ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the roots of commodity culture, analyzing the development of the contemporary diet industry and the coterminous expansion of nutritional health promotion. Drawing chiefly on the work of historian Stuart Ewen and anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, it presents a historical and theoretical discussion of consumer education and commodity knowledge as they relate to the creation and proliferation of markets, particularly diet food markets. The chapter then provides a framework from economic theory to situate the diet food industry in its broader context of contemporary economic change and advanced capitalist expansion. It demonstrates however, public health is far more than an ineffectual or co-opted pawn of consumer culture. Some critics of health promotion and social marketing, while raising questions about the entanglement of public health with the marketplace, have concluded that the relationship ultimately furthers the aims of public health practitioners.