Present Tense A Journal of Rhetoric in Society
Healthy Living: Metaphors We Eat By?
Philippa Spoel Laurentian University
Roma Harris University of Western Ontario
Flis Henwood University of Brighton
Present Tense, Vol. 2, Issue 2, 2012. www.presenttensejournal.org | [email protected] Healthy Living: Metaphors We Eat By? Philippa Spoel, Roma Harris, and Flis Henwood
participants as rhetorical actors who draw on and reconfigure the resources of publicly circulating discourse, we explore how their uses of these conventional metaphors function in multiple and possibly strategic ways in their interpretations of healthy eating. Our analysis suggests that the situated uptakes4 of these metaphors in the participants’ responses not only reproduced but also amplified and ambiguated normative rhetorics of healthy eating. Metaphor, according to Michael Billig and Katie MacMillan’s Aristotelian definition, “involves talking about one thing in terms of attributes Contemporary public health promotion normally associated with another” exhorts us to care for ourselves by (460). Metaphor pervades everyday following a healthy lifestyle including, language and thought and affects how crucially, eating healthily.1 Injunctions we understand and experience reality to eat a balanced diet, avoid junk food, (Lakoff and Johnson).5 As a key mode of and consume appropriate fuel for our rhetorical invention and symbolic action, bodies proliferate across institutional, metaphor constitutes ways of seeing popular, and commercialized health the world and influences attitudes, discourse.2 But how do people interpret knowledge, values, and actions (Ivie; and reconstitute this mainstream advice Gronnvoll and Landau; Foss 299-302). in relation to their everyday lives? Otto Santa Ana argues that “metaphor How do they engage rhetorically with shapes everyday discourse, and by this the imperatives of dominant health means it shapes how people discern promotion discourse?3 and enact the everyday” (26). Because everyday discourse (re)constructs We address these questions through a social values and ways of being, the brief analysis of recurring metaphors in metaphors that circulate within common older adults’ responses to open-ended language at once reveal, enact, and interview questions about healthy naturalize social orders (21). Attending eating. These are the metaphors of to the most ubiquitous—and hence healthy eating as balanced eating, food least noticeable—metaphors within as fuel, and food as junk. Conceiving rhetorics of health and medicine can, 1 Philippa Spoel, Roma Harris, and Flis Henwood
as Judy Segal notes, shed light on the or eating a “good balance” of foods, values that these terms “smuggle into” likewise emphasizes the metaphor’s healthcare policy and practice (115); positive valence. The association of good however, the polysemous, dynamic, and balance reinforces the naturalized and contextualized “social usage” of assumption that balanced eating is good metaphor (Condit et al. 303) means because it is healthy, and healthy is— that idiomatic metaphors may not unquestionably—good; however, the use simply reproduce dominant ideology: of good to modify balance and balanced the complex, shifting, and ambiguous also begs the question whether balanced meanings of commonplace metaphors eating is intrinsically good or whether in use shows how these applications may it is possible to have a bad balance. This also destabilize naturalized meanings question, though not overtly addressed and values. by participants, potentially destabilizes the commonplace equation that healthy In 2010, we interviewed 55 adults aged eating equals balanced eating equals 45-70 in three Ontario communities good eating. and one UK community about what healthy eating and active living meant Beyond its function as an abstract, to them. This project explored how motivational ideal in the participants’ citizens negotiated dominant discourses responses, many characterized the of healthy living in relation to their own metaphor of balance more concretely lives including, as we examine here, to mean eating the right proportions how they drew on and reconfigured of the right kinds of foods, which commonplace metaphors related to together compose the desirable whole healthy eating. To help ensure that of healthy eating. This meaning evokes participants already possessed some conventional public health guidelines interest in the topic of healthy living, we that instruct citizens to daily eat a certain recruited through recreational physical amount from a range of food groups, activity organizations. We selected and these instructions are often imaged older adults because of our interest in through a color-coded, pie-chart styled how self-care imperatives are especially plate.8 According to one participant, “I pronounced for aging citizens.6 interpret (healthy eating) as balanced eating: in other words, fruits, vegetables, Healthy Eating as Balanced Eating healthy proteins . . . . I don’t think that there is a restriction of any one group; The metaphor of balance appeared although, if there was, it would probably prominently in the participants’ views of be in the fat group and the sugar groups, how to fulfill the imperative of healthy but I still think that it is healthy to eat eating, functioning as a motivational from all different food groups.” ideal for their efforts to be good health(y) citizens.7 Often, the term balanced Others said healthy eating “means operates as a substitute or equivalent having a balanced diet with a variety of term for healthy. As one participant meat[s], fish, fruit[s and], vegetables but explained, “I try to eat a balanced, healthy with allowable fat content probably,” diet as much as I can.” The yoking of the or, less precisely, healthy eating “[is] terms balance and balanced with the balanced; so, you know, your proteins, term good, as in “a good balanced meal” your carbs, your this, your that, you 2 Healthy Living
know, [you] get a good balance in those.” balance between healthy foods (located This interpretation enacts the quasi- on one side of the scale) and unhealthy logical technique of dividing the whole foods (located on the other side of into parts, the ideal whole of balanced the scale). Instead of reproducing the eating comprising the sum of its parts health promotion sense of balance in (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 234); which all parts of the whole are healthy, however, the participants’ tentative (i.e., this use of the metaphor legitimates “probably,” “possibly,” and “I . . . think”) eating some unhealthy foods because and imprecise (i.e., “your this, your that”) they are counterbalanced by healthy language suggests uncertainty about ones. As one participant explained, “I the parts that make up the whole, which know when I am eating things that are destabilizes the coherence of balanced calorie thick—and I suppose I do—, I’d eating as a motivating term. want to balance out with something healthy when I do it”; another said she Conversely, the inclusion of fruits and wanted to “get the balance . . . [that] vegetables as two essential, but not can allow you sometimes to indulge in exhaustive, parts of a balanced diet was less healthy eating.” Another participant stated more definitively. The repeated actively resisted following the rule book naming of these two food groups by too closely, constructing this approach the participants (i.e., “healthy diet, a to eating as excessive and hence good balance of fruit and vegetables”; imbalanced: “my balanced diet, lots of fruit and vegetables”; and “Healthy eating: It I don’t necessarily wanna follow means having a really good balance of everything in the book. I can go a lot of fruits, a lot of vegetables”) may overboard into something too much have resulted because these two food that, you know, I would rather balance. groups are consistently present across Like, balance, I think is the key if I can sort public health guidelines compared of take a little bit of this and a little bit of with the more diverse, and contested, that and sort of find something that’s categorization of other required groups.9 comfortable to me. Like, I’m not gonna Contrasting with the quantitative division give up chocolate chip cookies. of the whole into (more or less) all its parts, the naming of fruits and vegetables Though not directly opposed to the as the two most important food groups mainstream (healthy) whole-part constructs a more qualitative—and more meaning, this alternative sense of manageable—meaning for balanced balance amplifies the metaphor’s eating. potential functions for how lay people negotiate dominant health advice by The conventional configuration of the offering a logical framework that makes balance metaphor as a [pie-chart] whole the balancing of healthy and unhealthy comprising appropriate food groups foods a sensible, justifiable approach to was the primary sense used by the everyday eating. participants, but some also invoked the sense of balance as a scale for regulating Food as Fuel the even distribution of weights and counterweights. In this interpretation, The commonplace metaphor food as balanced eating means achieving a fuel also occurred quite frequently in 3 Philippa Spoel, Roma Harris, and Flis Henwood
the participants’ explanations.10 Like the energy requirements” or that eating was balance metaphor, the fuel metaphor was a way “to rebuild what I’ve taken out of associated mainly with the concept of my body in my workout.” healthy (and, hence, good) eating though less clearly and consistently. Some The food as fuel metaphor presumes described food as fuel in the sense of it and reconstitutes a culturally prevalent being required for the body to function; understanding of the body as a machine it is necessary but not necessarily healthy. whose functioning both requires a The participants communicated this certain amount of fuel and can be meaning with comments, such as “most improved with the right kind of fuel. of the time we aim to put good fuel in As Cor Van Der Weele argues, this our bodies to allow us to function,” “your image of food and its accompanying performance is affected by the fuel you view of the body as a machine “are not put in the tank basically,” and “my fuel has maximally helpful for integrating two to be better.” These explanations imply important human desires: health and a qualitative hierarchy of fuels, ranging pleasure” (313). A version of this tension from bad to better to good. Another between eating for health and eating participant, however, unequivocally for enjoyment surfaced strongly in one equated fuel with good (nutritious) food participant’s account that opposed as opposed to bad fill: “[Healthy eating the metaphors food as fuel and food means] eating food that is fuel for your as comfort: “I was someone who ate body and not just fill [for] your stomach, food for comfort . . . . And now, I say to . . . to get good nutrients . . . . It’s what myself, ‘No, food is for fuel.’” Here, the drives your body to make you feel good; contrast of metaphors functions not so, you put good things in, and you get simply to characterize different kinds of good things out.” eating but also—more fundamentally— as the rhetorical grounds for self- The engineering input-output model reconceptualization; a change in the act invoked in this excerpt figures in other (i.e., in eating food for fuel rather than for responses, too, which are often linked comfort) entails a reconstruction of the with the image of burning calories. person (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca In this association, the fuel of food 411).11 is reduced to its caloric (rather than, for instance, its nutritional) value; the The participants’ rearticulations of the qualitative distinction between good popular food as fuel metaphor show and bad fuel is transformed into a its multiple and shifting meanings. quantitative calculation (i.e., how many The distinction between a qualitative calories the body needs to function). As and quantitative interpretation entails one participant explained, “I had a father different possibilities for how people who was an engineer . . . , and he would conceptualize healthy eating (e.g., does say ‘it doesn’t matter what anybody tells it mean eating the right kind of fuel you; this slow metabolism stuff is all a or eating the right amount of fuel?). crock. It’s calories in, and burn it off.’” The metaphor’s constitutive power Others likewise invoked a quantitative is manifested in how some use it to input-output model when explaining characterize not only the action of eating that healthy eating meant “not eating but also the nature of the body and self. any more than you need to give you 4 Healthy Living
Food as Junk not the speaker’s own identity but the identity, or bad character, of others. One The metaphor of food as junk occurred participant explained that her husband almost as frequently as the balance “would be a junk food eater, absolutely metaphor in the participants’ discussions a junk food eater . . . . If I ate like him, I of healthy eating.12 The strong presence would be gross.” Another participant of the junk metaphor suggests how similarly characterized her husband as everyday understandings of healthy a junk food eater contrasted with the eating are shaped as much by what virtuous character she claimed for herself people think healthy eating is not as by and her home: “No, there’s no junk food what it is. This metaphor introduces a in my house [except for] the occasional kind of negative definition premised on bag of chips for ball games and hockey assumptions about what is permissible for my husband. He’s the chip eater. I (i.e., “thou-shalts”) and impermissible (i.e., don’t eat chips.” A parent, perhaps “thou-shalt-nots”) within the domain of unintentionally, associated eating junk healthy eating (Burke 4).13 food with being addicted to street drugs in describing her son’s changed identity Primarily, participants used junk in its when he left home for university: “He conventional public health sense as a went to university, and he became metaphor for unhealthy or bad food kind of a junk food junkie.”14 Another that should be avoided or excluded. participant framed the social problem The equation of junk equals unhealthy of junk food eaters as one of attitude, equals bad equals exclude counterposes not simply one of behavior. He asked, the earlier equation of balance equals “Junk food eaters, . . . how do you get healthy equals good equals include. the people that eat fast food and junk Antithetical expressions to describe food and don’t really care?” In these uses, healthy eating, such as “working to the metaphor of junk functions to mark eliminate junk food; working to increase undesirable character rather than simply fruits, vegetables, whole grains” or “no an undesirable characteristic of food. junk food, no fast-food, fresh fruits, vegetables, home-made food,” reinforce Condemning junk food and junk the opposition between healthy foods food eaters as unhealthy and hence that should be included and junk foods bad reproduces dominant health that should be excluded (emphasis promotion messages: junk food should added). The metaphor’s strongly be avoided or eliminated; it has no place negative valence is underscored through within an ideal healthy and balanced associated terms, such as garbage, waste, diet. But, just as some participants rubbish, crap, and even poison. In this reconfigured the balance metaphor in characterization, junk food is worse ways that ambiguated its conventional than valueless empty fill; it is positively public health meaning, so, too, some harmful, a dangerous body pollutant. constituted an alternative version of junk as a form of eating that was a desired As with the fuel metaphor, the logic and desirable “problem.” Recalling the that the act constitutes the person also preceding association of junk with drug structured several occurrences of the addiction, some confessed to being junk metaphor; however, the act of “addicted” to unhealthy junk foods but eating junk food was taken to indicate described this in desirable terms, as 5 Philippa Spoel, Roma Harris, and Flis Henwood
food that they “like[d]” or “love[d].” One metaphors function as more than said, “And salty things I try not to buy unreflective repetition of “routine idioms at all because I am sort of addicted to . . . that deaden political consciousness” salt. I love salt, you know, chips and junk (Billig and MacMillan 459). Each situated food.” Here, the yoking of the terms love utterance reactivates the metaphoric and salt and chips and junk suggests term in ways that both reflect and that even though this participant tried reconfigure mainstream meanings and to avoid her addictions, she did not conventionalized values. These rhetorical really want to deny them. Others more reconstitutions reveal some of the rich explicitly constituted junk food as a and possibly strategic ways in which permissible, desirable component—in citizens engage with dominant health moderation—of their everyday lives: “I discourses. occasionally allow myself to eat some garbage . . . . I actually like junk food. I like For the burgeoning field of health the taste of junk food,” or “the one thing and medical rhetorical research, this else that we like to do is things that aren’t analysis suggests the value of exploring necessarily particularly good for you. I everyday informal rhetorics of health eat cookies and snacks and, . . . you know, and medicine in addition to expert- junk foods and things like that.” Rather professional or public-promotional than antithetically opposing healthy health communication. Understanding and unhealthy foods, these descriptions some of the complex, shifting, and use a strategy of paradox (i.e., junk food ambiguous uses of commonplace is simultaneously bad and good) that metaphors in our participants’ talk partially rehabilitates the value of junk as about healthy eating illustrates how a kind of food that need not, and indeed mainstream health promotion discourse should not, be wholly eliminated from and values are not only taken up but everyday eating practices. also destabilized and reconfigured in the context of people’s everyday Conclusion lives. The multiple ways in which our participants interpreted and combined The analysis presented here addresses apparently simple metaphors show one aspect of the following question: that the metaphors’ conventional how did the older adults in our study health promotion uses do not capture rhetorically engage with dominant the complexity of lived experiences of health promotion discourse in relation food and eating in society. Attending to their everyday lives? If metaphor is to the everyday rhetorical usage of a form of rhetorical action that plays a conventional eating metaphors can significant role in how we constitute thus enrich our understanding of these reality through our everyday language, situated complexities, a prerequisite then analyzing the metaphors that for the development of alternative occur in lay people’s characterizations strategies for change. of healthy eating helps to elucidate their interpretations of this dimension of contemporary health citizenship. Conceiving participants as rhetorical actors presupposes that their local (re)articulations of commonplace 6 Healthy Living
Endnotes Petersen et al., Petersen and Lupton, Rudman,Lindsay, Harris et al., Henwood 1. This research was funded primarily et al., and/or Spoel et al. by the Office of the Vice President (Research), the University of Western 4. By situated uptake, we mean the Ontario, along with a supporting specific, dynamic ways in which grant from the Office of Research participants take up—that is, draw on, and Creativity, Laurentian University. rearticulate, and reconfigure—common We would like to thank our research metaphors for healthy eating when assistants Josh Osika, Lee-Ann Fielding, talking about their own situations or and Courtney Rae-Duffin for their everyday lives. See Emmons and also contributions to the analysis developed Freedman for a discussion of uptake in here and our anonymous reviewers for the context of rhetorical genre theory. their helpful feedback. As Emmons explains, “Uptake is a rhetorical process . . . [that] operates as a 2. Though a systematic analysis of the recognition of the previous text and an presence of these metaphors in public enactment of the text that follows from discourse lies beyond the scope of this it. . . . Individual uptakes are visible in paper, a few unsystematically collected the ways that texts position themselves examples of their use in public health in relation to other texts” (161). In guidelines can be found in the following our case, we are looking at the ways (though we have not included the many that our participants’ metaphoric talk examples that turned up from media, about healthy eating recognized and commercial, and diverse blog sites). For positioned itself in relation to previous “balance,” see the UK’s Eatwell Plate; commonplace metaphors of healthy Health Canada’s “Food and Nutrition” eating. page; and/or the Center for Disease Control’s “Healthy Weight – Healthy 5. Although we concur with Lakoff and Eating”. For “fuel,” see the National Health Johnson that metaphor is a ubiquitous Service’s (NHS’s) “Food for Sport”; the and embedded element of human Australian Women’s and Children’s communication, our rhetorical (rather Health Network’s “Kids’ Health”; and/or than psychological) approach focuses on the Government of Alberta’s “How to Eat the situated, social functions of language and Drink to Fuel an Active Lifestyle”. For in shaping human thought, values, and “junk,” see the NHS’s “How to Avoid Man actions rather than on approaching Boobs – Ditch the Junk Food”; the British metaphor as an inherent cognitive Heart Foundation’s “Junk Food Marketing structure. Like Billig and MacMillan, to Children”; EatRight Ontario’s “Why Are we examine the rhetorical, pragmatic Healthy Lunches and Snacks Important functions of particular, contextualized at School?”; the Dietitians of Canada’s uses of idiomatic metaphors and do not “. “Resources”; and/or the Harvard School . . collect clusters of common metaphors, of Public Health’s “The Problems with divorce them from particular contexts MyPyramid and MyPlate”. of their usage, and then hypothesize in general what experience [or ‘inner 3. For more on healthy living imperatives cognitive states’] such metaphors might for individual citizens, including aging express” (462). citizens, in neo-liberal contexts, see 7 Philippa Spoel, Roma Harris, and Flis Henwood
6. The full project is titled “Managing image instead of a divided plate. See this Healthy Living in Everyday Life.” We link for popular as well as official uses of recruited participants from three balanced plate images. midsized Ontario towns and one midsized city in Southeastern UK. In 9. The diverse, contested nature of semi-structured interviews lasting 45- food categories other than fruits and 90 minutes, participants were asked vegetables is clearly demonstrated in questions about what healthy eating the critical counter-plate that Harvard and active living meat to them, how they published following the USDA’s launch found out about healthy living, how they of its new MyPlate. did or did not practice healthy living, as well as what challenges they faced 10. See Note 5. in eating healthily and living actively. The tape-recorded interviews were 11. According to Perelman and transcribed and coded for content and Olbrechts-Tyteca, the person-act rhetorical themes consistent with the argument posits a relationship of interview questions and the categories coexistence between a person and his that emerged from the data during an or her actions such that one identifies initial open coding process (a method the other and transfer of value can occur described by Bruce Berg). Following between them (297). this initial process, the transcripts were coded for metaphors related to (un) 12. See Note 5. healthy eating through an iterative process that led to their categorization 13. For a fuller Burkean analysis of the according to recurring clusters of which rhetorics of guilt, purification, and balance, fuel, and junk were the most redemption in the participants’ accounts, prominent. See Henwood et al., Harris et see Spoel et al. al., and Spoel et al. for additional analysis from this project. 14. WebMD’s section “Are You a Junk Food Junkie? Here’s What You Need to 7. The balance metaphor occurred more Know” indicates the circulation of this than 50 times altogether in at least phrase in common health discourse. 21 interviews. The junk metaphor and its clustering terms likewise occurred about 50 times altogether within at Works Cited least 25 interviews. The fuel metaphor was somewhat less common, occurring Berg, Bruce L. Qualitative Research about 20 times across at least 12 Methods for the Social Sciences. 4th ed. interviews. Several participants used all Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001. Print. three metaphors, several used two, and some used just one. Billig, Michael, and Katie MacMillan. “Metaphor, Idiom and Ideology: The 8. See, for example, the UK’s “Eatwell Search for ‘No Smoking Guns’ Across Plate” as well as the US’s recently Time.” Discourse & Society 16.4 (2005): 459- introduced “MyPlate” that replaces the 80. Print. former pyramid image. Interestingly, Canada’s Food Guide uses a rainbow Burke, Kenneth. The Rhetoric of Religion: 8 Healthy Living
Studies in Logology. Boston: Beacon, 1961. and Medicine 72.12 (2011): 2026-32. Print. Print. Ivie, Robert L. “Metaphor and the Condit, Celeste M., et al. “Recipes or Rhetorical Invention of Cold War ‘Idealists.’” Blueprints for Our Genes? How Contexts Communication Monographs 54.2 (1987): Selectively Activate the Multiple 165-82. Print. Meanings of Metaphors.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 88.3 (2002): 303-25. Print. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: U of Emmons, Kimberly. “‘All on the List’: Chicago P, 1980. Print. Uptake in Talk about Depression.”Rhetoric of Healthcare: Essays Toward a New Lindsay, Jo. “Healthy Living Guidelines and Disciplinary Inquiry. Ed. Barbara Heifferon the Disconnect with Everyday Life.” Critical and Stuart Brown. Cresskill: Hampton, Public Health 20.4 (2010): 475-87. Print. 2008. 159-80. Print. Perelman, Chaim, and Lucie Olbrechts- Foss, Sonja K. Rhetorical Criticism. 3rd ed. Tyteca. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Long Grove: Waveland, 2004. Print. Argumentation. London: U of Notre Dame P, 1969. Print. Freadman, Anne. “Uptake.” The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre: Strategies for Petersen, Alan, et al. “Healthy Living and Stability and Change. Ed. Richard Coe, Citizenship: An Overview.” Critical Public Lorelei Lingard, and Tatiana Teslenko. Health 20.4 (2010): 391-400. Print. Cresskill: Hampton, 2002. 39-53. Print. Petersen, Alan, and Deborah Lupton. The Gronnvol, Marita, and Jamie Landau. New Public Health: Health and Self in the “From Viruses to Russian Roulette Age of Risk. London: Sage, 1996. Print. to Dance: A Rhetorical Critique and Petersen, Alan, et al. “Healthy Living and Rudman, Debbie Laliberte. “Shaping the Citizenship: An Overview.” Critical Public Active, Autonomous and Responsible Health 20.4 (2010): 391-400. Print. Modern Retiree: An Analysis of Discursive Technologies and their Links with Neo- Harris, Roma, Philippa Spoel, and Flis liberal Political Rationality.” Ageing & Henwood. “Integrating the Imperatives of Society 26.2 (2006): 181-201. Print. Healthy Living in Everyday Life.” Relational Concepts in Medicine. Eds. Mario Deng, Santa Ana, Otto. Brown Tide Rising: Federico Raia, and Maria Vaccarella. Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary Whitney, UK: Inter-Disciplinary, 2012. American Public Discourse. Austin: U of 63-71. Web. 4 Feb. 2012.
and Older Adults’ Accounts of Healthy Eating.” Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health (9 April 2012): n. pag. Web. 9 April 2012.
Philippa Spoel is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Laurentian University, Ontario. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on rhetorical criticism of healthcare, science, and environmental communication. She has published on the rhetoric of midwifery care, public communication of environmental science, and lay perspectives on healthy living.
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Roma Harris is Professor in the Faculty Flis Henwood is Professor of Social of Information and Media Studies, Informatics in the School of Applied University of Western Ontario. Her Social Science, University of Brighton, research focuses on health information UK. Her research focuses on the behaviour. She led the ‘Rural HIV/AIDS social dimensions of information Information Networks Project’ and is co- and communication technologies, editor of Mediating Health Information: most recently in health care. She has The Go-Betweens in a Changing published widely in social science, Socio-Technical Landscape (Palgrave media, and health informatics journals Macmillan, 2008) and Configuring and is co-editor of Gender, Health and Health Consumers: Health Work and the Information Technology in Context Imperative of Personal Responsibility (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
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