‘A grim health future’: food risks in the Sydney press

Abstract

Food scares and newsworthy stories about risks associated with food often receive a high level of attention in the news media. This article examines the reporting of food risks over a recent 14-month period in three metropolitan newspapers available to readers in Sydney. The major topic reported over this time was the relationship between food intake and obesity, which comprised almost half of news stories about food risks. This topic was followed in frequency by the risks associated with primary food production and the risks from processed, restaurant or takeaway food. The article looks in detail at how each of these topics was reported, including the discourses that were employed to give meaning to the news stories. Much emphasis was placed upon personal responsibility for avoiding food risks, particularly in relation to overweight. News stories suggested that Australians, and in particular, Australian children, were facing a crisis in relation to the numbers of people over-eating and becoming fat as a result. The overweight body was represented as grotesque, out of control, unhealthy and unAustralian. In other news stories, various aspects of farming were presented as ‘unnatural’ and thus as rendering foodstuffs risky. Food prepared outside the home was portrayed as far more dangerous than food prepared within the home, with an emphasis in reporting on the potential for contamination in such foods.

Keywords:

• risk
• food risks
• risk communication
• the media

Acknowledgment

The research project upon which this article draws was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant awarded to the author.

Notes

According to news accounts, acrylamide is a chemical that had been identified in high-starch foods that had been cooked at a high temperature. In some animal research it had been linked to gene mutations leading to cancer and damage to the central nervous system.

Articles about GM foods that referred only to risks to do with GM seeds spreading to adjacent non-GM crops were not included in the study because they did not directly deal with the risks to humans of consuming GM foods.