Mapping moralities of food and health in marketing research literature

Inspired by a former review of four sets of moralities that orient food and health research and lead to potentially harmful consequences for consumer wellbeing, this study seeks to qualify and nuance their original arguments by mapping them in a broader (epistemological, methodological and historical) context of research agendas relevant to marketing. We do so with the help of a systematic review and content analysis methods of a corpus of marketing research articles published from 1988 until today. In addition to a quantification of the extent to which various ‘symptoms’ of moralities of health and food manifest in marketing scholarship, the study provides a critical reflection on the more nuanced expressions of the alleged moralities. Consequently, it calls for increased researchers’ awareness about moral assumptions structuring formulation of research questions and operationalisation of the studied health-related concepts.