Food culture in obesity prevention Europe

Once again the problem of the rising rates of obesity hit the newspapers when the World Obesity Federation announced that the World Health Organisation’s goal of no increase in obesity beyond the levels of 2010 was impossible to meet. A call for increased market control and standards for school meals was repeated as a means to curb the trend. 1 This might be helpful, but the difficulties in handling the obesity problem are without any doubt complex and there is a need of a broader understanding for what shapes eating-patterns—and, thus, might help re-shaping them. One theme that remains relatively unexplored within public health is the impact of—what in the lack of a better term might be called—traditional food cultures. The World Health Organisation [WHO] acknowledges that cultural dimensions are influential 2 and despite discussions in the Standing Committee 3 , the idea that food cultures have a positive impact on health and weight does not seem to have been discarded. Nevertheless, going through the databases of the funding-mechanisms in the European Union 4 , considerations on food culture are rare in the initiatives carried out within the framework of health promotion and obesity prevention. 5 And, when mentioned, it seems to have been a basic assumption that cultural diversity exists, that it has an influence on eating patterns and, hence, on the distribution of overweight and obesity across Europe. However, what qualifies as food culture is not explained in further detail and what the cultural diversity consists in remains largely an open question as well. This is striking as contributions from humanities and social sciences emphasise the position of food as a meaning- and identity-shaping factor, a dimension that has important impact on eating patterns. If the overall aspiration is to understand how cultural analysis may contribute to the understanding of what shapes eating patterns and, thus, what is likely to have an impact on obesity rates, then there is a need to understand more profoundly the tension between change as a fundamental element in human living conditions and the apparent search for stability expressed in the adherence to customs. Or, we have to understand the impact of tradition and globalisation on the formation of cultural identities. In this respect, we have to consider no less than four dimensions of food culture: The political dimension referring to policies and governance is a dominant focus for public health. However, though policy is indisputably part of culture, it is not likely that culture can be reduced into policy. There is a need to distinguish between what a regulatory framework can achieve and what cultural identification means. Surely, culture is influenced by policy decisions in the sense that the organisation of work life, the political economy in food production and the displacements linked to globalisation inevitably influence the preferences of taste, the handed over skills and the social practices related to eating. 6 Only, the question of the creation of collective identities and attachment remains outside the sphere of regulation; it cannot be forced by legislative measures. The nutritional dimension is equally dominant in public health. But the shift in focus in the WHO papers from a view of traditional food culture as protective of health to the cultural dimensions of nutrition as protective of health is interesting. Because it rephrases the reference to food culture as a something close to a contradiction. Nutrition translates familiar foods into chemical constituents with putative effects on human health and in this respect it is an alienation of food. It is an extension of the medical sciences into the field of food rendering the social and cultural functions of the meal negligible. Claiming this is not a question of ignoring the impact of nutrients on health. It is acknowledging that the scientific perspective is based on the human experience of food as sensory experience and collective reference. Food is a material object from the production to the cooking and eating, but at the same time a focal point for practices transforming the biological need for sustenance into a framework of meaning. In this context, the spatial and temporal dimensions of food culture constitute an important point of analysis—indispensable in terms of approaching an understanding of the meaning embedded in practices related to food and eating. However, these dimensions are frequently absent in public health initiatives or they are reduced into rather trivial statements of people eating differently in different parts of Europe or in different ethnic groups. There can be little doubt that there are differences in eating patterns across national, social, religious and generational divides. Some are rooted in cultural practices maintained over time in specific places or among specific groups, others are influenced by images and commercial agendas that are distributed across the world at an increasing speed. But no matter the roots of cultural practices, they express identification and meaning. And, understanding this interplay between tradition and modernity, stability and ephemerality requires a more thorough investigation into the role of memory and imagination in the span between references to tradition and the impact of globalization. Altogether, the four dimensions can be viewed as basic elements in a genuine analysis of the impact of food culture on eating patterns. It may add to the complexity of obesity as a public health problem, but complexity has to be addressed The unresolved problem of rising obesity rates calls for answers. Two challenges need to be met. In first place, a definition of food culture accepted across academic disciplines needs to be established. And, secondly, a thorough understanding of the correlation between food culture and obesity-rates is indispensable. Academic works on food as meaning- and identity-shaping leaves no room for doubting the influence of cultural conventions and social practices on eating patterns. But the link to obesity is not established. In order to do so, the academic disciplines capable of cultural analysis must be invited into the field through calls from the funding mechanisms and through an agenda supporting genuine interdisciplinary work. Meaning that these academic disciplines must be accepted not as appendices but as independent providers of new—and useful—knowledge in this field Conflicts of interest : None declared.