS OF NUTRITIONISM, PRIMITIVISM, AND FEMINISM
Superfoods have emerged as an increasingly popular category of health foods, making their way into health stores and supermarkets around the world. Interestingly, the term “superfood” lacks a formal definition, enabling the superfood industry to court consumers on the basis of discursive messaging and marketing. In particular, superfood companies adopt a reductive focus on nutrients to reinforce consumers’ personal responsibility for health, utilize primitivistic claims to take advantage of do-good intentions to combat ecological problems, as well as perpetuate feminine stereotypes to ensure an idealistic appeal to female consumers. Through the case study of acai berries, I contend that acai commercial discourse contributes to and relies on a construction of superfoods that promises ideals of healthy, sustainable, and gender-conforming consumption.
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APPROPRIATING THE BIG MAC IN EAST ASIA
Some scholars have used McDonaldization as an example of the homogenization of culture, arguing that the consumption of fast food and specifically, the existence of the American franchise McDonald’s in much of the world, is a sign of cultural imperialism and the triumph over the local. However, McDonaldization can also signify difference, divergence, and diversity. Ethnographic research in East Asia reveals that American fast food culture does not–and cannot–simply infiltrate into a society without localization efforts that protect indigenous tastes, values, and customs. Specifically, in Japan, McDonald’s seeks to preserve local ingredients and traditions of communal eating; in Beijing, McDonald’s serves as an open social space to overcome the harsh realities of social life; and in Hong Kong, McDonald’s promotes existing hygiene standards. Hence, the spread of the American fast food revolution, more often than not, contributes to the diversification of cultures across the world.