This book brings together a selection of studies written by
specialists from universities and/or research institutions from
every continent. The processes of change in systems of production,
commercialisation, and consumption of food, as well as the problems
and nutritional habits analysed here, develop within the framework
of the technological and socio-productive transformations
experienced in many parts of the world as a consequence of the
transition from traditional rural societies to the predominantly
urban and industrial societies of our time. Many of these societies
are affected by the fluctuations, questions, or socio-economic
uncertainties caused principally by what is named globalisation.
The authors involved in this volume are from a variety of
backgrounds and their theoretical-analytical focuses regarding
eating habits are quite diverse. However, independent of their
different perspectives and scientific disciplines (Anthropology,
Communication, Economy, Marketing, Medicine, Nursing, Psychology
and Sociology), all of these authors are united in their concerns
regarding similar food processes and problems, such as the
industrialisation of food production, junk food, fast food, eating
disorders, overeating, obesity, the impacts of ideal body images on
eating behaviours, lifestyles and feeding, anorexia, bulimia,
organic foods, healthy foods, functional foods, and so on.
Moreover, in a time shaped by a worldwide standardisation of eating
habits, the search for identity, specificity, or distinction
through the acquisition and consumption of foods is commonplace in
many chapters of the book. Likewise, these chapters show a
generalised interest on the negative effects of the advertising and
communications media that often drive patterns of food consumption
and provoke desires for ideals of beauty and body forms prejudicial
to health. As the editor states in the preface, all this occurs in
an ever more modernised and globalised world in which artificial
procedures of the production of industrial foods that are quite
opaque to the general public become increasingly widespread. In
such a world, while people's concerns over the healthiness of foods
increase, we are witnessing a non-stop expansion of markets for
organic food, as well as the repeated manipulation of growing
consumers' preferences for certain foodstuffs that they believe are
healthy or have specific natural qualities. This manipulation
frequently takes place through a variety of advertisements that
announce a series of industrial foods as supposedly possessing
these qualities. Obviously, a priority objective of these and other
advertising strategies is to increase sales in the agro-alimentary
sector in a context of obvious over-production and over-supply,
which in turn is translated into the stimulation of food
consumption. This would help explain such developments in the
current consumer society, which is explored in further detail in
many chapters of this book.
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