In her new book, Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge, Charlotte Biltekoff explores friction between the U.S. public and food industry marketers when it comes to food processing.  

Biltekoff, who has a joint appointment in the Department of Food Science and Technology and Department of American Studies at UC Davis, straddles these two worlds — the food industry and cultural studies.  

“I started to become more and more curious about this dynamic that I kept encountering where people were talking about the public’s increasingly negative attitudes about processed food and what the food industry could do about them," said Biltekoff, who was recently appointed as the first Darrel Corti Endowed Professor in Food, Wine and Culture. "Their perceptions of that problem were so different from the ones that I had.” 

Biltekoff examines this tension throughout the book as she figures out “what the processed food controversy can tell us about the role of scientific authority in the relationship between the food industry and the public." 

A changing view of food  

Opinions about which foods are "bad” and which foods are “good” for us are constantly changing and, often, conflicting.  

According to Biltekoff, the American public’s perceptions about healthy food emerge from a confluence of factors, including concerns about rising obesity rates, ecological sustainability, new technologies, lax regulatory oversight in the food industry and the industry’s influence over government policies.  

As a response to this, more coverage in the media touted the dangers of processed foods — that they weren’t good for the consumers’ or planet’s health. 

On one side of the argument, Biltekoff explains, the food industry insisted that consumers didn’t understand that most food was “processed.” Even fresh spinach goes through a process of cleaning and packaging.  

"'Processed food’ is very abstract,” Biltekoff said. “Nobody defines it very clearly, but it came to really mean something even though it's vague and abstract.” 

Speaking different languages  

What even is processed food? The public’s definition and the industry’s definition are different and ever-changing. 

“I'm really interested in its slipperiness and how it's used and deployed in different ways and in different moments,” Biltekoff said.   

While the public sees processed food as any food that isn’t natural, has additives or can’t be considered a whole food, the industry sees processed food as anything that has been prepared for mass distribution. Preparation can mean cleaning and packaging; removing the seeds from fruit before canning; a technical advancement, like genetically engineered strawberries; or doing anything to a make a food more nutritious or shelf-stable.  

“In the industry, sometimes there's this sense that the public doesn't know what they're talking about — you know, yogurt is processed and pasta is processed and so are Cheetos,” Biltekoff said. “Meanwhile, when someone in the general population says ‘processed food’ they're talking about this list of 100 ingredients that doesn't make sense for cheese.” 

Instead of addressing the public’s concerns about the health and safety of their food, the industry has used the word as a type of defensive mechanism, deflecting and putting the blame on the consumer.  

“There’s an interesting conflict because the food industry is doing two things at once," Biltekoff said. "It's trying to meet consumers where they are with ‘natural’ claims, simple packaging and simple ingredients — words you can know and pronounce — while, at the same time saying, ‘Oh my gosh, we have to do something about this problem of people wanting natural food because it's so at odds with our fundamental mission.’” 

That mission: sales, of course. But, also, Biltekoff said, to make convenient, nutritious, shelf-stable and more delicious — more consumable — food. 

Putting a new label on an old product 

Instead of addressing the concerns of consumers, food industry marketers began highlighting how “natural” their existing brands were while simultaneously launching campaigns to address what they viewed as the public’s misperceptions and irrational fears about processed foods.   

One example of this is the industry’s view that consumers are afraid of things they aren’t familiar with. For instance, consumers might not know what an emulsifier is but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. (An emulsifier is a food additive, either a purified natural product or a synthetic chemical, that helps mix two substances that typically separate when they are combined like oil and water, according to The European Food Information Council.) 

“There's a ton of reformulation and ingredient innovation that has come out of all of this,” Biltekoff said. “The technical job of processing is so very complex and, as the food industry has rightly pointed out, while the public has seemed to desire their food to be less processed, they still want it to taste good and last and not feel funny in their mouths and be familiar.”  

A problem of trust  

There’s a widespread concern in the industry that the public doesn’t trust these brands or products anymore. Their solutions to this, however, keep coming back to messaging. Convince the public with more facts. Appeal to their values by putting a green leaf or a strand of wheat on packaging.  

“The book really takes a different view of what should be done about it,” Biltekoff said. “It provides a real deep dive into the issues behind all of that and suggests that better science communication strategies are not the answer.” 

The real problem may not be that consumers don’t trust the food industry but that the food industry doesn’t trust consumers. 

“Do they recognize our capacity for agency, for acting as participants in the food system — not just as passive consumers but as shapers of the food system and its trajectory going into the future,” Biltekoff said.  

To go even further, she asks, can the industry allow consumers to even be part of this conversation?  

Bringing the conversation to life 

Biltekoff and others at UC Davis are making these types of conversations real and accessible to people both inside and outside of the food industry.  

Thinking Food at the Intersections, a seminar focused on exploring the narratives and systems that contribute to food inequity in the U.S., kicked off last fall with several events and a two-day colloquium. The spring colloquium, Reclaiming Our Food Narratives as a Social Justice Practice, is scheduled for March 14-15.  

Biltekoff will be doing a reading from her book at Omnivore Books in San Francisco on Thursday, Jan. 16 from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Her book launch will be at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis on Tuesday, Feb. 4, from 4:30-7:30 p.m.  

Real Food, Real Facts is an open access book and is available for purchase or downloadable for free via UC Press.  

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