Real Food, Real Facts:
Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge

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Shortly after finishing my first book, Eating Right in America, I was struck by two things simultaneously; many people had become concerned about the health and environmental impacts of processed food and experts in the food industry viewed the public's growing disaffection for processed food as a result of irrational fears and lack of scientific literacy, hoping to "correct" it through education and communication. This book is a result of my attempt to understand both how good food became "real" in the early 21st century and the political stakes of the food industry's use of science and scientific authority in their efforts to communicate with the public about the benefits of processed food.

Real Food, Real Facts provides a way of thinking about contemporary disagreements about the uses of science and technology in the food system that refrains from demonizing or further polarizing, instead attending to the worldviews that shape the perspectives of both experts and the public, which include contradictory assumptions about the role the public should play in the food system. Chapters explore competing school curricula seeking to teach students very different versions of “where their food comes from,” the fraught politics of “natural” claims, and the possibilities and limits of “transparency" as a means of building trust in the food industry. Ultimately I argue that treating the public's embrace of "real" food as a result of irrational fears or misunderstanding rather than legitimate concerns about the food system enacts a troubling form of "antipolitics," closing down rather than opening up essential conversations about the kind of food system we want and should have.

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BLURBS

"In this brilliant book, Charlotte Biltekoff deftly examines unexplored dimensions of the food wars, including the deployment of science to defend processed food, as if science is free of social context and cultural values. In effect Biltekoff asks for more nuanced thinking about science as the ultimate arbiter of fundamentally political decisions—a difficult but necessary challenge in a 'post-truth' world."
Julie Guthman, author of The Problem with Solutions

"Real Food, Real Facts clearly highlights the centrality of scientism and deficit thinking in contemporary food policy, showing how this approach is a form of antipolitics that excludes key issues from the realm of legitimate political debate."
Saul Halfon, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Science, Technology, and Society, Virginia Tech

"This deeply researched and important book illuminates how trust in science informs trust in the industrial food system. Biltekoff's analysis is critical reading for scholars, consumers, and food industry professionals alike."
Anna Zeide, author of Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry

"Why do the food industry and the public seem to be speaking different languages about the American industrial food system? Biltekoff provides a clear-eyed explanation of food fights between food industry professionals—who assume that if only the public understood the science they would enthusiastically embrace processed foods—and a public wanting something different, including a more transparent food system and a voice in making it. In lucid, accessible prose, Biltekoff employs the frames of Real Facts and Real Food to understand the twenty-first-century landscape of American food."
Amy Bentley, Professor of Food Studies, New York University

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REVIEWS

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