On the epistemological limits of “real food” discourse

ABSTRACT

As part of the wider discourse of “real food,” consumers today are exhorted to “know where their food comes from” and “know their farmers.” This paper presents a critical analysis of real food discourse through an analysis of popular food writing, supplemented with participant observation in farmers markets. Real food discourse argues for a “natural” way of knowing based on direct sensory experience of food and the land it comes from. Farmers figure prominently in this discourse because they are said to retain the natural wisdom that the rest of us have lost. I argue that, while intuitively appealing, ways of knowing advocated for in real food discourse obscure as much as they reveal. Specifically, I find that these ways of knowing mystify issues pertaining to labor and urban-rural relations, and conclude that their valorization limits the radical potential of local food politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Real food
• farmers markets
• epistemological politics
• consumption
• Alice Waters
• Michael Pollan

Acknowledgments

I thank friends and co-workers at the farmers markets for teaching me about local food in San Francisco, especially Leslie, Valentina, and Miguel. Thanks also to Aya Kimura and Manfred Steger for comments on early drafts of the paper, and to anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Is this interpretation too uncharitable? Consider Pollan’s (2006) analysis of obesity in Omnivore’s Dilemma, which he attributes to the ubiquity of cheap junk food. He believes that he is making a structural argument – the problem is some combination of corn subsidy, advertising, and industry making these foods so available. However, as Julie Guthman (2007) argues, his structural argument relies on an image of fat people as “short of subjectivity.” She asks, “If junk food is so ubiquitous that it cannot be resisted, how is it that some people remain (or become) thin?” (78). For Guthman, the implicit answer is clear – on some level, Pollan simply does not consider people who eat badly to be full moral agents.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sang-Hyoun Pahk

Sang-hyoun Pahk has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He will be an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Pacific University starting in Fall 2021.