This paper takes what has been termed the “epidemic of obesity” as the point of departure to examine the way in which political economic factors intersect with diet and nutrition to determine adverse health outcomes. The paper proposes several concepts to better understand the dynamics of the “foodscape” – institutional sites for the merchandising and consumption of food. These include the concepts of “spatial colonization” and “pseudo foods.” With a focus on critical dimensions of the contemporary “foodscape,” principally supermarket merchandising (...) practices, as well as trends in other food vending operations, the paper explores incentives that motivate capital to “spatially colonize” the foodscape with aggressively promoted high fat/high sugar “pseudo foods.” The paper reports on extensive research on trade industry publications as well as data collected through onsite investigations of supermarket practices of the three largest Canadian retail supermarket operations. In addition, current merchandising practices of convenience chain store operations and some non-traditional food vending sites are examined. In concluding, it is argued that the rapidly evolving interdisciplinary debate around the obesity crisis would benefit considerably from the insights to be gained from political economic analysis of retail food industry practices and trends. (shrink)

The nutrition transition concept developed by Popkin has gained wide currency within the nutritional sciences literature as a way of understanding population wide changes to diet and energy balance and their related health outcomes in society. It offers a useful template of different nutritional patterns societies progress through, but it has not provided a comprehensive understanding of the why and how of dietary change. Building on insights from the literature on food regimes in the social sciences, this paper argues the (...) concept of dietary regimes can augment the nutrition transition model and can serve as a bridge between social and health sciences around nutrition and dietary change. The political economy analysis of the dietary regime approach provides insights into the historical degradation of food and the diffusion of nutrient-poor products throughout food environments today. It also engages analysis of the key actors shaping food environments and diets in the industrial era. The dietary regime approach can provide fruitful directions with respect to concrete policy options to address the major issue of population wide weight gain that the nutrition transition model has sought to confront in recent iterations. (shrink)

To understand the phenomenon of the rapidly increasing prevalence of overweight and obese children and youth, it is especially important to examine the school food environment, the role of structural factors in shaping this environment, and the resulting nutrition and health outcomes. The paper examines research on school food environments in the US and Canada. It notes evidence of widespread availability of poor nutrition products in both environments and delineates reasons for the situation, and examines initiatives presently being undertaken in (...) a number of jurisdictions in both countries to encourage healthy eating in schools. Empirical data are presented from a pilot study of high schools in the Canadian province of Ontario. The study documents the extent of student purchasing of nutrient-poor foods and beverages, and the structural factors internal and external to the school that appear responsible for the availability of such products in food environments in this critical institutional sphere. The paper also examines positive local initiatives in high schools that seek to encourage healthy eating in schools. (shrink)