Healthy living guidelines and the disconnect with everyday life

Abstract

In Western democracies, citizens are advised by governments to manage their bodily practices in highly specific ways. There are guidelines for healthy eating, alcohol consumption, exercise and screen time. However, most research works suggest that there is a substantial gap between the guidelines and the ways in which most people live their lives. How can we make sense of this disconnect between the guidelines and everyday life? In this article, I discuss Australian healthy eating and healthy drinking guidelines. I argue that the guidelines invite us to manage our bodies in an idealised, individualised world where lifestyle change is a straightforward matter of putting knowledge into practice. Instead, we inhabit complex social worlds where food and alcohol are central to social life, and the enactment of our social identities and key social practices. Citizens do actively manage their food and alcohol consumption in an effort to be healthy, but they do so from a context where ‘social well-being’ is the primary aim. On the basis of current public health practice, it seems the guidelines will remain central to public health knowledge and funding claims but increasingly disconnected and irrelevant to citizens who inhabit contextualised social worlds.

Keywords:

• consumption
• sociology of health
• healthy public policy

Notes

1. The guidelines used were current at the time of the survey and include the following: (1) Eat plenty of bread and cereals: 4+ servings per day. (2) Eat plenty of vegetables including legumes: 5+ servings per day. (3) Eat plenty of fruits: 2+ servings per day. (4) Milk/yoghurt/cheese: 2+ servings per day. (5) Meat/fish/poultry/eggs/nuts/legumes: 1+ servings per day. (6) ‘Extra’ foods (cakes, pastries, fried food and alcoholic drinks): 2.5 or fewer servings per day. (7) If you drink alcohol limit your intake: 2 or fewer servings per day. (8) Eat a diet low in fat (<30% total energy). (9) Eat a diet low in saturated fat (<10% total energy). (10) Eat only a moderate amount of sugars and food containing sugar (only level suggested for older adults 15–20% of energy). (11) Choose low-salt foods and use salt sparingly (<2300 mg sodium per day). (12) Eat foods containing calcium (≥800 mg per day). (13) Eat foods containing iron (12–16 mg per day). Note that the items 8–13 were calculated nutrient estimates (Ball et al. 2004).

2. See Wyn (2009, p. 108) for an overview of different definitions of well-being and their implications.