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Food , consumption and health
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Social Studies Collection
No. 24
24
Food, consumption
and health
Cecilia Díaz Méndez and Cristóbal Gómez Benito
(coordinators)
Javier Aranceta Bartrina
Jesús Contreras Hernández
María González Álvarez
Mabel Gracia Arnaiz
Paloma Herrera Racionero
Alicia de León Arce
Emilio Luque
María Ángeles Menéndez Patterson
Published by
the ”la Caixa” Foundation
Av. Diagonal, 621
08028 Barcelona
GOVERNING BODIES OF ”LA CAIXA” SOCIAL PROJECTS

SOCIAL PROJECTS COMMITTEE
Chairman
Isidro Fainé Casas
Deputy Chairmen
Salvador Gabarró Serra, Jorge Mercader Miró, Manuel Raventós Negra
Members
Marta Domènech Sardà, Javier Godó Muntañola, Inmaculada Juan Franch,
Justo B. Novella Martínez, Magín Pallarés Morgades
Secretary
Alejandro García-Bragado Dalmau
Chief Executive Officer of ”la Caixa”
Juan María Nin Génova
Executive Director of ”la Caixa” Social Projects
José F. de Conrado y Villalonga
BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE ”LA CAIXA” FOUNDATION

Chairman
Isidro Fainé Casas
Deputy Chairmen
Ricardo Fornesa Ribó (Deputy Chairman 1st), Salvador Gabarró Serra,
Jorge Mercader Miró, Juan María Nin Génova
Trustees
Ramon Balagueró Gañet, Mª Amparo Camarasa Carrasco,
José F. de Conrado y Villalonga, Marta Domènech Sardà, Manuel García Biel,
Javier Godó Muntañola, Inmaculada Juan Franch, Juan José López Burniol,
Montserrat López Ferreres, Amparo Moraleda Martínez, Miguel Noguer Planas,
Justo B. Novella Martínez, Vicente Oller Compañ, Magín Pallarés Morgades,
Alejandro Plasencia García, Manuel Raventós Negra, Leopoldo Rodés Castañé,
Luis Rojas Marcos, Lucas Tomás Munar, Francisco Tutzó Bennasar,
José Vilarasau Salat, Nuria Esther Villalba Fernández, Josep Francesc Zaragozà Alba
Secretary (non trustee)
Alejandro García-Bragado Dalmau
Deputy Secretary (non trustee)
Óscar Calderón de Oya
Managing Director
José F. de Conrado y Villalonga

Director
Rosa M. Molins
Coordinator
Mònica Badia
No. 24
Food, consumption and health
Cecilia Díaz Méndez

University of Oviedo
Cristóbal Gómez Benito
UNED
(Coordinators)
Javier Aranceta Bartrina

Spanish Society of Community Nutrition
Jesús Contreras Hernández
University of Barcelona
María González Álvarez
Mabel Gracia Arnaiz
University Rovira i Virgili
Paloma Herrera Racionero
Polytechnic University of Valencia
Alicia de León Arce
Emilio Luque
UNED
María Ángeles Menéndez Patterson
Electronic edition available on the Internet:

www.laCaixa.es/ObraSocial
© Cecilia Díaz Méndez and Cristóbal Gómez Benito (coordinators), Javier Aranceta Bartrina, Jesús
Contreras Hernández, María González Álvarez, Mabel Gracia Arnaiz, Paloma Herrera Racionero,
Alicia de León Arce, Emilio Luque and María Ángeles Menéndez Patterson
© The ”la Caixa” Foundation, 2008
Responsibility for the opinions expressed in the documents of this collection lies exclusively with the authors.
The ”la Caixa” Foundation does not necessarily agree with their opinions.
JAVIER ARANCETA BARTRINA MD, is a specialist in Preventive Medicine and
Public Health and doctor in Medicine and Surgery for the University of the Pais Vasco
(UPV). He has coordinated the Work Group on Epidemiology for the NAOS Strategy
(Nutrición, Actividad Física y prevención de la Obesidad) of the Ministry for Health and
Consumer Affairs. He is the technical coordinator for the PERSEO programme (Spanish
Food Safety Agency) for the promotion of physical activity and healthy eating in the
Spanish population.
JESÚS CONTRERAS HERNÁNDEZ PhD, is a Professor of Social Anthropology at the
University of Barcelona. His most recent research focuses on the study of the relationship
between changes in lifestyle and food changes. Among his numerous publications stand
out, Los aspectos culturales en el consumo de carne [Cultural aspects in the consumption
of meat] (2001), La obesidad: una perspectiva sociocultural [Obesity: a sociocultural
perspective] (2002) and, together with Mabel Gracia, Alimentación y cultura. Perspectivas
antropológicas [Food and culture. Anthropological Perspectives] (2005).
CECILIA DÍAZ MÉNDEZ PhD, is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Oviedo
and specializes in the Sociology of Consumption. Her research is done through the
Sociology of Consumption Research Group that she directs at the University of Oviedo.
She completed the study Cambio en el consumo alimentario en España [Change in food
consumption in Spain] (2001-2003) and among her publications are The sociology of
food in Spain: European Influences in Social Analysis on Eating Habits, (Comparative
Sociology, 2006) and the book ¿Cómo comemos? Cambios en los comportamientos
alimentarios de los españoles [How do we eat? Changes in the eating behaviour of the
Spanish] (2005).
MARÍA GONZÁLEZ ÁLVAREZ has a degree in History from the University of
Oviedo (2004) and is completing a doctorate in the programme in History and Social
Analysis, Methods and Sociocultural Analysis. She is preparing her Diploma in Advanced
Studies entitled La industria agroalimentaria en España a través de la publicidad.
Transformaciones en los conceptos de salud y alimentación (1960-2007) [The agrifood
industry in Spain as seen through advertising. Transformations in the concepts of health
and food], under the direction of Dr. Cecilia Díaz Méndez.
MABEL GRACIA ARNAIZ PhD, is a Professor of Social Anthropology at the University
Rovira i Virgili. She has been a visiting researcher in various foreign research centres
(CNRSEHSS, in Paris; CIESAS in Mexico and CETIA in Toulouse) and has coordinated
numerous studies on the sociocultural dimensions of food, health and gender. Among her
most recent publications is Alimentación y Cultura. Perspectivas antropológicas [Food and
culture. Anthropological Perspectives] (2005) and two books she co edited: Comemos como
vivimos. Alimentación, salud y estilos de vida [We eat how we live. Food, health and lifestyle]
(2006) and No comerás. Narrativas sobre comida, cuerpo y género en el nuevo milenio [You
won’t eat. Narratives on food, body and gender in the new millennium] (2007).
CRISTÓBAL GÓMEZ BENITO PhD, is a Professor at the National University for
Distance Education. He has participated in different research projects on food related themes.
Among his publications in this field stands out the coordination of the monograph Consumo,
Seguridad Alimentaria y Salud [Consumption, Food Safety and Health] in the Revista
Internacional de Sociología del CSIC (2005) in collaboration with Cecilia Díaz Méndez.
PALOMA HERRERA RACIONERO PhD, is a professor of Sociology at the Polytechnic
University of Valencia. Currently she forms part of a team of researchers in the field of the
Sociology of Food, Rural Sociology and Sociology of the Environment. She is the author
of diverse works centred on the study of food behaviour and its transformations from
a social perspective and on the analysis of perceptions and attitudes toward genetically
modified foods.
ALICIA DE LEÓN ARCE PhD, is a Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oviedo
with a specialization in Consumer Law and Private Environmental Law. She is the author
of numerous publications centred on the protection of consumers and food safety and has
directed diverse research projects in this field, the most recent being Responsabilidad civil
derivada de daños causados por nuevos alimentos [Civil responsibility derived from harm
caused by novel foods] (2003-2005).
EMILIO LUQUE PhD, is a professor of Human Ecology and Environment and Society
in the Faculties of Political Science and Sociology at the National University for Distance
Education. Among his areas of research and his publications are works on the political
sociology of food, citizenship and ecology and the impact of the built environment.
MARÍA ÁNGELES MENÉNDEZ PATTERSON PhD, is a Professor of Physiology at
the University of Oviedo. In 2002 she received the Grande Covián grant from the Prince
of Asturias Foundation. She co-directs the Masters in Food Biotechnology and has formed
part of the Work Group on Nutrition and Physical Exercise of the Council on Health and
Health Services of the Government of the Principality of Asturias.
Contents
Presentation 9
Introduction 11
Part one: FOOD AND INSTITUTIONS
I. The evolution of institutional recommendations

on health and food 23
1.1. Introduction 23
1.2. Development models and food models 27
1.3. Evolution of the agrifood system, agricultural policy
and dietary recommendations 38
1.4. Conclusions 44
Appendix I 46
II. Scientific advances in nutrition and food 51

2.2. Evolution of nutrition and food 53
2.3. Future perspectives 67
2.4. Conclusions 73
III. Food policies and consumer safety 75

3.1. Introduction: Does every cloud have a silver lining? 75
3.2. Antecedents: The Spanish Food Code and the General
Law for the Defence of Consumers and Users 78
3.3. The admission of Spain into the European Community
and the food crises 82
3.4. Conclusions: better to prevent than lament 96
IV. Industry and Food: from referential advertising
to functional foods 97
4.2. Analysis of Advertising 99
4.3. Advertising by decades: from the 1960s to 2007 100
4.4. Conclusions: food advertising, a complex
and problematic path toward food modernity 114
V. Obesity, beyond the consumer: structural roots

of the food environment 121
5.2. The built environment, physical activity, obesity
and inequality 126
5.3. A political economy of obesity 127
5.4. The «foodscape» of the consumer: the hypermarket
and the hamburger 131
5.5. The consumer’s limited capacity for control 132
5.6. The triple invisibility of the agrifood system 134
5.7. Intervention models 136
5.8. Conclusions 138
Part Two: THE CONSUMER’S RESPONSE
VI. Preferences and food consumption:

pleasure, convenience and health 141
6.2. Food preferences and criteria of choice 143
6.3. Description of the eating day 152
6.4. Current food trends: new lifestyles and new
ways of eating 173
6.5. Conclusion: health, convenience, pleasure…
depending on the circumstances 175
VII. Learning to cook: culinary do-it-yourself,
letter soup, and the audiovisual stew 178
7.2. The kitchen: a traditional place of feminine knowledge
and oral transmission 180
7.3. The alphabet kitchen or letter soup 184
7.4. Secondary orality or the electronic recuperation
of talking 190
7.5. Moral cooking 195
VIII. Childhood obesity: new eating habits

and new health risks 201
8.2. Criteria for the categorization of weight
of the child population 202
8.3. Impact of childhood obesity on child and adult health 205
8.4. Obesity in children, adolescents and young adults
in the Spanish population 208
8.5. Evolution of obesity in children, adolescents
and young adults 211
8.6. Analysis of the causes 214
8.7. Actions to prevent obesity in Spain 225
Conclusions: current problematics related to food,

consumption and health 231
Bibliography 250
Index of Graphs and Tables 268

Presentation
During recent decades, western societies have reached a level of abundance in

the provision of food which is reflected in the general health of the population
and consequently, in the increase in life expectancy.
Parallel to this, social concern related to health and nutrition has been growing.
Concern about having a balanced diet, sensitivity toward internalising healthy
habits, growth in the practice of sports at all levels of society and rigour in
control over diet are all aspects that demonstrate the social importance this
subject has acquired.
However, despite public sensitivity and the availability at this time of more than
enough food and scientific knowledge on nutrition and health, it is not clear that
we are eating better. On the contrary, new disorders such as childhood obesity
have appeared, and we find ourselves before a profusion of alternatives about
what a balanced diet really is, placing us at a crossroads where it is difficult to
make correct decisions about what we ought to eat.
Today more than ever, food has an important social basis and is intimately
related to the modernisation of societies in all areas of life, which leads us to
the idea that an exclusively medical focus is not sufficient to understand and
deal with the new problems which have appeared in relation to food. This is
how Professors Cecilia Díaz Méndez (University of Oviedo) and Cristóbal
Gómez Benito (UNED) have understood it, and as a result, as coordinators of
this study they have turned to experts not only in medicine and biology, but also
in anthropology, sociology and law.
9
The multi-disciplinary focus of this new edition of the Social Studies Collection
permits a broader analysis of the relationships between health, consumption and
food in advanced societies. In this way, the ”la Caixa” Foundation hopes to
stimulate debate on these issues and as far as possible, offer elements to reflect
on that can help in the design of public and private strategies oriented toward
correcting existing problems.
Isidro Fainé Casas

President of ”la Caixa” and
the ”la Caixa” Foundation
Barcelona, February 2008
10
Introduction
Cecilia Díaz Méndez (University of Oviedo)
Cristóbal Gómez Benito (UNED)
(Coordinators)
Food and Health in Modern Societies
During the second half of the twentieth century food took on a new meaning
within Europe, one which developed parallel to the continent’s economic
take-off and to the origin and development of consumer society. In Spain this
great change could be described as the transformation from a society with
food shortages to a society with an overabundance of food. At the least, this
means two types of relevant changes for the study of contemporary food:
on the one hand, objective changes in eating habits, and on the other hand,
changes in perceptions related to what it means to «eat well.» These changes
share a common characteristic: a growing and novel problematization of food
happening in a context where curiously, for Spain, the insecurity associated
with a lack of food is no longer a part of the daily life of the Spanish people.
Food moved into the background of citizens’ concerns with the development
of consumer society and as Spain improved its economic situation and moved
away from hunger and the post-war world. However, the new problematization
of food, which forcefully emerged at the end of the 20th century, reveals
the social aspects of habits that are increasingly disconnected from the
satisfaction of basic biological needs. Today food problems appear connected
to social phenomena that have little to do with scarcity and much to do with
abundance and globalisation. Nonetheless, in these years of economic and
social development, people’s ideas about food have gone through different
phases, which only a detailed exploration will permit us to understand in all
their dimensions. This study will deal with some of them. Food problems did
not end with the post-war period and the disappearance of hunger, nor did
the new problems from the globalisation of food suddenly emerge with the
INTRODUCTION 11
change in century. Between these two periods there have been changes in the
concept of health and eating, changes in the perception of security and risk,
changes in the profile of the consumer, and changes in the role of institutions.
All these changes contribute to demonstrating what could be called «a new
food order,» but one which continues to be a product of the past and the
political, economic, social and cultural development of Spain. These changes
have taken place parallel to the genesis, development and consolidation of
consumer society in Spain. At the same time, food has gone from necessity to
desire and has evolved with the changes in the characteristics of consumers in
an opulent society.
It is necessary to clarify that the social sciences have participated in a
marginal manner in the analysis of contemporary food and have focused
on the exploration of food inequalities in times of scarcity. These sciences
moved away from the study of the different phases of modernity the moment
that hunger stopped being a socially relevant problem and food came to
be a strictly domestic consumer issue. However, food has recovered its
prominence now that scientists in the natural and health sciences, responsible
for analyzing the diet of the population, are finding eating problems linked
to an excess of food, the origins of which are more social than biological. In
addition, the social sciences themselves have changed their objectives, and
feminist studies (demanding a critical look at the domestic sphere) as well as
the development of the sociology of consumption (demanding for itself the
academic attention previously monopolized by the field of production and
work) have permitted the recuperation of sociology and anthropology for the
study of food modernity.
The health sciences have a particular relevance in social studies of food.
Historically, the dietary recommendations of doctors and nutritionists based
on food science have been the basis for changing certain practices and habits
considered by these experts to be unhealthy. These recommendations have
included not only what is to be consumed, but also how, when, where and how
much is to be consumed. When we speak about practices and habits, these are
not only a result of ideas, values, knowledge and judgments related to food,
but also needs, situations and social conditions. To understand these factors in
the current diet, the social sciences have taken on a special prominence, as it
has been demonstrated that policies directed toward improving these practices
12 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

and habits through the diffusion of healthy diets and dietary recommendations,
need to be based not only on solid scientific knowledge about food and
nutrition, but also on a sociological understanding of food in human groups.
Still thinking about the need to introduce an historical perspective in this
analysis, it is necessary to recognize that food has taken on importance in
recent decades, in particular, starting with the global food crises. In addition
to this new risk situation, there are new pathologies today, such as anorexia,
bulimia or orthorexia. Psychological studies on these pathologies have been
done, but there continues to be a limited understanding of the social aspects
that generate them or intercede in them. There is also growing public concern
about the loss of traditional diets and the relation this has with the maintenance
or the loss of what is understood as good health. Foods are also appearing that
are offered as medicines or products capable of helping one achieve the ideal
weight and a svelte figure that contrast with the images of health and body
from the past and with the effort of governments to preserve the good health
of their citizens. Interest in maintaining health through diet has also grown,
as has the impact of the beneficial effects of the Mediterranean diet or the
social relevance of cuisines «d’auteur.» These and other behaviours show the
unusual importance of food, only comparable to the past concern for scarcity
of food.
In this setting, it is understood that new food problems have important social
roots and are intimately related to the changes that modernisation has produced
in other areas of people’s lives. In the daily food choices that people make,
factors and actors intervene which cannot be completely controlled and with
diverse dynamics that reveal the complexity of what is known as the «agrifood
system:» the path food travels from the soil to the plate.
The study presented here offers the possibility of understanding some of the
problems involved in «eating well» today. Our purpose is to offer an analysis
of the food issues causing the greatest concern at this time, prioritising the
consideration of the social dimension of these problems and the motives for
their recent appearance in public discussion. We will investigate the concepts
of «good diet,» food safety, food risk and health, as well as the mutable
character and new roles of public and private institutions in relation to the
consumer, and the consumer in relation to new problems associated with the
consumption of food. It is possible that the underlying concern of this study
INTRODUCTION 13
has to do with a paradox: never before has so much been known about food
and nutrition; never before have consumers had so much information on these
subjects, and never before have food safety and health associated with food
been the object of so much attention (and regulation) from diverse public and
private authorities; and yet, never before have consumers been so disoriented
and confused before the proliferation of dietary recommendations and advice,
still not knowing or understanding what «good food» is.
Although this study has taken the most recent problems of food modernity
as the starting point, nevertheless, it will enable us to understand that we
are not facing a completely new situation, or one that suddenly appeared in
this new century. This situation has emerged from the evolution of Spanish
society itself, from its integration in the social dynamics common to economic
development and globalisation, and from its path toward maturity as a
consumer society; in short, from Spain’s entrance into what analysts of social
change call modernity.
We have considered it important to explore food issues with two frames of
reference: the first focused on institutions and the second, focused on the
consumer. This orientation is in response to a dynamic and holistic conception
of the scenarios in which the exchange of food is produced, but also to the
idea described before, the problematization of food as modern consumer
society has advanced. These scenarios consist of diverse pieces, like a puzzle.
The consumer is the final destination of food and the agent responsible for
choosing the products in order to feed him or herself well. Production is the
responsibility of farmer and livestock farmer. But the agrifood chain is a long
and complex one and throughout modernity the most important sources of
power and decision-making have changed. A clear example of this has been
the growing importance of the food industry and the transfer of power to the
large distributors, with the relegation of agricultural producers to secondary
importance. The growing distance between consumer and producer is another
example. And no less important is the growing role of the media as an
intermediary among the different agents in the agrifood chain. Because of
all of the above, we have taken an analytical approach that emphasizes an
historical analysis of contemporary food and diet. This allows us to place the
two elements on which we have based our line of argument, the institutions
involved in food issues and consumers, into an historical context.

We know that the existing analytical separation between production and
consumption is one of the most questioned aspects of social research on
contemporary food. The real separation between those who produce and
those who buy and consume has been gradually broadening throughout
recent decades. It has been consumers who have demonstrated this by their
clear rejection of certain products and certain food situations, or by their
support of alternative small-scale producers. These unexpected responses
by consumers who have been considered passive and uncritical have been
a challenge for the analysis of consumer behaviour. These same actors have
demanded institutional intervention in the agrifood chain. The uncertainty
of consumption has, curiously, given greater prominence to the consumer in
society. The consumer has become more central, more dynamic, more critical
and less open to manipulation.
We are also aware that this starting point, this historical perspective on the
changes in the agrifood chain, has limitations. It is based on a vision of social
change as a unilinear process with successive phases. It is easy to fall into a
homogeneous and linear vision of food changes in which diversity remains
hidden. But we think that it is worthwhile to look at it in this way in order
to establish the links between different periods and different actors in the
agrifood chain. These links can be causal or non-causal, but without a doubt
they offer a panoramic view of the situation and enable us to understand the
present by looking at the past. We will try to ensure that the consumer is not
presented in the analysis as a mere passive agent of this process of change,
and we also hope to show the dynamics of consumer action as consumers face
and respond to different situations. For all of these reasons, this study contains
two different parts, and an evolutionary treatment of food change in many of
its chapters.
The first part provides an analysis of the form in which food has been dealt
with by public and private institutions and the impact of their actions on
consumer behaviour. The evolution in the actions of these institutions and
the changing character of their role in different historical periods will allow
us to focus on the current debates related to food. The primary role of the
institutions involved most directly in food and diet in modern societies has
been to preserve the population’s health through making recommendations
for eating correctly. Nevertheless, over the years this role has been changing
INTRODUCTION 15
and has turned more toward the field of food safety. In this process we can see
an increase in the regulation of food, which reveals the growing intervention
of public institutions throughout the food system, even in the eating habits of
the public.
Institutions, at first, gathered information from experts in the field of medicine
and later from the field of nutrition. It was these experts who replaced dietary
uncertainty with guidance based on scientific studies, offering reliable
information on how to maintain or improve the good eating habits of the
population.
Agrifood businesses have also played a part in the food changes of consumers
and have contributed to these changes by offering information through
advertising that has promoted food consumption with the same marketing
strategies used to promote the consumption of other products. These strategies,
characterized by an in depth knowledge of the consumer, have made it possible
to respond to consumer expectations by offering foods that are further and
further removed from the world of production.
Controversy permeates a large part of the information exchange between
consumers and institutions and among institutions themselves. Friction results
from changes in the roles of experts with a resulting distrust of scientific
information; changes in dietary recommendations from government agencies
which confuse the public; and changes in food legislation as a formula for
regulating the areas of food production and distribution, not always well
received by business when this restricts their actions. These are only some
of the frictions that can be detected among institutions. In addition we are
witnessing another problem with particular impact on the consumer: everything
is pointing toward a progressive distancing from healthy eating habits in spite
of the growth of institutional controls, the increase in regulations and greater
scientific attention being paid to food.
In «The evolution of institutional recommendations on health and food,»
Cecilia Díaz Méndez and Cristóbal Gómez Benito highlight the changes in
dietary recommendations and in the concept of a healthy diet. The basic idea
of the chapter is that these changes are closely related to, among other factors,
the conceptions of development and modernity (and within modernity to food
modernity) and the evolution of agricultural policy and the agrifood system.

Through the analysis of the conception of food modernity, according to the first
three Foessa Reports (1966-1975), and the analysis of dietary recommendations
from diverse government agencies between 1960 and 2000, the authors show
empirically not only the mutability of dietary recommendations, but also their
close connection with certain aspects of the wider social context.
But this mutability of what we consider «good to eat» also has to do with the
evolution of scientific knowledge about nutrition and dietetics. In the chapter
by Professor María Ángeles Menéndez Patterson, «Scientific advances in
nutrition and food» we can see how scientific advances in the middle of the
twentieth century impacted on the classical concepts of nutrition, changing
the traditional idea of an adequate diet. In this sense, the emphasis of
recommendations initially oriented toward the prevention of diseases caused
by deficiencies and malnutrition has shifted to the study of the potential for
foods to promote health, improve well-being and reduce the risk of diseases
associated with excess eating typical of developed countries. This chapter
ends with some thoughts on the future of the nutritional sciences which pose
new challenges such as the development of «nutrigenomics,» which will lead
us to make the leap from general dietetic advice to individualized diets.
The paradox between the perception of food safety (which, as has been said,
is full of uncertainty and distrust) and the extensive and ample regulation of
all aspects of food (from production to consumption, including processing,
transport and sales) is confirmed by studying the evolution of food policies
in Alicia de León de Arce’s chapter on «Food policies and consumer safety.»
This chapter takes us on a historical journey of food safety policies in Spain
from the second half of the twentieth century until the present. The changes
in policy since Spain’s entry into the European Union (1986) are highlighted.
The author hopes to establish the achievements and gaps in food protection
for the Spanish consumer from a legal perspective and to demonstrate how
certain events (such as the problem with adulterated rapeseed oil or recent
food crises) have led to a legal approach to food safety for consumers and
increased their protection.
Looking at the contexts that affect eating habits, we find two areas of particular
importance: food advertising and the structural context of eating disorders.
Regarding the first, Cecilia Díaz Méndez and María González Álvarez in
INTRODUCTION 17
«Industry and food: from referential advertising to functional foods,» show
us how through advertising we learn about dietary recommendations from
the agrifood industry, which are transmitted to consumers to capture their
attention and influence their preferences. Analyzing the evolution of Spanish
food advertising from the 1960s until today, not only can the food models of
each period be seen, but also the dominant values related to food and health.
Regarding the second issue, in «Obesity, beyond the consumer: structural
roots of the food environment,» Emilio Luque responds to certain questions:
Who is responsible for the pandemic of obesity declared by the WHO? Is it
a private problem whose solution is based on education, or is it also a public
issue, of a structural nature? The general trend toward obesity reveals some
of the contradictions of a pathological agrifood system that has shaped an
«obesogenic» food environment. Subsidies for overproduction, interests of
the industry in the wide distribution of the most profitable products (typically
those most inclined to encourage excess weight), and the fragile role of the
consumer in the context of powerful marketing pressures are some of the
issues dealt with in this chapter.
The second part deals with the study of the consumer. Although it is impossible
to establish a causal relationship with the actions of the institutions dealt with
in the first part, the consumer is at the centre of decisions, controversies and
problems. The chapters in the second part focus on describing consumers’ eating
behaviours and their universe of attitudes, values, preferences, knowledge
and habits related to food. The intention of the authors is to understand the
motivations for food consumption and with this, the background of consumer
food decisions. Each of the chapters deals with some of the most controversial
issues: the problems of the reproduction of the traditional Spanish food culture
and the implications this has on the preparation of the daily diet; eating disorders
and problems of childhood obesity as a consequence of the inadequate eating
habits of the population; or the growing distrust of consumers and the origins
of the perception of risk and its evolution in moments of great uncertainty
about food. We’ll observe the bases of these behaviours, as well as how some
habits are declining while others emerge. All of this will enable us to respond
to some of the most worrying questions related to inappropriate eating habits
and investigate more thoroughly the origin of these new ills affecting society.
Controversy is also evident in the field of the consumer. It is complicated to

know what diverts consumers from dietary norms considered to be appropriate.
It is also complicated to determine the factors which could offer an explanation
of those food behaviours that could be improved. Curiously, it is easier to
analyze the network of actors present in the agrifood market (producers,
distributors, retailers and public institutions) than consumers, possibly because
the final decisions on food consumption are primarily produced in the private
environment of consumption, in the home.
From this perspective, Jesús Contreras Hernández and Mabel Gracia Arnaiz
describe for us in «Preferences and food consumption: pleasure, convenience
and health,» the eating tendencies of the Spanish population today. They
analyse different aspects of life (social, family, work, economic, organisation
of time, health and value system) to explain the diversity of food behaviours
within the different situations and functions in which food plays a part. In this
chapter we have a wide and detailed picture of the socio-anthropology of food
behaviours.
Another area of interest in food changes is focused on what is happening in the
kitchen. In Paloma Herrera’s «Learning to cook: culinary do-it-yourself, letter
soup and the audiovisual stew,» the movement from forms of expression and
communication based on orality and imitation to others based on writing and
abstraction has induced drastic changes in all orders of life, from economics
and politics to daily life. These changes have also radically affected the world
of food and have been accelerated by the irruption of new communications
technologies. Three forms of transmission of culinary knowledge (oral, written
and electronic) overlap and mix together today, leading to the coexistence
of different forms of authority and legitimacy (tradition, the written word,
medical prescriptions, the health ministry, advertising, audiovisual chefs,
etc.). The messages, often contradictory among these authorities, place the
modern food consumer in a permanent state of confusion and anxiety given
the lack of criteria from which to evaluate and resolve the cognitive dissonance
generated.
This second part ends with a chapter from a perspective outside the social
sciences but which completes our vision of the complex relationship between
health and food. Childhood obesity is an emerging problem in all developed
societies and one which has grave individual, social and public health
INTRODUCTION 19
consequences in the short and medium term. In «Childhood obesity: new
eating habits and new health risks,» Javier Aranceta Bartrina shows us that it
is possible that for the first time in the recent history of humankind, children
may live fewer years than their parents. The author talks about premature
mortality induced by the early appearance of degenerative diseases, many of
them related to excess weight and inadequate eating habits. In this chapter he
reviews the clinical and epidemiological concepts of overweight and obesity,
the evidence for their potential repercussion on health and quality of life,
and the data on their impact in Spain and in other countries of the European
Union. Supported by the contributions of the enKid Study, the determinant
factors related to childhood and juvenile obesity are reviewed, and the chapter
ends with a look at current institutional initiatives to reverse the trends in the
coming years, particularly those connected to the school community.
In the closing chapter of the book, «Current problematics related to food,
consumption and health,» taking the previous chapters as a starting point,
Cecilia Díaz Méndez and Cristóbal Gómez Benito set out several lines of
thought on the relationship between health, consumption and food. They
inquire into conflicts existing among the different agents involved in the
problematization of food, and make some predictions about what may happen
in the future with food and diet.

Part one
FOOD AND INSTITUTIONS

I. The evolution of institutional
recommendations on health and food
1.1. Introduction
The relationship between food and health is based on the assumption that we
know the effects of foods, eating practices and habits on health. The nutritional
sciences and dietetics seem to provide us with a base of scientific knowledge
about the effect of eating and diet on health. Based on this knowledge,
numerous public and private authorities make recommendations about what
foods we should eat, in what quantities, with what frequency and in what way
they have to be consumed. Consequently, if people follow these directions,
there is no doubt that the health of the population will improve. From this
perspective, the problem is a question of information and education about food.
The proliferation of television and radio programs, of specialised magazines
and public agencies dedicated to the relationship between food and health is
proof of the social acceptance of this way of approaching the problem. At the
same time it reveals the existence of health problems associated with food in
our opulent societies and the existence of a growing social concern over this
issue.
However, the relationship between health and food is very complex, and
there is a lot of evidence that we are still far from a scientific consensus
on what is good or harmful for our health in regards to food, in spite of the
unquestionable advances in scientific knowledge in this area. What is more,
not only is there a definite lack of consensus on many questions related to
these issues, but we can also see that the concept of a «healthy diet» is very
mutable, which translates into constant changes in dietary recommendations.
In contrast to what one would expect from scientifically based knowledge
from nutritionists and food scientists, what is understood as a healthy diet is
THE EVOLUTION OF INSTITUTIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS ON HEALTH AND FOOD 23

as changeable and contradictory as any other social construction, and to such
an extent that it confuses the consumer. Anyone, for example, who remembers
the dietary recommendations which have come to us in the last two decades
from scientific authorities and the media on the benefits or dangers of certain
foods, diets or culinary practices can confirm for themselves the «volatility»
of expert opinion. It is precisely these changes and contradictions which are
responsible to a great degree for the uncertainty that characterises the modern
food consumer. This uncertainty and confusion has also come about because
of the crises in food safety of recent years (chickens contaminated with
dioxins, mad cow disease, etc.), which have not only called into question the
modern food production system but also the system that regulates and controls
the healthiness and quality of food. As a result, what is placed in doubt for
the consumer is the capacity of this system of experts to propose consistent
dietary recommendations and to guarantee health and the quality of foods.
The changes, which are often contradictory, in dietary recommendations are
much more evident when observed over a long period of time. We will have
the opportunity to offer some evidence of these changes in the concept of a
healthy diet in our country.
One could think that the mutability of the concept of a «healthy diet» and
the dietary recommendations associated with it are due to the limitations of
scientific knowledge in a given moment regarding the physiology of foods,
of food sciences, and of dietetics, and that therefore the advance of scientific
knowledge in these areas will eliminate incorrect assumptions. Without a
doubt this is true. Professor Menéndez Patterson’s chapter in this study shows
us this, while at the same time exposing the limitations of much of scientific
knowledge that was at one point in time accepted without question. But it
is not only a problem of scientific knowledge. There are other factors that
powerfully influence the mutability of what is understood as a healthy diet. It
is in the analysis of these other factors and of the social conditions that lead to
the social construction of the healthy diet where sociology can contribute to
the study of the relationship between health and food.
Other than the level of scientific knowledge of nutritionists, what are the other
factors that could explain these changes in the concept of a healthy diet? The
hypothesis that we put forward is that the changing concepts of a healthy
diet are due not only to logical adaptations to a society changing its food

needs, but that needs and food problems also change with the society as it
develops. The social context explains a good part of what in any moment
is understood as a healthy diet. In this work we consider the social context
from two perspectives. The first refers to what in each historical period is
understood as modernisation (and in particular, food modernisation), and we
will see how many things besides information from nutritionists intervene in
this conception. The second refers to the context of agrifood production, and
concretely to the evolution of agricultural policy and the development of the
agrifood system.
With respect to the first, what in each period is understood as food modernisation
is closely tied to the general theories of modernisation dominant in each
historical period. And both the general theories of modernisation as well as
those of food modernisation are based on reference models to which behaviours
and social values have to be adjusted. To see these reference models we can
turn to the diagnosis of the social sciences (sociology in particular) regarding
the social situation of Spain since the 1960s in its process of development
and modernisation, and how what we understand by development and
modernisation has been changing. These sociological works have analysed
the state of nutrition, eating habits or even in a partial manner the food culture
of the Spanish in each period, as part of the Spanish social situation and as an
indicator of the level of development. Analysing these sociological studies on
the Spanish diet is justified because, on the one hand, they help to define the
social context of each period (they are even part of the context) by showing
us some aspects of the Spanish social situation relevant to our analysis, but
also because in some way they illustrate for us how sociological analysis is
socially constructed and becomes incorporated into the opinions of the experts
(in nutrition and diet) as a sort of speculative mirror image, in such a way that
more than being analysts of the situation they are part of the situation.
Looking back in time, the validity of the statements and recommendations
of these sociologists is shown to be as ephemeral as many of the dietary
recommendations that we are going to look at, as they are products of very
conventional, simple and unidirectional (typical of the times) theoretical
schemas of economic and social modernisation. In debt to the opinions of food
experts and to an already obsolete theory of modernisation, their diagnoses of
the food situation and the social conditioning of the Spanish and their proposals

for improvement are projected on the official dietary recommendations and
they inevitably become another factor to explain them, another part of the
system of experts.
Regarding the second perspective, it must be said that studies on food
behaviours, especially the consumption of food, often look at these behaviours
as phenomena in themselves or as related to other aspects of culture or to the
cultural and social characteristics of consumers but rarely do they connect
food behaviour to the evolution of the agrifood sector and to agricultural
and food policies; in other words, the production and consumption or supply
and demand of food is rarely connected.(1) The supply of food is provided
by the agrifood system, composed of the agricultural or primary sector,
the food industry and the distribution sector. The first two, in particular
the agricultural sector, are regulated by agricultural policies. In this sense,
we think that the changing dietary recommendations are also related to the
evolution of the agricultural sector, the agrifood system and agricultural
policies. The evolution of both sectors and policies has to be seen not only
as an adaptation to the changing needs of the population and the preferences
of consumers, but also as shaping their needs and preferences. For example,
the advertising campaigns of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fishing and Food
on the consumption of bananas (from the Canary Islands), sugar, olive oil
or sardines are better understood as an attempt to stimulate the consumption
of these products as a way of promoting national agricultural production (or
fishing) rather than as recommendations made for their dietetic or nutritional
values, even though their nutritional qualities or disease preventing qualities
are often backed by the opinions of experts. The participation of professional
organisations in these campaigns (made up of all the agents in the food chain,
from primary production to distribution, and from government to professional
organizations) demonstrates this point.
Therefore, we think that the situation of the agricultural sector (and the
subsequent process of industrialisation of the agrifood industry) and the
objectives of agricultural policies explain many of the dietary recommendations,
and an in-depth sociological study of these recommendations, should take this
into account.
(1) This is not the case of sociologists that deal with food who come from agricultural sociology and some econo-
mists of the agrifood system. On this theme see Díaz Méndez and Gómes Benito (2005: 21-46).

In this work we cannot analyse in depth the relationships between food
and health from the perspectives pointed out; that is, their relationship with
changing conceptions of modernisation and food modernisation in particular
and in relation to the evolution of the agricultural and agrifood sectors and
agricultural policy. We can only mention some examples to support our
hypothesis, but we think this will be enough to make clear that what has been
understood as a healthy diet in different times has had to do with diverse
social factors and not only with the state of scientific knowledge on nutrition
and food at each moment.(2) We do not defend a strong relativism regarding
the scientific fundamentals of what is understood as a healthy diet; rather
we want to highlight the influence of other factors that are often behind
dietary recommendations and that are almost always ignored. To do this it is
necessary to widen our critical look to find the logic of these changes in what is
understood as a healthy diet in each period. On these issues, as in everything,
there are ideologies, beliefs, values and interests involved which condition
the reach of the models of a healthy diet and the dietary recommendations
associated with them.
1.2. Development models and food models
Since the middle of the 1960s many different reports on the social situation of
Spain have come out. The first among them were the Foessa Reports,(3) awhich
were the most well-known and complete and which also had the greatest
social impact at the time. They were followed by other reports from diverse
institutions.(4) The first of the Foessa Reports (begun in 1966, when the First
Development Plan was barely two years in running) was a study dealing with
social problems (with methods of positivist sociology) in order to understand
the social reality of Spain and its emerging problems as a developing country.
Hence, it paid special attention to the study of the life circumstances of the
population, in particular the most disadvantaged sectors. The food situation
of the population of a still underdeveloped country appeared as a primary
(2) It should also be added that scientific research itself is socially conditioned and oriented, which reinforces our
argument.
(3) Between 1966 and 1995 five Foessa Reports were completed.
(4) Such as the De Miguel Reports about Spanish society for the Complutense University (De Miguel, 1994, 1995
and 1996), among others.

problem in the form of shortages and food imbalances. In what follows, and
for reasons of space, we will only take into account the first three Foessa
Reports, but they are enough to illustrate and support our argument.
In these reports we find the first sociological studies on food consumption (not
on the general phenomenon of food) done in Spain, as the first three reports
(1966, 1970 and 1975)(5) include chapters on the diet of the Spanish.(6) All of
them took the construction of a «rational diet» as defined by experts in nutrition
as the starting point (citing in particular Gregorio Varela and his school), and
this was accepted without discussion. But what is most important is that in
this concept of the «rational diet» there was an explicit ideal referent; in other
words, the unquestioned dietary model was that of the developed countries
(as occurred in general with other aspects of the conventional conception of
development and modernisation then in use). The model of development that
Spain had to reach was provided by the richest countries (the United States,
Germany, France, England, etc.). Their food model was synonymous to the
modern developed food model (the so-called «Mediterranean diet» had not
been invented, as we will see), and this model had to be adopted in Spain
and in other developing countries. The diet of the developed countries (as if
they were all the same) both in qualitative terms (types of products that form
the diet) and in quantitative terms (absolute and relative quantities of them)
represented not only an objective but also a referent to measure the degree of
development regarding food of a country. Thus, these eminently empiricist
studies, implicitly based on a now obsolete functionalist and univocal
conception of development, tried to describe (and barely to explain) the food
situation of the Spanish while at the same time using food as an indicator
of the development of the country. In this sense, food was not of interest as
an object of study in itself, like any other aspect of social reality, but rather
for its being an indicator of the well-being of the population. These reports
(especially the first two, directed by Amando de Miguel) followed practically
the same developmentalist ideology as the Plans for Development (the First
Development Plan was from 1964 to 1967). They were closely related and in
(5) The third report was directed by Luis González Seara, who substituted Juan Díez Nicolás.
(6) In 1967 the same foundation edited a work by Amando de Miguel, called «Tres estudios para un sistema de
indicadores sociales» [Three studies for a system of social indicators] in which section 2.8 was dedicated to indi-
cators related to food. This study is of interest because of its quantitative methodology and theoretical approach to
the study of food consumption.

a certain way mutually reinforced each other. In what follows we will see the
most interesting aspects of these reports having to do with our argument.
The nutritional state of the Spanish as deficient and imbalanced
In the first two reports (1966 and 1970) the nutritional state of the Spanish
was diagnosed as deficient and imbalanced, as it did not reach the level of
caloric intake of the developed countries (3,200 calories per day). In addition,
serious imbalances in the components of the diet appeared, affirming that
Spain «is at an acceptable level, although there are still great differences
regarding the distinct participation of diverse social sectors in this average
dietary level and above all, in the distribution of foods, and the diet is very
far from being rational» (Foessa 1966: 102).(7) There is no doubt that in those
years the nutritional state of the Spanish still presented notable deficiencies,
especially in the form of imbalances in basic nutrients and among the different
food groups. But along with the verification of nutritional deficiencies the
report went a step further and described the average Spanish diet of the period
as «irrational:» «A deficient level of nutrition and irrational distribution of
food» (Foessa, 1966: 102). The irrational distribution of food was attributed
to cultural factors,(8) more than to the acquisitive capacity of the population. In
the case of Spain these cultural factors consisted of the «traditional importance
that is given to eating,» «that it is not easy to make the midday meal disappear,»
«that canned and frozen products are not easily accepted,» that «being fat» or
«eating a lot» was socially valued, and in «the social importance of gatherings
such as wedding and baptisms, or gastronomic societies,» etc. (Foessa, 1966:
103). In other words, with this slightly folkloric way of expressing it, the
study was recognizing the importance of cultural factors in the models of food
consumption, which do not necessarily closely follow levels of income.(9)
As can be seen, apart from the doubtful causal capacity of those habits, it is
(7) As was recognized in the second report (Foessa, 1970: 716), these indicators have to be considered as relative
cultural standards and not so much as biological levels «always difficult to foresee» (because what is really not
known is if the underdeveloped countries are under eating or if the rich are overeating).
(8) The second report says the same thing (Foessa, 1970: 717).
(9) Which in a certain manner contradicts the analysis of the evolution of spending on food in the process of deve-
lopment, which affirms that the greater the level of income, the smaller the percentage which is dedicated to food.
In Spain, in 1958 40% of the national income (of family income) was spent on food, 35% in 1963, 33% in 1964 and
27% in 1965. The proportion of spending on food has been habitually used as an indicator of development.

curious and surprising from our current perspective to relate bad eating habits
to the lack of consumption of canned and frozen products.(10)
Cultural factors and spending on food
Given that the irrational diet was due more to bad cultural eating habits, they said
that it was very possible that spending on food would not decrease as incomes
increased, and that it would stay above the levels of other similar countries.
Nevertheless, the progressive decline in family spending on food meant that
the food problem moved from the level of nutrition to that of distribution
in the diet. But in this lack of rationality there were not only objective food
imbalances (derived from hunger and from bad nutrition that still affected an
important part of the population), but there was also a lack of standardisation
in relation to the eating habits of the most industrialised countries. Criticism
of the modern industrial food system had still not appeared.
This imbalanced and irrational average diet of the Spanish population with
lower incomes (it is assumed that those with higher incomes had an adequate and
rational diet) was characterised by (Foessa, 1966: 108-110) a high consumption
of bread(11) (at levels common to countries with low caloric intake, because of
the weight of consumption of the rural population), although inferior to that
of countries such as Italy, Portugal and Greece and similar to that of France;
a high consumption of potatoes, similar to that of Portugal and superior to
Italy and Greece; a very low consumption of milk, very far from the levels
of the rich countries, and similar to the consumption of Italy and Greece and
superior to that of Portugal;(12) a middle to low consumption of meat (similar
to Portugal and somewhat inferior to that of Italy); a consumption of fruits
and vegetables superior to the majority of countries;(13) a high consumption of
fats and fish; a high consumption of legumes, at levels of poor countries, and
low consumption of eggs (but growing, due to the incipient development of
(10) There is not doubt that the incipient development of the agrifood industry and the domestic technology for
freezing began to affect consumer demand for food products. It makes sense, but what we want to highlight is that
this type of consumption was presented as desirable and recommended by «experts.»
(11) Data was used from the Commission for the Plan for Economic and Social Development, based in turn on
studies by Varela.
(12) The study echoed the opinion of Casado on the influence of cultural factors on the low consumption of milk,
which was explained by the «low valuation of milk.»
(13) The increase in consumption of these products is associated with the expansion of new irrigated crops.

industrial poultry farms) and sugar, quite inferior to that of the countries of
central Europe but similar to other Mediterranean countries.(14)
Small food shops as part of the problem
In the first report (1966) part of reason for the high family spending on food was
seen as the responsibility of the retail food system, at that time still dominated
by small food shops that according to the report still employed almost half
a million persons. This was reflected in the prices of foods in certain places
and explains in part the still high percentages of family spending dedicated
to food. We wouldn’t see the expansion of supermarkets until the second
half of the 1960s, and the phenomena of the hypermarkets until the 1980s.(15)
Although the changes in the food distribution system (which has consolidated
the hegemony of the large stores) has affected the prices of foods, today
the opinion is growing that this distribution system has a good part of the
responsibility in the formation of bad eating habits.(16)
Bad eating habits
The study of eating habits and the social factors which determined those habits
was considered to be «an aspect barely analysed and one which the sociological
point of view can, without a doubt, help to outline quite a bit» (Foessa, 1970:
715).(17) As mentioned above, the change toward a more balanced and «rational»
diet required that bad eating habits be eliminated. The reasoning was correct
but what it raised was the issue of what was understood by bad habits. In these
reports, the starting point was that the change in eating habits found irrational
obstacles «in the sense that they are not foreseeable through the law of supply
and demand. In other words, using only the classical model, the people are
not as sensitive to price as would be imagined,» therefore change depended
on many other economic, social and cultural factors (seen as problems).
(14) The third report (Foessa, 1976) insisted on this comparative perspective. According to the report, in those
years Spain was ranked in an intermediate position in the consumption of total calories and calories of animal
origin, in other words, «Spain is reaffirmed as a nation of intermediate development» (Foessa, 1976: 244).
(15) Contreras, 2000: 311 and ss.
(16) On the return of some developed countries to promoting small businesses and the effects of large-scale distri-
bution on bad eating habits, see Mauleón (2007).
(17) The third report recommends doing nutritional surveys to support local or national campaigns to correct food
habits and to prevent nutritional deficiencies, such as doing educational campaigns in schools and in the media to
teach consumers (Foessa 1976: 526).

As a result, «the most interesting analytical problem is to determine the
motivations for assimilating new products into the diet» (Foessa, 1966: 112).
As an example of the influence of these factors the study analysed the cases
of frozen fish and meat, products whose consumption was recommended as
components of a more rational diet.(18) The increase in their consumption was
not only dependent on price, but rather on other social and cultural factors.
In those years, the consumption of frozen fish and meat was associated with
modernity,(19) status (high) and social class (upper-middle and upper) (Foessa,
1966: 114). After analysing these cases, the authors concluded that to support
a change in eating habits it was necessary to promote the following: spread of
dietetic education, principally through the media and among primary school
teachers; the expansion of systems of refrigeration as much in productive
and distributive industries as in homes; contact with foreign dietary models,
through travelling; programmes of complementary food (milk in the schools);
and progress in the preserving of many perishable or exotic foods. Given the
difficulty of putting these factors into action in rural zones, they proposed
specific campaigns directed at children and young women as part of community
development in rural zones (Foessa, 1970: 116-117).(20)
Progress and modernity in food
The 1970 report (Foessa, 1970: 716) (21) explicitly stated what was understood
by food progress:
1) Proportional decrease in the budget destined for food.
2) Increase and balance in the level of food consumption in calories, proteins,
minerals and vitamins.
3) Increase in the percentage of foods of animal origin, which means a greater
nutritive richness for the quantity consumed.
(18) It should be noted that fish was introduced in a general and massive way in the Spanish diet in the years of
rationing, as, until then, fresh fish was almost unknown in the interior of the country, while frozen fish didn’t
spread until the beginning of the 60s and its development was conditioned by the lack of diffusion of refrigerators
(Foessa, 1966: 112).
(19) We won’t go into the concept of «modernity» here. We have worked based on the suppositions raised and
discussed by Solé (1998) and with the suggestions from these concepts on food raised by Poulain (2002).
(20) Which is being done now through Agents of the Household Economy of the Agricultural Extension Service,
as will be seen.
(21) Also in the third report (Foessa, 1976: 512).

4) Balance in the cultural interpretation of food, in its conception as a reasonable
means to restore energy, but also conserving as far as possible aesthetic values,
of human relations, etc. which distinguish the function of food.
Behind this progress was, without a doubt, the food model of Europe and
North America, high in proteins and fat of animal origin.(22) In contrast the
average diet of the Spanish in those years was still far from that model. It was
described as having:
1) Consumption of cereals at an intermediate level between central Europe
and southern Europe.
2) A very high level of consumption of potatoes.
3) A fairly high level of consumption of legumes with a decreasing tendency
and quite a bit less than in Portugal.
4) A high consumption of vegetables and low consumption of fruit.
5) An intermediary consumption of meat, between the extremes of Portugal
and France.
6) Very high consumption of fish, almost at the level of Sweden and
Portugal.
7) High consumption of fats, almost at the level of France.
8) Rapidly growing consumption of eggs.
9) Low consumption of milk, below that of Italy and Greece, and somewhat
above that of Portugal.
In general, the evolution of the Spanish diet was close to the Italian model.
But food modernity was also associated with an urban phenomenon: «It is the
fact of living in cities which determines in all social groups the probability of
having a more balanced and modern diet» (Foessa, 1970: 718). But habitat
and income combined in the models of diet: the urban middle classes were
those that had a diet most similar to the European, while the urban working
(22) The third report (Foessa, 1976: 514) continued proposing an increase in the consumption of animal proteins.
The report says: «the essential components of the Spanish diet have varied in form in recent years. Between 1960
and 1970 we have gone from 75 to 85 grams of protein (of animal origin) per habitant per day,» and later: «Never-
theless, in comparison with other European countries Spain consumes more bread and less meat, milk and butter»
(Foessa, 1976: 514).

class and the rural classes were those which maintained the «stereotypical»
elements of the Spanish diet.
The improvement in the diet of the Spanish in those years was still conditioned
by what was called the «food potential.»(23) The potentials expressed the
changes in the agricultural sector (expansion of crops, dairy factories,
intensive poultry installations, etc.) as well as the changes in foreign trade
of agricultural products. Nevertheless, the existence of some obstacles, such
as the delay in refrigeration capacity, impeded the more rapid growth of the
availability of some products, such as milk. In summary, the Spanish food
potential was growing beyond forecasts, although it was still below that of
similar countries. But it was already reflecting changes in the structure of
agricultural production in the country, which would allow the acceleration
of change in the model of diet in the second half of the 1970s (Foessa, 1970:
720-721). It must be said that productive changes in the agricultural sector
(agricultural and livestock production) and in the agrifood industry, propelled
by agricultural policies and by the agrifood market itself, were oriented by
earlier models of consumption, not so much (or not only) by demand. The
case of the consumption of vegetable oils and fats, distinct from olive oil was
a clear example of this orientation.
It is interesting to see how modernity in diet was understood in these reports. It
was demonstrated in the consumption of certain foods, which supposed greater
aesthetic taste, greater ease, better quality, etc., such as frozen fish, prepared
soups, instant coffee, frozen meat, juices, loaf bread, etc.; in other words, typical
products from the supermarket,(24) and less frequently available in rural areas.
However, it is interesting to note that, given the advantages of these products
(«their greater rationality,» sic), they were not consumed more among the
urban middle classes. Rather it is the families with higher incomes that bought
more of these (rational) products. The consumption of these products was
considered in the second report as an example of rational eating, and their low
consumption among the lower classes was an example of bad habits: «While
they subsist [referring to the low consumption of these products] it can’t be said
that the modest classes achieve a rational and sufficient diet. In any case, what
(23) In other words, the balance of production plus or minus the trade balance with the exterior plus or minus
self-consumption, losses, etc.
(24) In expansion in those years in which hypermarkets still did not exist.

is evident is that the diet that we could call “modern” appears to be the norm
almost exclusively among the comfortable urban classes» (Foessa, 1970: 724).
For the report, the product of greatest power of class distinction was loaf bread:
«The wealthiest classes permit themselves what is still, in reality, a luxury, in
other words, the use in their diets of more manageable, storable, nutritious,
and most of all, more varied products» (Foessa, 1970: 725). Another aspect of
this qualitative change was the increase in the consumption of beverages of all
types: soft drinks, nutritional drinks, stimulants, etc. Compare this «modern
and rational» diet with current preferences and dietary recommendations and
we can see their peculiar relationship.
The gradual move toward the European diet can already be observed in the
third report (Foessa, 1976: 515), which said, regarding the relative decline in
consumption of cereals and potatoes, that «these declines reflect a substantial
improvement of diet thanks to the lesser relative importance of these products,
considered to be of inferior nutritional quality,» and that the value of proteins
had increased almost 10 percent, while consumption of animal proteins
as a percentage of all proteins had gone from 30 percent to 45.7 percent.
However, the report still insisted that the Spanish diet continued to be «[…]
lacking in what are referred to as nutritive substances (proteins, minerals and
vitamins), given that the diet is principally composed of legumes, fats, cereals,
beverages, etc.» (Foessa, 1976: 244). After affirming that the quality of food
was improving, the problem was relegated to the poor classes or to rural areas
where less animal protein, fats, minerals and vitamins were consumed and
more vegetable proteins and carbohydrates: «It presents, therefore, a type of
diet of very inadequate composition.»
The role of the household economy
The second Report (1970) was an advance on the study of food culture and
habits compared to the 1966 report. For the authors of this Report, what was
important was to confront the problems that determined the adaptation of the
diet, the change of certain eating habits, the acceptance of new foods, the
diffusion of certain rudiments of food science, etc. (Foessa, 1970: 722), and
all of this with a practical end: to know the determinants of eating behaviours
and, in this way facilitate change toward a more rational diet.

From this perspective, the second report centred on the family,(25) because this
was the most important and most useful sociological context for understanding
the social situation. In this context the problem of the household food economy
had an extraordinary importance (Foessa, 1970: 722). The report introduced the
concept of «food culture,» although it recognised that this was an abstraction
not taking into account regional diversity and urban and rural differences. The
European referent was also explicitly present in the analysis of this food culture,
for example, in relation to meal-times. The typical timetable for the three meals
was quite different from the general European timetable, the Spanish generally
eating much later (with a trend toward being even later) (Foessa, 1970: 722).
In the family sphere it was the «bromatological culture» which also explained the
changes, once a certain determined level of income had been reached (Foessa,
1970: 726). The report produced an «index of food education» which revealed
that the highest values were in the urban strata: housewives with secondary or
higher education, the upper middle-class and upper class, non agricultural classes,
those with the highest incomes. They made various recommendations to improve
eating habits including having an earlier and complete breakfast, a lighter lunch
at mid-day, most often out of the house, and an earlier and more complete dinner
in which the whole family would meet – once again, the European model.
Connections with the agrifood sector and the institutional framework
The third report (Foessa, 1976) went a step further in relating the food model
with the food production system, in such a way that the changes in the
structure of final agricultural production went hand in hand with the changes
in the structure of food consumption, as in the case of the consumption of
meat – especially chicken – and also eggs, milk, sugar, fish and fruit, while
the consumption of cereals, legumes and vegetables barely grew. However,
Spanish agriculture still had grave structural problems to the extent that the
national agricultural sector could not satisfy the growing internal demand
caused by the increase in income and population growth.(26) The report insisted
on the need to adapt supply to demand, which became one of the objectives of
the chapter on food of the Third Development Plan.
(25) Following also the orientations of the CCB Plan and the work of Demetrio Casado (1967).
(26) As a contrast, the study mentioned the poultry sector, «which is the only branch of our agriculture that has
managed to reach international levels difficult to surpass…» (Foessa, 1976: 510).

The report also highlighted the structural deficiencies of the Spanish food
industry: small in size and atomized, lack of hygiene and with deficiencies
in marketing channels. For these years, the importance of food in the growth
of GDP was still very high (55 percent), revealing characteristics of an
underdeveloped country, and with the attendant high prices of agricultural
products and food as a consequence of these structural problems.
New problems: fraud and the adulteration of food
Innovative compared to the previous reports, the third report gave attention
to «one of the grave problems affecting the food system of our country,»
the adulteration of foods (Foessa, 1976: 522). After the development of the
industrial system of food production during the decade of the 1970s, problems
associated with this system appeared. The authors expressly said: «It is
curious that as a country develops and the system of the provision of food
becomes more complex, biotic contamination (food infections) and abiotic
contamination become more frequent; the first because the food production
chain is longer and the second because in order to preserve food, because of its
presentation or because of it being the object of fraudulent trade, the addition of
diverse substances or their substitution for other similar ones is required.» The
authors didn’t spend much time on this question nor on its implications for the
analysis of industrialized food systems, although they introduced (probably
spontaneously) terms such as «chain» to refer to the successive handling of
food, though not so much to refer to the concept of a «food chain.» Considering
that these problems were inherent in the food system, they demanded better
legal regulations such as the elaboration of a food code and greater control
over inspections, in addition to making businesses «conscious» (Foessa, 1976:
522-523). Thus, it is in those years when problems with the modern industrial
food system first began to be perceived, although some of the old problems
still persisted. In this sense, the report picked up on the need to elaborate a
Spanish food code.(27)
(27) The code was approved in 1967, but it wasn’t put into effect until six years later. Its parts are 1st, General prin-
ciples; 2nd, General conditions of the materials, treatment and personnel related with foods, food establishments
and food industries; 3rd, Foods and beverages; 4th, Additives and impurities of the materials directly related with
foods (the 5th part is not mentioned). (See the chapter by Alicia de León in this book).

1.3. Evolution of the agrifood system, agricultural policy
and dietary recommendations
If we observe the evolution of dietary recommendations (DR) (28) from a

certain historical perspective we can see that they not only followed changes
in Spanish society but often very closely followed agricultural policy and the
evolution of the agrifood sector. As we said in the introduction, this parallel
demonstrates the influence of non-scientific factors on the changes in DR and
in the concept of a «healthy diet,» changes that increase the contingency of
many of these recommendations and the concept of a «healthy diet.» Given
the limitations of space, we only want to highlight some of the relationships
that support our argument.(29)
During the decades analysed we can see the changes that took place in the social
context as well as in dietary recommendations. Many of the social factors of
change in our most recent history constitute a reference for understanding
the way in which the recommendations and the concept of «appropriate diet»
itself have varied. We are going to highlight several aspects considered to be
independent variables in explaining the changes.
In the 1960s and 1970s in the context of a still very rural society and one
with a majority of the active population in the agricultural sector, dietary
recommendations were exclusively in the hands of agricultural institutions.(30)
In those years the Ministry of Agriculture was responsible for spreading
a new food culture in which we can see the close connection with the
direction of agricultural policy. With a tone of paternalism, they transmitted
a conception of appropriate diet focused on the objective of improving the
diet of a population which coexisted with underdevelopment and which still
remembered shortages and hunger. In this period the role of Home Economics
(28) We understand dietary recommendations (DR) to be guidelines made by public and private authorities to change
the food consumption habits of the population by recommending certain practices and consumption of certain foods
and advising against others. The DR are broader than nutritional recommendations (NR), given that they refer to all
aspects of eating and not only diet.
(29) These aspects are dealt with at greater length in an unedited and more extensive version of this section
(Díaz Méndez and Gómez Benito, 2006). The principal aspects of this evolution are presented synthetically in
Appendix I.
(30) In 1960 Spain was still a very agrarian society, with 40% of the active population employed in agriculture, and
with almost 58% of the population living in towns with less than 10,000 inhabitants.

Agents in the Agricultural Extension Service (SEA), created in 1955, was
very important.(31)
Organisations in charge of health and subsequently consumption were
gradually increasing in importance. The Ministry of Agriculture, decisive
in the beginning of the 1960s for the expansion of the basic concepts of
adequate diet, was slowly relegated to the promotion of national agricultural
products. Its secondary role in the field of foods was more noticeable after
Spain’s entrance in the EEC. The institutions oriented to consumption became
the basic referents. They related consumption to health through information
which came from the Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs. In this context
food became a specialised field for action. Institutions, such as the National
Consumer Institute were created, more focused on the role of the consumer
and his/her education and protection and distant from the institutional sphere
of healthcare.
Changes in Spanish society itself were reproduced in the field of consumption.
In the beginning of the 1960s information was oriented toward the urban
population as the trend toward urbanisation of the Spanish population after the
rural exodus was being consolidated. Later, in the middle of the 1980s, after
the crisis of the adulterated rapeseed oil,(32) protection of consumers deepened.
If at first it was about recommendations of an informative nature instructing
the citizen as a consumer (to read labels, choose establishments carefully,
etc.), in the 1980s the confidence of all that which was state regulated was
offered, clearly highlighting the character of the state as protector in food
related themes. The 1990s, however, reveal the advertising-like character
of institutional recommendations under the auspices of businesses and non-
governmental organisations that contributed, together with the state, to the
diffusion of dietary information about national products within the European
market in which they compete. Curiously one can see the change from a
decade in which the government showed its interest in the Europeanization
of Spain, to the period subsequent to Spain’s entrance in the EEC, with an
(31) Because of this, dietary recommendations were often associated with problems of the home and of the rural
household economy, with the objective of attaining better use of the resources of the family garden, of improving
the household economy and of improving the diet of the family. The recommendations were not only made from a
nutritional perspective, but also with the goal of creating a demand for the new products that the agrifood system
was putting on the market.
(32) See the chapter by Alicia de León in this book.

orientation toward the stereotypical Mediterranean diet and characteristic
national products.(33)
Some of the advertising campaigns of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fishing and
Food on the consumption of bananas from the Canary Islands, sugar, olive
oil or sardines, among other examples, are better understood as a stimulus
to consume these products in support of national agricultural production
rather than as recommendations for their dietetic or nutritional value, even
though their nutritional qualities or ability to prevent diseases is backed by the
opinions of experts. The participation in these campaigns of interprofessional
organizations (integrated by all the different agents in a productive sector – for
example, sugar – from primary production to distribution, from government
to professional organizations) reveals what we have said. Therefore, we think
that the situation of the agricultural sector and subsequently, the process of
industrialisation of the agrifood industry, together with the objectives of
agricultural policies explain many of the dietary recommendations, and an in-
depth sociological study of them has to take this into account.
The variations in the target of dietary recommendations are also meaningful.
If in the 1960s the recommendations were directed at rural housewives, going
into great depth on their jobs as sole caretakers of the family diet, this target was
gradually changing. The traditional role of the woman as housewife changed
in the 1970s as recommendations began to be directed at the urban woman.
But the image of the woman as the person responsible for the feeding and care
of the family and home persisted. Although in the 1980s the society showed
signs of demanding gender equality, and women were starting to work outside
of the home, the recommendations still continued to respond to a stereotype
of a hardworking woman taking care of her family, but who now was offered
the possibility of spending less time cooking. In the 1990s the target of the
recommendations acquired a more individual and depersonalised character;
that of a consumer who seemed to have no objectives and concerns other
than feeding him/herself and taking care of his/her body. At the end of the
decade family responsibilities regarding food and eating reappeared, although
(33) It is not by chance that the regulative and protective character of the state returned at the beginning of the 21st
century, after two new food crises (mad cow disease and dioxin contaminated chicken) that would be dealt with
institutionally by the creation of a specific body with the object of assuming control over the situation: The Food
Safety Agency.

with a new character; now the family had to take on the role of co-educator
in order to bring about the convergence of the educational orientation of the
state regarding diet with that of the family, as they appeared to have grown
apart. This was perhaps a late return to the domestic after a period in which the
decline in women’s responsibility for food and eating had been in part made
up for outside of the home (by school lunchrooms in particular).
The referent for the reliability of dietary recommendations also underwent
important changes; from the town doctor in the 1960s to the researchers who
analysed human nutrition in the following decade. This trend was consolidated
in subsequent years through continual references to specialists in nutrition,
medicine and pharmacy accompanied by institutional guidance on correct
eating. Beginning in the 1980s we see these experts more technical side, as
researchers whose advice is based on the findings of the experimental sciences.
First, general information on the nutrients in foods is presented in simple and
easy to understand pictures, like the food wheel and later the pyramid, and
then other more elaborate messages appear. In the 1980s guides to food and
diet with a clear educational character came out, not only to provide nutritional
information on food, but rather to assure that this information would be
accepted and adopted as the dietary recommendations of reference.
But perhaps what has changed more is not the expert but the role of the
recipient in relation to the expert. In the 1960s people were told that they had
to consult their doctor for correct dietary guidelines, and rural women were
asked to forget traditional knowledge based on experience. This orientation is
understandable given the low educational level of these women, as well as the
little value given to their skills and knowledge on the part of the government
of the time. The higher educational level of the recipients can be perceived
in the following years through the more elaborate messages aimed at them,
including abundant technical information on the nutrients in food. They had
acquired a well-rounded education which meant that dietary decisions in the
home could be based on nutritional knowledge attained from scientific experts.
Rationality was the appropriate norm, although curiously in some cases
what at that time was considered a rational diet has subsequently come to be
considered irrational. In the same way, what was in days gone by traditional
and therefore reviled, by the end of the 1980s and in the 1990s came to be
considered part of correct dietary norms; what was before considered a luxury

is today popular and what before denoted low social status is now associated
with the diet of the elite and most educated.
But perhaps the most significant changes were precisely those which referred
to what was appropriate to eat and to what should not be eaten. The conception
of diet and health promoted by government institutions in these different
periods was implicit in these changes. The recommendations of the 1960s
were a reminder to an (underfed) population of the appropriate guidelines,
instructing them to leave their monotonous diets and incorporate new products
into their menu. Here quantity, in the interest of bringing variety to the diet,
was more important than any other recommendation, whereas in the 1970s the
effects of this could be seen through guidelines to eradicate the idea that being
healthy meant being fat. They insisted on breaking this association through
recommendations that promoted the consumption of industrial products and
fish to complete a diet based on animal fats. The institutional objectives of
the 1960s and 1970s were finally achieved, as the diet grew in variety and
quantity, but there were also effects on the composition of the diet, as a greater
preference for meat, a product of superior status, was notable.
At the end of the 1970s and in the 1980s the recommendations tended to
incorporate new products into the diet substituting for traditional ones;
pasta, rice and industrial sweets came to occupy a space left by legumes, and
were status symbols of the lower classes. But also as a result of this social
symbology, new positively valued products emerged such as new vegetable
oils, white meats and a series of products that denoted modernity in measure
of how far they were from those considered traditional and rural: red meat,
animal fats, pork, chicken, stews, etc. Everything related to the backward
rural world was what the urban population desired to get away from, and this
was promoted by the government. From the period of scarcity the society
quickly passed to a period of overabundance with no sense of continuity.
Obesity, which in the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s was raised as an
issue that affected children crossed the borders of age. The developmentalism
impregnated in the recommendations and the eagerness to introduce more
expensive higher status industrial products into the diet marked the middle
of the 1970s. Dedicating little time to cooking, eating prepared products,
moving away from the natural and the rural marked the beginning of the
1980s. All this led to the appearance of new food problems and the beginning

of institutional concern about cholesterol and excess calories, without a doubt
the result of the recommendations of previous decades and marking the period
from the beginning 1980s up to the beginning 1990s. In this sense there was
notable interest in reducing the consumption of sugar and sweets, eating less
meat or opting for lean meats, controlling the consumption of carbohydrates
including bread, and reducing the consumption of eggs which were considered
to be dangerous because of their effects on cholesterol. The expansion of low
calorie products was exploited by agrifood advertising ad nauseam.(34) If at the
beginning of the 1980s the concern was about cholesterol and calories, by the
end of the decade and after Spain’s entry into the EEC, we detect an expansion
of products of a national character, products previously questioned but that
now made possible a different and «identity-linked» diet in the context of
a free-market and the loss of national differentiation. Olive oil won terrain
over animal fats, although to achieve this, negative assessments of some other
products (in particular vegetable seed oils) had to be introduced. In the return
to the roots and to traditional diets, references to previous times, now positively
valued appeared, while developmentalism seemed to have reached its limits.
The promotion of the Mediterranean diet had its maximum expansion in the
1980s and the 1990s, in an attempt to recover the foods which came from the
more traditional rural past, such as legumes, fruits and vegetables. Thinness
emerged as a value to pursue, and these foods aided in achieving it. In addition
a certain national identification was offered through their consumption.
In the 1990s what we could call a certain medicalization of dietary
recommendations appeared. The association between health and food was
fostered by establishing a causal relationship between the consumption of
certain products and the absence or presence of certain illnesses. The recipient
of information about this relationship would then know how to achieve
optimum health and avoid or correct illnesses through the consumption of
certain foods.
If recommendations of earlier decades included non-dietary aspects about the
care of the home, the (extra) dietary norm of the 1990s was physical exercise
as a decisive element to accompany an adequate diet. But perhaps this was
(34) At this time preoccupation with being thin increased. Little by little the recommendation to not gain weight
was accepted at a time of generalized access to food products and of huge expansion and acceptance of industrial
foods. In this context of overabundance any excess could lead to obesity.

the only common element regarding what the consumer should do, as the
relationship between diet and health had reached such an extreme between
those products that were good for you and those that were not. By then, the
capacity to follow the path toward health or illness was left in the hands of the
consumer. Behind the recommendations for the perfect body, meaning thin
and shapely, was the idea of having control over one’s own body and also the
capacity for self-control in diet.
Perhaps for this reason the beginning of this century has culminated with
the insistence, as an institutional slogan, that there are no good or bad foods,
but rather correct or incorrect diets. This would seem to indicate that the
recommendations of the previous decade have been taken to an extreme.
Consumers have controlled their eating in order to lose weight, even to the
point of becoming unhealthy. We can observe an institutional preoccupation
with the effects of «miracle diets,» in particular in the search for the ideal
weight at whatever price (this is the era of institutional concern for anorexia and
bulimia), reminding us of the importance of excesses as much as deficiencies.
The slogan now might be, «You have to eat some of everything,» which
reminds us a lot of the 1960s, then because of shortages and deficiencies and
today because of an excess of foods. It is a demonstration of the concern for
what is now being called «the epidemic of the 21st century,» obesity, but also
for being overweight.
Without a doubt we can expect an institutional campaign against obesity
based on the important association established by researchers between the
increase in body weight of an overfed population and the development of a
great number of diseases. The overweight children of the 1960s, now mothers
and fathers, seem today to have the «moral» obligation of ensuring the ideal
weight of their children and themselves, with the same responsibility they had
in the past to communicate values of another nature.
1.4. Conclusions
As we indicated at the beginning of this chapter, it is not easy to establish

an unquestionable causal relationship between dietary recommendations and
the factors that make them vary. But we believe that this study gives a good

account of the existing relationship although it may be difficult to specify the
complex connections.
The dietary recommendations (DR) of each period play with a conception
of adequate diet that is very mutable, and they are constructed to respond to
social changes and to the convenience of institutions. They follow sometimes
very closely the dominant conceptions of development and modernity. In
addition, the parallels between the DR and the evolution of agricultural policy
(first) and the agrifood system overall (after) is evident.
It can be stated that a large number of the food problems that we see today
were forged in the past, and came about as unintentional effects of the actions
of institutions pursuing the modernisation of Spanish society. The stimulation
of the move away from the traditional diet, its products and knowledge, is
apparent today in a set of dietary habits far from the traditional diets of days
gone by. The search for variety to break with the dietary monotony of periods
of scarcity has been accompanied by the appearance of new products. Though
not always bringing the expected health, they have nevertheless, replaced
previous foods. The «common» culture reclaimed through the Mediterranean
diet seems to have fallen on deaf ears in some homes where traditional patterns
are no longer the reference for action or of status. The proposal to recuperate
these habits is today a complicated or even impossible task, not only because
much of the past is lost or unknown, but rather because of a greater number of
interests. The agents of these new interests guide the recommendations today
toward an optimum diet, on occasion with greater insistence and influence than
the institutions themselves and, above all, not always in the same direction.
All of this points out the importance of analyzing in-depth the factors that we
have mentioned here as generators of the changes in the concept of the healthy
diet. Each of the aspects evaluated here can be analysed separately. However,
without a doubt there are still areas to explore which can enrich our analysis of
what we might call «a social history of the Spanish diet,» and that could help
us to understand and face what is now being called «food destructuring.»

Appendix I
What should we eat to be well fed?

FIRST PHASE: the beginning of the consumer society (1960s)
INSTITUTIONAL
HISTORICAL REFERENTS
DIETARY CONCEPTIONS
CHARACTERISTICS AND THE PROFILE OF
RECOMMENDATIONS OF FOOD
OF THE PERIOD THE RECIPIENT
OF INFORMATION
Agricultural Institutions: Take care of the diet The diet of the rural
modernization following MAPA through the SEA of the family to achieve population is poor and
the model of the Green and INC. optimal nutritional state. needs to include more
Revolution. products.
Experts: Incorporate variety to a
Growth in the Agents of household diet poor in products. The rural woman,
productivity and economics of MAPA. caretaker of the family
Look for balance in the
development of industrial Family doctors. and the home, needs
nutrients in the daily
livestock farming. Food sciences. better nutritional
diet.
information to achieve
Recipient:
Basic hygiene this objective.
Rural housewife, role
recommendations
of the mother and Information is offered
(special reference
caretaker of the family about the nutrients
to milk) in reference
and the home. of foods and some
to handling and
concrete deficiencies
conservation.
(vitamins) for their
General information integration into the diet.
about vitamins and their
The guidelines for
importance in diet.
the handling of foods
Keys: to eat more are deficient for their
variety. productive origin within
the families themselves.
These guidelines must
be modified.

SECOND PHASE: development and urbanization (1970s)
INSTITUTIONAL
DIETARY CONCEPTIONS
OF INFORMATION
Expansion of irrigation, Institutions: Reports on the The nutritional education

new crops oriented INC and MAPA through nutritional components of the housewife must
toward national and the SEA. of foods through the be improved so that
international markets. food wheel and the she can feed her family
Experts:
Spanish food code. correctly.
Increase in supply and Family doctors.
decrease in prices. Food sciences. Information about the The rural origin of
advantages of products dietary practices is
Growth in demand faster Recipient:
that include some detrimental to the
than growth in supply. Urban housewife, only
industrial phase in their expansion of modern
purchaser of foods
Petroleum crisis. treatment (obvious eating habits and slows
for others, also busy
examples in the down their diffusion.
outside the home
pasteurization of milk
(without specifying the Industrial products are
and in frozen fish).
labour role). better than products
Promotion of habits that come directly from
that ease housework the country as they are
through technology safer to consume.
so that it is easier
The conception of food
and more simple to
is integrated in the
cook (promotion of
food wheel and
precooked meals and
the creation of the
the use of pressure
Spanish food code.
cookers).
Obesity is a public
Traditional
health problem.
home-cooking makes
one gain weight.
Careful with calories, if
you eat too much you
will gain weight (fewer
eggs, less sugar, less
bread, less animal fat).
Being fat doesn’t mean
being healthy.

THIRD PHASE: modernity (1980s)
INSTITUTIONAL
DIETARY CONCEPTIONS
OF INFORMATION
Decline in the agricultural Institutions: Significant increase It is necessary to eat

labour force and increase INC for in recommendations some of everything to
in the urban population. recommendations related to the handling find nutritional balance
for consuming. and sale of foods: in the diet. If one
Entrance in the EEC:
MAPA oriented to the hygienic measures product is consumed
productive change and
promotion of Spanish within and outside a lot and another is
change in agricultural
products. Autonomous the home (bars and missing the diet is not
supply.
and or municipal restaurants). correct.
Development of the bodies oriented toward
Growth in state control Consumption of quantity
State of autonomous consumption.
over foods to guarantee and variety based on
regions.
Experts: consumer safety. age, work, sex and
Promotion of the Family doctors. Nominal place of residence.
Concern for childhood
Mediterranean diet reference to experts
obesity and for The ingestion of fat is
associated with Spanish in nutrition at national
cholesterol. excessive, a sedentary
foods. level.
lifestyle doesn’t require
A balanced diet is
Toxic syndrome from Recipient: as much caloric
necessary, eating some
adulterated rapeseed oil. Urban housewife. With contributions.
of everything, not only
diverse roles between
what one most likes. It is recommended to
the traditional housewife
Consumption of that count calories in the
and mother with
which is accepted diet and in different
other characteristics
(white meats, sweets) products.
less centered on
has extended to excess,
the home. Specific The consumer must
while other products
orientations inside the know how to choose
are consumed less
home for members of what is best to eat and
(legumes).
different ages (children, to do this must shop
adolescents, old Eating more fish and well, store appropriately
people). meat with less fat and follow guidelines for
(pork) is recommended, responsible shopping.
along with fruit,
The characteristics
vegetables, olive oil:
of the Mediterranean
recommended to follow
diet are extolled, in
the Mediterranean diet,
relation to the products
composed of Spanish
which integrate it
products.
(fruit, vegetables, olive
Recommendations oil, fish) showing, in
for responsible addition, the national
consumption that is referents of these
not manipulated by products.
advertising or other
The state guarantees
demands to buy.
safety of foods through
Recommend reflection
controls.
in consuming.

FOURTH PHASE: the individualization of diet (1990s)
INSTITUTIONAL
DIETARY CONCEPTIONS
OF INFORMATION
Diversification and Institutions: Precaution in eating as Health comes from diet.

globalization of the food INC, MAPA, there are good diets
Poor eating leads to
supply. according to previous and bad diets.
illness.
specialization,
Food crises: mad cow The Mediterranean
Consumer NGOs. The Mediterranean diet
desease and chickens diet is extolled as a
Institutional is the healthiest diet
with dioxins. guarantee of health.
collaboration with and we have lost the
The importance of the agrifood businesses. Regulated weight knowledge we had of it.
food industry and food control through
Recipient: Return to the goodness
distribution. specialists on diet.
Individualization of of the traditional diets
Appearance of food recommendations. Obesity is a serious and eating habits.
related health problems: Greater orientation health problem and and
It is necessary to take
bulimia and anorexia. toward the general action must be taken
care of the body, to
population. Traditional based on the individual.
Promotion of the control one’s weight,
roles coexist with other
Mediterranean diet to think about being
models.
associated with health. healthy. It is necessary
to exercise to increase
energetic expenditure.
Medical control of
obesity.
Educate the consumer
with dietary guidelines.

FIFTH PHASE: the beginning of the 21st century
INSTITUTIONAL
DIETARY CONCEPTIONS
OF INFORMATION
Institutions: Strengthening of the There are food risks and

Specialization of the recommendations of the state protection and
institutions responsible last years of the 1990s controls are not sufficient
for production, regarding problems to help the consumer.
consumption and health. related to obesity.
The consumer doesn’t
National Food Safety
There are food know enough about
Agency.
risks and we must foods and must
Experts: protect ourselves be educated in the
Appearance of the with information acquisition of healthy
educational role of and by following the habits.
food recommendations recommendations of the
The consumer must be
and their entrance state.
well-informed to lead a
in the school
Concern about food healthy lifestyle.
environment through
disorders.
specific educational
programmes.
Recipient:
Orientations toward
parents and educators
to promote healthy
lifestyles for the public.
Source: Díaz Méndez and Gómez Benito, 2008.

II. Scientific advances in nutrition
and food
María Ángeles Menéndez Patterson (University of Oviedo)
2.1. Introduction
Human nutrition can be considered as the science of the interrelationship

between human beings and food. Its essential characteristic is the integration
of data acquired thanks to fundamental and applied inter and multidisciplinary
research. The methodologies used are diverse and pertain to numerous
scientific disciplines.
The relationship between human beings and food varies greatly, as it concerns
the behaviour of the healthy or ill individual in relation to foods, the forms of
metabolic use of ingested nutrients, or the influences the foods available have
(expressed in terms of quality or quantity) over the biological destiny of the
human being.
Since the appearance of our species on the Earth we have had to acquire, if
not a science, at least some empirical knowledge of foods. But we are largely
ignorant of how many deaths and how much suffering was caused by this long
investigation to discriminate among useful harmful and useless food.
Nutrition as a science emerged in reality at the end of the 18th century and the
beginning of the 19th. Studies on nutrition search to understand the physiology
of foods and their components, as well as the quantitative and qualitative food
needs of the human being. The journey to attain this knowledge began in
1785 when Lavoisier identified respiration with combustion and oxidation.
Applying the law of conservation of energy he determined and quantified the
energetic and material interchange between living beings and the environment
which surrounds them. Soon would be known the vital role of proteins and
amino acids and the distinction between plastic substances and respiratory
SCIENTIFIC ADVANCES IN NUTRITION AND FOOD 51

substances, according to their function in the formation of matter or in caloric
and energetic needs.
At the end of the 19th century it was thought that all of the secrets of nutrition
had been discovered. Foods seemed to be a question of proteins, lipids,
carbohydrates and water. There remained some minimum residues that seemed
like dregs (ashes), something disposable in the energetic and plastic use of the
organism. It was then thought that it would be possible to feed laboratory
animals with a mixture of all the components then known of a particular food
such as milk. This idea was even expressed by a researcher who ended up
stating that «in the future man will eat from packets of pure chemical, that he
will carry in his vest pocket» (Carpenter, K. J. 2003a). Evidently, the pleasure
of eating was forgotten or disregarded.
It was in the beginning of the 20th century when the presence, functions and
need for minerals in our diet became clear, as they are indispensable mediators
in chemical reactions that are key to the maintenance of organ functions. Some
of the minerals were discovered in those ashes.
Certainly vitamins constituted one of the most interesting chapters of nutrition
research in the first half of the 20th century. In this sense, if we analyze the
first two volumes of The Journal of Nutrition, published in 1928-1930, 40%
of the articles are related to this subject. In 1933 Leslie Harris wrote his first
review about vitamins in the Annual Review of Biochemistry and verified that
in twelve months one thousand articles had been published about vitamins
(Carpenter, K. J. 2003b).
In 1948 the last vitamin was discovered, Cobalamin or B12, whose chemical
structure was established in 1955.
The discoveries in nutrition in the period between 1912 and 1944, understood
by some authors as «the golden age of nutrition,» were so many and so
important that some researchers thought that the theme of nutrition had been
exhausted. The University of Oxford closed its nutrition group with this
justification. However, there were still important discoveries to come from
the lines of research still under way, for example, essential fatty acids.
Currently, the considerable progress made in scientific knowledge on nutrition
and its relationship with human health has been accompanied by a growing

interest in contemporary society on such questions. But this has also been
accompanied by a proliferation of a series of erroneous ideas about the nature
of nutritional processes, the properties of foods and the magical virtues of
the most varied dietetic systems, while often forgetting about the scientific
knowledge we do possess. The consequence of this situation is the state of
confusion which many members of our society find themselves in regarding
the relationship between nutrition and health.
In this chapter, we will analyze how the discoveries in the field of Food and
Nutrition in the second half of the 20th century permitted spectacular advances
in knowledge about the role of diet in the development and prevention of the
most prevalent pathologies in developed countries: cardiovascular diseases,
cancer and obesity. In addition, we will study the change made by nutritionists
in the sense of evaluating the role of those chemical compounds that exist in
foods which don’t provide energy or essential nutrients but that do have an
important role to play in the health, well-being and longevity of individuals, the
bioactive compounds. Taking into account the interest of consumers in their
health, the food industry has developed new types of foods, called functional
foods. One of the objectives of this chapter is to evaluate the nutritional
advantages and possible disadvantages of these new foods.
Probably today and in the future one of the most promising fields in nutrition is
the study of the way in which diet in general, and some nutrients in particular,
can affect the functioning of our genes. This is developing into a new science,
nutrigenomics, which in a not so distant future may bring us diets made to
measure based on information contained in our genes.
2.2. Evolution of nutrition and food
The science of nutrition and the search for improvements in the human diet
has experienced a quiet but very important transition in the second half of
the 20th century. The first half of that century was centred on the discovery
of essential nutrients: vitamins, amino acids, minerals, and fatty acids. These
discoveries deeply influenced the focus of applied nutrition, which at first
tried to define the required minimum of essential nutrients for humans, what
today we know as Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA) or Recommended

Daily Intake (RDI), and subsequently to assess the diets that provide these
minimum quantities required to maintain health, all of which led to dietetic
guidelines. In this manner they were trying to avoid the diseases caused by
scarcity and malnutrition. The indicators to assess the suitability of diet were at
first biochemical and clinical indicators associated with deficiency or absence
(rickets, beriberi, scurvy, pellagra, etc.).
Public programs about nutrition were generally dedicated to increasing the
consumption of milk, meat, eggs… and practically any foods in the typical
diet. They preached security through abundance and transmitted the idea that
excess is preferable to limitation.
In the second half of the 20th century environmental factors began to gain
in importance as determinants of human health. Fed in part by the emerging
evidence of the role of tobacco in lung cancer, the lack of physical activity in
cardiovascular illness and other associations, scientists began to explore the
relationship between diet and illness from a wider perspective, that is to say,
an ecological perspective.
This vision changed the diet-illness association with the clinical syndrome
caused by insufficient ingestion:
1) Many of the new associations were related with non-essential constituents
of diet, such as fibre or cholesterol.
2) Some health problems were not related to deficiencies, but rather with
excesses, such as obesity.
In fact, after the Second World War it was found that in developed countries
what were considered «good diets» by definition seemed to be causes, to a
great extent, of arteriosclerosis, diabetes, some types of cancer and other non-
infectious diseases.
Among the discoveries which marked this transition is the relationship between
the ingestion of lipids and cardiovascular disease.
Cardiovascular disease
One of the primary causes of death in developed countries is coronary heart

disease, caused by the decrease in blood flow to a portion of the heart muscle and

causing its necrosis or heart attack. Through autopsies, more than one hundred
years ago medicine had demonstrated the narrowing of the coronary arteries
due to arteriosclerosis, in other words, the deposit of plaque rich in cholesterol
on the walls of the arteries. In 1984 in a classic book in medicine, Strumpell’s
Lehrbuch der speziellen Pathologie und Therapie der inneren Krankheiten,
dietetic recommendations had been made directed toward reducing cardiac
illness based on these clinical observations. In 1934 Rosenthal published
an article in the journal Archives of Pathology (Carpenter, K. J. 2003c) in
which he wrote, «The literature contains a multitude of works correlating
arteriosclerosis, with diet, blood pressure, race, etc.,» and later, «Where the
ingestion of fat is low, arteriosclerosis is not prevalent.»
Despite the great interest of researchers, above all pathologists, to know the
causes of coronary heart disease, this pathology did not get the attention of
nutritionists before the Second World War.
One of the characteristics of the diet of developed countries is the high
quantity of energy coming from lipids, above all of animal origin. It was
thought that the problem of coronary heart disease could have been related to
the high ingestion of cholesterol. To confirm this numerous experiments were
performed on animals and humans with different types of lipids.
Starting in 1950, Ancel Key and his collaborators began to study and compare
aspects of coronary heart disease in the United States and different parts of
Europe – the North and Mediterranean – as well as Japan. This gave rise to
the Seven Countries Study, thanks to which the «Mediterranean diet» became
known. This study had a multinational prospective design composed of 12,763
men of 40 to 59 years of ages from seven different countries: Yugoslavia,
Greece and Italy (Southern European and Mediterranean countries), Holland
and Finland (from the north and centre of Europe) and the United States. In
addition, Japan was included (Keys, A., 1970). Twenty cohorts were monitored
for thirty years. This study confirmed:
1) That mortality for coronary heart disease was lower in Mediterranean and
Japanese populations than in the United States and north and central Europe.
2) That a relationship existed between the consumption of saturated fats and
coronary heart disease, demonstrated as much by the occurrence of coronary

events as by the rates of mortality. The percentage of energy from saturated fats
was an average of 19% in the countries from the north of Europe and the United
States, while in the Mediterranean countries it was 10% and in Japan, 3%.
From the point of view of nutrition in cardiovascular pathology, the possible
beneficial role of other fatty acids in diet was assessed - the polyunsaturateds,
substituting for saturated fats. Thus the effect of some vegetable oils could be
demonstrated, but above all, those that came from fish of the omega-3 series.
The 1977 Framingan Study (Gordon, T. et al., 1977) allowed the clear
differentiation of the role of the lipoproteins, LDL (bad cholesterol) and HDL
(good cholesterol); from these discoveries the study of the influence of distinct
components of diet on lipoproteins began.
During recent years other components of the diet have been evaluated in
relation to the cardiovascular problem. Research has included looking at the
adverse effect of ingesting elevated levels of salt, saturated fats and trans fats,
and the potential protective effect of monounsaturated fats, omega-3 fatty
acids, anti-oxidants, alcohol and wine, fruits, vegetables, fibre, folic acid and
homocysteine, and the uncertain role of the omega-6 fatty acids. In light of
all this knowledge, various public entities published specific guidelines for
preventing heart attacks, some for the general population like those from the
Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs and The Spanish Arteriosclerosis
Society from 2000, and others aimed specifically at women (Mosca, L. et al.,
1999).
Nutrition and cancer: a complex relationship
Cancer is one of the health problems of greatest importance in western

societies and constitutes the second-leading cause of death. Based on data
from the Spanish Cancer Association in 2004 deaths from cancer were 26.22
percent of the total deaths in Spain. Of cancer deaths, 63 percent were males
and 37 percent females.
The search for connections between diet, nutritional and metabolic factors and
the aetiology of cancer is an area of research which, in the last two decades,
has received increasing attention both from the scientific perspective as well
as from a public health perspective. This growing interest can be explained

by important scientific developments and their perception by the broader
society.
In 1964 the World Health Organization concluded in an examination of
behavioural and environmental factors in cancer that «the greater part
of cancers is potentially preventable.» Since then, epidemiological and
experimental research on the relationship between diet, nutrition and cancer
has expanded enormously and rapidly.
In 1980 the European Union created the Europe Against Cancer Programme,
which immediately identified nutrition as one of the areas of high priority in
the search for a cure and prevention of cancer. It was decided to subsidize
two parallel lines: first, to formulate recommendations for Europe for the
prevention of cancer that included nutritional advice and, secondly, to promote
extensive epidemiological studies on nutrition and cancer.
Doll and Peto (1981) were the first researchers to quantify the contribution of
a series of environmental factors to cancer, among them diet, tobacco, alcohol,
job and radiation. They estimated the proportion of deaths from cancer
attributable to diet at 35 percent; diet, after tobacco being the most important
preventable cause of cancer. In addition, they identified distinct types of diets
that contributed to increasing the risk of cancer.
Diet is a set of chemical substances that can influence in a direct or indirect
manner the development of or prevention of cancer. In some cases this can be
through natural carcinogens and existing contaminants in foods, or as a result
of the cooking or preservation of foods; in others because the activation or
deactivation of carcinogens is induced by the diet. The biological formation of
carcinogens in vivo, through the intestinal flora, is also possible. Sometimes,
a nutritional imbalance is produced which could alter immunity, affecting the
capacity to respond to an aggressive neoplasm.
We should not forget chemoprevention agents against cancer (among others,
antioxidants, retinoids, vitamin D and folic acid,) that are found in foods. Fruits
and vegetables are a very rich source of anti-oxidants, among which should be
mentioned the carotenoids, vitamins C and E, selenium and the polyphenols.
The antioxidants in the diet exercise a protective action against oxidative
stress, through the blocking of free radicals derived from oxidation and/or the
interruption of the peroxidation chain. The retinoids participate in the normal

process of cellular growth and differentiation. As chemoprevention agents they
act in the phases of promotion and progression of the carcinogenesis process,
in contrast to antioxidants which act in the initiation phase.
In 2002 Lancet published a review of the studies from the previous 30 years
which analyzed the effects of diet on the risk of cancer (Key, T. J. et al., 2002).
The authors arrived at the following conclusions:
1) Dietetic factors that seem to increase the risk of cancer:
• Alcohol – cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, oesophagus, larynx, liver and
lung.
• Obesity – cancer of the oesophagus, colorectal, endometrium, breast and
kidney.
• Salty foods – nasopharyngeal cancer, stomach cancer.
• Red meats and processed meats – colorectal cancer.
• Very hot drinks – cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx and oesophagus.
2) Dietetic factors that seem to reduce the risk of cancer:
• Fruits and vegetables – cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, oesophagus,
stomach, colorectal and lung.
• Fibre – colorectal cancer.
Waiting for the results of various epidemiological studies about cancer and diet
that are being completed, today it seems prudent to advise maintenance of a
healthy body weight, restriction of the consumption of alcohol, and selection
of a diet that is balanced and assures the ingestion of adequate amounts of fruit,
vegetables and whole grain cereals (Riboli, E. and Norat, T., 2003).
The role of diet in the control of obesity
Obesity constitutes one of the principal nutritional problems in the developed

countries, and it is growing on a world level. This situation has led some authors
to consider it the epidemic of the 21st century.
Obesity is defined as an excessive accumulation of fat in the organism which
is associated, to a considerable extent, not only with an increase in the risk of
diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but also in certain types of cancer and other
very prevalent illnesses (digestive, respiratory, osteoarthritis, etc.), to such an
extent that it has become the second leading cause of premature and avoidable

mortality after tobacco. In addition, it is an aesthetic and body image problem
with serious psychological and social repercussions.
Social attitudes toward obese persons have gone through cycles throughout
history. In periods of poverty and scarcity of food resources obese people
enjoyed prestige and represented opulence and well-being. In periods of
abundance it has been the contrary – what is prized is the image of the thin
person.
The economic costs generated by obesity are those derived from the treatments
for associated illnesses and for social adaptations. It is difficult to evaluate
them. Data referring to health costs exist and the numbers vary in industrialized
countries between 2% and 8% of total spending on health. In Spain the number
is around 6.9%.
Obesity is a manifestation of a disruption in the control of the balance between
energy ingested and energy consumed in metabolic processes. As F. Grande
Covián said; «obesity is an accumulation of surplus energy.»
Obesity is heterogeneous in its origin, depending on physiological, metabolic
and genetic factors, and also the ingestion of excessive energy and inadequate
physical activity (a sedentary lifestyle). For this, a problem with one or several
of these elements can lead to obesity. In any case, changes in foods, and also
the new habits and lifestyles of developed societies, are the definitive trigger,
as the organism does not have sufficient control to face the excessive energetic
offer and/or sedentarism. To a certain extent, obesity is the «payment» of our
society for the globalisation in the food sector, the fruit of recent trends in the
world economy.
During the second half of the twentieth century and in particular, starting in
1962, when the first nutritional surveys in Spain were done, we can confirm the
increase of the percentage of calories contributed by lipids, passing from 30
percent to 44 percent in 2000. We should remember that the recommendation
in Europe and in the United States is 30 percent. The opposite has happened
with carbohydrates, whose caloric contribution in 1962 was 58 percent
while in 2000 it was down to 41 percent. The recommendation is 60 percent.
Regarding proteins, the recommendation is 10 percent and the increase in the
Spanish diet has been from 12 percent in 1962 to 15 percent in 2000. These
changes are the result of the evolution in the consumption of foods of animal

and vegetable origin during this period (Moreno, L. A. et al., 2002). In brief,
we should point out that the percentage of foods of animal origin grew from
24 percent to 43 percent; a result which clearly confirms the idea that, «The
greater the economic level of a country, the greater the consumption of meat
and foods of animal origin.» Spain is a clear example of this. The increase in
foods of animal origin explains, in part, the increase of lipids in our diet. Some
authors (Golay, A. and Bobbini, E., 1997) have put forward the hypothesis
that this elevated ingestion of lipids, together with a genetic predisposition,
can lead to obesity.
For many researchers behind obesity is a series of genes that were moulded
during millions of years of evolution. These scientists state that the answer
to this phenomenon is found in what has been called the hypothesis of the
thrifty genotype, proposed in 1962 by J. V. Neel. The cycles of hunger
and abundance that our ancestors went through during millions of years of
evolution in an environment in which the availability of foods was limited,
selected for a genotype that would allow a rapid gain of fat during periods of
food abundance, as these deposits of reserve energy provided advantages for
survival and reproduction. But today, in the developed countries where there
exists a permanent abundance of foods, this genotype leads to obesity.
Among the external factors which influence obesity, the changes introduced
in diet, with the frequent presence of refined foods of a high energetic density,
have contributed to establishing and perpetuating a positive caloric balance.
A diet rich in simple carbohydrates, with a high percentage of energy supplied
by lipids particularly from saturated fats, together with low contributions of
fibre and elevated contributions from alcohol, are the most prominent dietary
elements which can have an influence in weight gain.
It is evident that weight loss programmes should combine a nutritionally balanced
dietary regime with exercise and lifestyle modification. Diet has to be varied,
agreeable to the palate and in harmony with the culture and eating habits of the
individual. Following monotonous or strange diets to control weight is neither
justified nor will it work over time. In fact, many of the so-called miracle diets
can be harmful to health. In this sense the Ministry of Health and Consumer
Affairs, through the Spanish Food Safety Agency (AESAN) on its webpage
recently posted information on this issue (June, 2007).

The best treatment for obesity is primary prevention. The Spanish Society
for the Study of Obesity (SEEDO) published in 2007 a consensus document
which gathered together the strategies for the evaluation of overweight and
obesity and the establishment of criteria for therapeutic intervention (Salas-
Salvadó, J. et al., Grupo colaborativo de la SEEDO, 2007).
Though my intention is not to be pessimistic I would like to point out that
traditional strategies for the prevention and treatment of obesity have frankly
been demonstrated to be ineffective as they rely almost exclusively on
individualized prescriptions or recommendations for change in the behaviour
of affected persons. The recommendations to eat less and to have a more
balanced diet and to do moderate exercise clash with multiple aspects of
our westernized culture, which in fact promote obesity: the greater energetic
density of meals, fast food, the relationship of food with social activities and
with the rhythm of life, stress, lack of physical activity, automobiles, TV, etc.
Given that the problem is known, and its economic and social consequences
are now very apparent, it would seem that the keys to the success of any public
health and food policy in this area would be to focus not only on promoting
changes in individual behaviour, but also on examining the complicity of
all the social actors involved (businesses, legislators, consumers, the media,
educators, etc.) and, in particular, on the need for a considerable increase in
funding scientific investigation, as much is still unknown (Palou, A., 2006).
Bioactive compounds of foods
The foods that we consume daily contain hundreds of chemical compounds,

some of which are known and well quantified, others only poorly described
and many others completely without description and currently difficult to
measure. The chemical compounds that are in our foods can be placed into the
following not mutually exclusive categories: essential nutrients, nutrients as
sources of energy, additives, chemical contaminants coming from agriculture,
contaminating microbiological toxins, inorganic contaminants, chemical
compounds coming from cooking and processing of foods, natural toxins,
other non-nutrient chemical compounds from food, and with a beneficial role
in health, the bioactive compounds.

Just as in the first half of the 20th century the focus of nutritionists centred on
the essential nutrients as sources of energy, from the end of the 20th century and
up to now, bioactive chemical compounds have attracted a great interest. These
compounds don’t fit into any of the categories of known nutrients (essential
and energetic), but their protective role is being confirmed in cardiovascular
illnesses, stroke, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, and they even have a
great importance in the ageing process.
Bioactive compounds are defined as those constituents that are not nutrients
and that are typically found in natural form in small quantities in plants (fruits and
vegetables) and in foods rich in lipids (Kitts, D. D., 1994). Sometimes the
bioactive compounds which come from vegetables are called phytonutrients
or phytochemical substances. These compounds vary a lot in their chemical
structure and function and are grouped according to such characteristics.
Within the phytonutrients we can distinguish four large groups: phenolic
substances, terpenic substances, sulphuric substances, and nitrogenic substances.
Of these four groups, the first three are the most important as constituents of fruit
and garden produce. The phenolic compounds are found in general in all food
of vegetable origin. There are more than 8,000 phenolic structures and they are
present in all plants, and have been studied in-depth in cereals, legumes, dried
fruit and nuts, olive oil, vegetables, fruit, tea, cocoa, chocolate and red wine.
From the point of view of biological activity, many phenolic compounds have
free radical capturing properties, which confers on them antioxidant activity,
and some studies have shown their favourable effects on the prevention of
thrombosis, on some types of cancer, on many illnesses related to ageing, and
it has even been hypothesized, given that oxidative stress can contribute to the
pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s, that the risk of suffering this disease could be
reduced by the consumption of antioxidants that counteract the negative effect
of oxidative stress. But results obtained up to now are still not definitive; more
clinical study is needed.
There also exist substances with estrogenic or antiestrogenic activity: the
phytoestrogens, some of which are present in soy, and also in linseed oil, grains
of cereals and fruit and vegetables. They possess antioxidant properties and
some studies have revealed beneficial effects on cardiovascular risk factors
and in models of cancer in animals and cell cultures. Nevertheless, as the

phytoestrogens act as much like agonists and antagonists of estrogens, their
effects on cancer are probably complex. We should not forget their possible role
in the prevention of osteoporosis, improvement of the symptoms of menopause
and the possible decrease in blood cholesterol levels.
A great part of the bioactive compounds have been analyzed and discovered in
foods typical of the Mediterranean diet (olives, olive oil, dried fruit and nuts,
vegetables, garden produce, citrus fruit, red wine, etc.) and, to some extent, they
explain the benefits of this diet. In a period of approximately 50 years we have
advanced from epidemiological evidence – countries where the Mediterranean
diet is followed have a lower mortality from cardiovascular problems – to
demonstrating why this is so, based on the chemical compounds which exist in
the foods typical of this diet.
As we have observed in short, many bioactive compounds seem to have beneficial
effects on health, but although epidemiological studies have been done which
seem to provide the evidence of an association between their consumption and
the prevention of some chronic illnesses, much more research is needed before
we can turn these results into dietary recommendations. However, it seems that
we can affirm that a healthy diet must fulfil two fundamental conditions:
1) Provide an adequate and balanced quantity of energy and nutrients (as is
currently recommended).
2) Provide a determined quantity of fibre and bioactive compounds for the
prevention of chronic and degenerative illnesses.
With this in mind, many governments like that of the United States have
developed campaigns to increase the consumption of fruit and vegetables and
foods derived from them, whether through a food pyramid or through associations
which have emerged to promote the consumption of fruit and vegetables due to
their healthy properties. This is the case of the «5 per day» Club in Spain, which
has its equivalents in the majority of developed countries.
Simple recommendations for consumers have also been elaborated (Tomás-
Barberán, F. A., 2003) such as consuming 400 to 600 grams per day of fruit
and vegetables, advising that they be different colours because the majority
of phytochemical compounds are of different colours and have different
beneficial functions.

Consumers, health and the food industry
Global food trends in recent years indicate an accentuated interest by consumers

in certain foods, which in addition to their nutritional value contribute
physiological benefits to the human organism. We have gone from stressing
negative aspects of foods (elevated concentrations of lipids, cholesterol, salt,
nitrates, etc.), to recognizing that diet, beyond its nutritional contribution, can
have beneficial physiological and psychological effects.
The basic concepts in nutrition are undergoing a significant change. The
traditional idea of an adequate diet as one that contributes sufficient nutrients
that assure the survival of the person, meets metabolic needs, and pleasantly
satisfies hunger, is being replaced. Today, in addition to these things and
concern for food safety, the emphasis accentuates the potential of foods to
promote health, well-being and reduce the risk of diseases. Hence the concept
of adequate nutrition tends to be substituted by the concept of optimal
nutrition, above all because in developed countries in the 21st century there
exists a tendency toward a considerable increase in the cost of healthcare
and loss of labour activity due to illnesses. This is happening parallel to
increasing life expectancy, the ageing of the population and the desire for a
better quality of life.
Both governments and consumers try to take care of health through diet. In
Spain this trend is clearly reflected in the study, «Health products. A market
that continues evolving,» completed in 2003 by International Research and
Taylor Nelson, and based on interviews with a sample of Spanish consumers
in hypermarkets and supermarkets. The study stated that «healthy and
wholesome is the key,» and concluded that the current trend will continue
into the future with a gradual substitution of spending on curative health care
for spending on preventative health care and healthy diets (Botey, L. J. and
Murillo, F. I., 2006).
I would like to point out that the old idea that foods and medicines have
much in common is being revived and we have returned to what Hippocrates
said almost 2,500 years ago: «Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy
food.»

The added value of food today is health.(1)
The three Spanish «B’s» – Bueno (good), Bonito (beautiful) and Barato
(cheap) will have to be replaced by the three Spanish «S’s» – Sano (healthy),
Seguro (safe) and Saludable (wholesome).
As a result of the new lifestyles that began to develop at the end of the 20th
century and continue today, consumers conscientious about their health have
appeared.(2)
These conscientious consumers, the so-called baby-boomers, are persons born
after the Second World War, between 1946 and 1963, who look to maintain
their health through diet and who have economic means. With these consumers
in mind, the food industry has developed a series of foods called «functional
foods» based on the latest scientific advances in nutrition, biotechnology,
genetic engineering, etc. This industry has placed, and will continue placing
on the market a great variety of foods which have eliminated or added some
chemical compound. The aim is to affect targeted functions of the organism in
a specific and positive way, and to promote a physiological or psychological
effect beyond the food’s traditional nutritional value.
The food industry is very interested in these foods; in fact a survey done of
the heads of 100 large American companies on the order of priorities for
investment in the food sector resulted in the following:
First, the development of products within the category of health foods.
Second, food safety.
Third, the development of natural foods.
A large quantity of products is being generated, and although currently they
only represent a small percentage of total food consumption, statistics show
that their consumption is spreading. In fact, the inclusion of these functional
foods is increasing each year by 16 percent. Currently in Spain there are now
some 200 functional food products being sold. Ninety-five percent of homes
have them in their refrigerators or kitchen cabinets, although many times they
(1) The father of illness could have been anything, but there is no doubt that the mother was bad diet» (Chinese
proverb).
(2) «In the sixties we all wanted to be free; in the eighties, to be rich; and in the nineties, to be healthy»
(Ang Lee).

are acquired unconsciously. It is predicted that in some years the demand for
functional foods will grow by 22 percent.
For many of these foods there isn’t always scientific evidence identifying a
beneficial interaction between the biological activity of some component in
the food and a particular function in the organism. In addition, we should not
forget about problems related to dose and toxicity. The phrase of Paracelsus,
«the dose makes the poison» is applicable to these foods. To make things
clearer I will provide an example. The omega-3 fatty acids are often employed
in the production of functional foods, with all their health benefits appearing
on the labels. Yet excesses of omega-3 fatty acids can lead to the following:
1) Increases in bleeding time.
2) Increase in the risk of hemorrhages.
3) Formation of biologically active oxidation products from the oxidation of
the omega-3 fatty acids.
4) Increase in the level of LDL cholesterol.
5) Reduced control of glucose in diabetics.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the United States in 2004 (ADA
Reports) concluded that the use of omega-3 fatty acid supplements is healthy,
but their daily ingestion, provided by foods plus supplements, should not
exceed 3 grams. It is evident that the labels do not provide any information
related to this recommendation. Because of this, regulatory bodies must closely
control the use of statements about health, both positive and negative ones,
which appear on the labels of said foods and, in the case of positive statements
confirm that stated positive effects are properly validated. In this sense, in the
Official Journal of the European Union of 18 January 2007, Regulation EC
(No) 1924/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 December
2006 was published and came into effect on July 1 2007. This regulation was
in regard to the nutritional statements about the health properties of foods and
to harmonize the legal, regulatory or administrative provisions of member
states, with the aim of guaranteeing an effective functioning of the interior
market as well as providing a higher level of consumer protection against food
claims that are exaggerated or false or that have no basis.
The social impact of these new foods is undeniable and confirmed by the fact
that many consumers assume that products containing antioxidants, omega-3,

prebiotics, «bifidus» effect, phytoesterols, polyphenols, etc., are beneficial
even though they don’t understand their biological actions, nor do they know
what the original sources of the active compounds are. The role the media
has played in the spread of these foods must be highlighted. In fact, the world
of health and specifically that of food have taken on special relevance in the
media, which in many cases has become a reference for the public and for
patient’s associations. Everything related to food occupies a privileged place
in this new informative space which has focused on the issue of health.
Changes in food are not simple. The arrival of new elements like functional
foods, which can contribute many positive things, is not being accompanied by
an effort to incorporate them intelligently into our diet. Attention is needed on
this issue, as a certain lack of scientific consensus and rigor can on the one hand
end up taking credibility away from functional foods and on the other, hold
back their development and innovation. The application of the new regulation
could resolve these doubts.
Functional foods provide benefits to health in states of deficiency, for
intolerances to specific foods or for chronic deficiencies-aiding in the
prevention of some illnesses and in balancing diets with specific nutritional
deficits- but we need to know how to better maximize the benefits that they
contribute in combination with conventional foods. It has been shown that
a correct, varied, balanced and pleasurable diet is the best strategy for the
prevention of illnesses
2.3. Future perspectives
The range of possibilities in the field of nutrition is immense and lines of

research are opening which relate nutrition to immunology, genetics, ageing,
sport and more, which can lead to the division of the discipline.
Probably today, one of the most promising areas of research in nutrition is
the study of the way in which diet in general and some specific nutrients
in particular, can affect the functioning of our genes. This new developing
science, nutrigenomics, is defined as the study of the molecular relationship
between nutritional stimuli and the response of genes.

In the past, genetics and nutrition were considered to be two competing
forces – nature versus nurture – in the shaping of the development of the
individual. Today we know that it is the interaction of genes and nutrients
together with other environmental factors which determine the phenotype and
development of individuals. A basic concept is that the progression from a
healthy phenotype to a chronically dysfunctional phenotype can be explained
by changes in genetic expression or by differences in the activity of proteins
and enzymes, and that the components of diet directly or indirectly regulate the
expression of genetic information. Everyone knows that eating the same foods
some people will gain weight, some will develop heart disease or allergies,
etc., while with others none of these things will happen.
In agreement with Marti et al., (2005) the conceptual grounds of this branch
of genomic research can be summarized as:
1) There are actions of components of foods on the human genome which
directly or indirectly can alter the expression or structure of the genes.
2) In some individuals and under some circumstances, diet can be an important
risk factor for a number of illnesses.
3) Some genes regulated by diet and their normal common variants, probably
play a role in the onset, incidence, progression and/or severity of chronic
illnesses.
4) The degree to which diet has influence on the duality health-illness can
depend on the individual genetic constitution.
5) Intervention based on knowledge of nutritional requirements, nutritional
state and genotype can be used to prevent, mitigate and cure illness.
There are examples that illustrate the fact that people respond in different
ways to diet. The protective effects of phytochemical compounds such as
isoflavonoids, flavonoids and resveratrol, differ from one person to another.
Sodium increases the arterial pressure of some people and of others no, and
the capacity of dietary fibre to reduce cholesterol is also subject to genomic
influences.
The studies in this field may in the future lead us to eating the «correct»
foods for our different genetic constitutions, and to the elaboration of more
personalized diets through which we can achieve a healthier way of eating that

will result in favourable phenotypic changes with a consequent reduction in
the incidence of mortality from distinct diseases. To achieve this objective, it
will be fundamental to develop new strategies for nutritional education and for
new functional foods that respond to the particular needs of each one of the sub-
groups of persons identified as genetically similar. These new points of view
are in contradiction with current public health policies, which establish a group
of general dietary norms for the whole population based on studies which do
not reflect the individuality of populations. In other words, it is often assumed
that all individuals respond equally to dietetic intervention and benefit equally
from dietetic guidelines and nutritional policies. It could be that in the not
very distant future, it will be normal that health professionals will recommend
diets made to measure in function of the needs of each person and starting
from information based on the genes. Individuality will take preference over
generality. In this sense it is important to remember the statement of Miguel
de Cervantes; «I will die old and I’ll never understand this two-legged animal
called man, each individual is a variety of this species.»
But this is not an easy task. We can take as an example cardiovascular diseases.
There is no single gene responsible for the functioning of our cardiovascular
system; at least 20,000 genes are involved. Although each gene has only
a small effect, some genetic markers can give us an overall indication of a
concrete risk factor associated with the development of heart diseases. Thus,
a gene that is related to control over the level of cholesterol in the blood has
been identified. In addition to the most common variant of this gene, there
exist two other variants that either raise the risk of the individual having high
cholesterol or protect the individual.
Another potential use of research on genes and nutrition is helping to find the
way to develop special individualized foods to make healthy diets appear more
attractive, improving the taste of foods, both raw and cooked or even choosing
foods that are easier to cook, process, more economical, healthy or nutritious.
For example, there are potatoes with high levels of starch that absorb less oil
when they are made into chips or crisps, or fruit and vegetables that maintain
their nutritional properties and their taste despite transport and storage.
Studies on plants and microorganisms could also lead us to the discovery of
new components for our health and determine what functional ingredients
have an effect when we consume them isolated from other nutrients and which

need to be ingested as whole foods. In this way new ingredients and foods with
beneficial properties for health could in the future be found in the supermarkets
thanks to the development of the techniques of biotechnology. In Europe, the
European Nutrigenomics Organization (NuGO) has been created and is facing
the challenge of putting the data coming from nutrigenomics into practical use
through precise predictions on the beneficial or adverse effect on health of the
components of diet (Hesketh, J. et al., 2006).
It is important to remember that the ethical and social questions associated
with genomics also apply here (Bergmann, M. M. et al., 2006). One of the
most important challenges that we must face in the nutrition and food sciences
is how to insure that scientific advances in this field reach the public. Thus,
knowing nutritional needs yet not knowing the best strategy for the public and
society to accept dietary advice from the field can be the result of our own
naivety.
Clearly, messages about foods will always be better understood than those
about nutrients. It is easier to recommend the consumption of blue fish
or oily fish to decrease the risk of heart disease than omega-3 fatty acids,
despite it being this nutrient in the fish which causes the beneficial effect by
inhibiting the formation of tromboxane, and thus reducing the tendency to
form intracoronary thrombi. In addition, focusing on providing information
about a nutrient within a food and forgetting the rest of the nutrients it contains
may sometimes only serve to detract from it. One example of this is the egg,
which for many persons is thought of as pure cholesterol and should not be
eaten, forgetting that eggs are an important source of essential amino acids,
rich in micronutrients and relatively low in saturated fats.
As an example of how the results of research in nutrition have been
communicated to the Spanish population in the last 50 years, we can look
at the evolution of the so-called Food Wheel, a resource used to promote a
healthy and balanced diet. This model was promoted in Spain by the EDALNU
programme (Programme for Education in Diet and Nutrition). The programme
began in 1961, sponsored by the FAO, WHO and UNICEF, and with the
participation at the highest level of the Health and Agricultural Services of
the country. It was developed with a special focus on schools. Beginning in
1973 the programme came under the General Direction of Public Health of the
Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs.

The Wheel was divided into 7 sections (each one representing a food group)
all of the same size and using 5 different colours:
• Group 1 (red): milk, cheese, cuajada (a yogurt like dairy product).
• Group 2 (red): fish, eggs and meat.
• Group 3 (orange): potatoes, lentils, dried fruit and nuts.
• Group 4 (green): vegetables and produce.
• Group 5 (green): fruit
• Group 6 (yellow): bread, rice, sugar, chocolate.
• Group 7 (yellow): oil, butter, lard.
Red (groups 1 and 2) refers to foods rich in proteins and calcium, the plastic
foods.
Green (groups 4 and 5) is for elements rich in vitamins and minerals, the
regulatory foods.
Yellow (groups 6 and 7) covers the energetic foods that are rich in calories.
Orange (group 3) is for foods with multiple functions, «a little bit of
everything.»
The Wheel was used to explain adequate diets, in fact a pamphlet from 1984
by the General Direction of Public Health entitled «Eat better for less money»
asked the question, «How to organize a diet» and answered, «To have an
adequate diet one has to choose one or two foods from each one of the sectors
of the wheel of the seven food groups. After, they should be distributed in the
different meals that are going to be consumed; for example, breakfast, sweet
milk, bread and butter; lunch, lentils with potatoes, two fried eggs with tomato
sauce, bread and an orange for desert; dinner, baked fish, a portion of cheese,
bread and an apple for desert.»
In 2005 the Spanish Society for the Dietetic and Food Sciences (SEDCA),
taking into account the new knowledge about food and nutrition, published
a New Food Wheel. It can be found on the website of the organization at,
www.nutricion.org. Some changes in comparison with the previous wheel
have been made:
1) The Wheel has gone from 7 groups to 6; the orange group has disappeared,
and the foods of this group have been put in others. Potatoes have been
incorporated into the yellow group of foods rich in carbohydrates. The

nutritional value of legumes and dried fruit and nuts has been re-evaluated by
incorporating them into the red sector of meat, fish and eggs.
2) The groups on the wheel no longer have the same size; in that way the
relative importance in our diet of the foods belonging to different groups is
emphasized. For example, the yellow group of oils, butter, etc., like the red
group of milk and milk products is smaller, while the yellow group of bread,
pasta, potatoes, etc., is much larger, and in fact occupies more than 25% of
the wheel. The importance of fruit and vegetables in our diets is illustrated
by the increase in size of the two green groups. The sum of both groups now
accounts for more than 45% of the wheel. In addition, the need for variety in
consumption is highlighted, while in the old wheel 4 types of fruit and 4 types
of vegetables and produce appeared, in the new one 9 types of fruit and 8
vegetables or produce are represented with the most varied colours possible.
3) The wheel indicates which foods should be consumed only occasionally or
in small portions. These foods are pictured as smaller than foods that should
be consumed more frequently. For example, bakery items of occasional
consumption are smaller than bread which is consumed daily, cured cheeses
are smaller than milk or yogurt, and oil is larger than butter or margarine.
4) The new wheel also explicitly mentions physical exercise and the need to
ingest water in sufficient quantities.
As a guide that helps in achieving a balanced and healthy diet it recommends
that «menus and diets should be planned in such a way that during a one week
period the same number of servings of foods belonging to each one of the
groups of the wheel is chosen. Of those foods represented in reduced size,
occasional consumption is recommended.»
In a further step toward updating knowledge, using the didactic model of the
food wheel, a Wheel of Antioxidant Foods was elaborated. It is based on research
about the antioxidant capacity of existing chemical compounds in foods and
their beneficial effects on the pathologies of developed countries. Proposed by
the SEDCA in 2005 (available at www.nutricion.org) it graphically represents
the need to ingest specific daily quantities of the foods that have this capacity:
fruit, bread, potatoes, vegetables and produce, cocoa, legumes, dried fruit and
nuts, and olive oil. The following are the recommended quantities:

• Fruit (the most varied possible): 3 pieces or a glass of juice and one piece
a day.
• Bread: 100 to 180 grams a day.
• Potatoes: 1 or 2 a day.
• Vegetables and produce (the most varied possible): a serving of vegetables
5 to 7 days a week and a serving of salad a day.
• Cocoa: 1 or 2 soups spoons or their equivalent per day.
• Legumes: 1 serving, 2 or 3 times per week.
• Dried fruit and nuts: 1 portion (30 grams) a day.
• Olive oil: in sufficient quantities to dress the dishes and/or cook.
2.4. Conclusions
In conclusion, it is important and based on recent research it would seem

necessary to update concepts and ideas about nutrition that come from the
beginning of the past century, which at times make more difficult or restrict
the development of the science. As an example, it is enough to analyze the
classification of vitamins into water soluble and fat soluble. It seems a bit
absurd to group some nutrients based on their solubility (in fat or in water)
and not based on their function. But the reality is that this classification comes
from the past century, when the first vitamin was isolated (thiamine or B1) in
1912 by Casimir Funk by extracting from rice bran an organic base (an amine)
that was capable of curing beri beri (and therefore «vital») (Patterson, A. M.,
2005). Currently it would be more logical to talk about vitamins from the
perspective of their function, as today we know that the functions of vitamins
go beyond that of preventing deficiency. In this sense, we could talk about
vitamins with coenzymatic function in intermediate metabolism: thiamine,
riboflavin, pyridoxal, niacin, pantothenic acid, cyanocobalomin, ascorbic acid.
Vitamins and cellular proliferation: folic acid, cyanocobalomin. Antioxidant
vitamins: ascorbic acid, tocopherols, beta-carotene. Some vitamins could even
be classified based on their action mechanism as steroid hormones: retinoic
acid (active metabolite from vitamin A) or 1alfa-25-hydroxycholecalciferol
(active metabolite of vitamin D). Some treatises on nutrition have now begun
to focus on vitamins from this other perspective (Mataix Verdú, J., 2002, Gil
Hernández, A., 2005).

Similarly, taking into account what was previously explained about
Nutrigenomics, it is necessary to redefine the term nutrient. In this sense
and in agreement with Gil Hernández and Chagoyán Thompson (p. 1043,
2005), the term nutrient should be applied to «[all] constituents of the diet,
completely characterized (physically, chemically and physiologically), natural
or designed, that serve as energetic substrates, precursors of molecules or other
necessary components in the differentiation, growth, renovation, reparation,
defence and/or maintenance of cells, or all that which functions as a signalling
molecule, cofactor, determinant of some function, molecular structure and/or
as promoter of the integrity of cells and organs.» With this long definition, in
addition to the metabolic function that nutrients fulfil, the influence that they
have in processes of transcription, post-transcription and translation of the
DNA is emphasized, as well as resultant functions.
In addition, it is necessary to remember that we consume foods, and that the
human diet is not only the product of our knowledge of human physiology and
the metabolism of food; it also responds to, on the one hand, the socioeconomic
and geoclimatic reality (the role of socioeconomic level, production and trade,
preservation of foods, technology and agriculture, etc.) And on the other
hand, it responds to very deep and implanted anthropological realities such as
customs and rites, taboos and religions which have to be taken into account
when considering diet and the pleasures of the table. (Contreras, J. 2007).
Nor should we forget gastronomy, as humans are animals that cook their food.
Other animals feed and nourish themselves but their ingestion of foods is not
a cultural phenomenon. Lévi-Strauss said that «cooking is a language through
which society translates all of its structures.» For this reason we find it in
books, oral traditions, memories, objects and dishes prepared throughout the
years by different groups.

III. Food policies and consumer safety
Alicia de León Arce (University of Oviedo)
3.1. Introduction: Does every cloud have a silver lining?
Consuming food is the only necessity which all living beings share. It is not by
chance that food has been employed as a weapon in military conflicts and that
the concept of food safety gained in importance after the Second World War,
when Europe suffered indescribably for lack of food. The current situation is
different, as economic progress and globalization bring a multitude of foods
to the market. The network of international trade distributes the products of
countries from all over the world, each country with its own legislation on
matters of food safety control. For this reason, the creation of common markets
must take into account the potential danger to health that this constant exchange
implies, as the globalization of food distribution also means the globalization
of health problems. According to data from the World Health Organization
(WHO), two million children die each year from diarrheal illnesses caused by
contaminated water or foods. Despite the fact that the application of rigorous
technological processes and high standards of hygiene in the industrialized
countries has drastically reduced the incidence of illnesses caused by food, it
is thought that between 5 and 10 percent of the population suffer at least one
episode of a food-borne illness during their lives.
The globalization of food refers to a broad set of activities that runs from
production to making available to the public the necessary and adequate goods
to satisfy their nutritional needs. It is intimately connected with agriculture,
livestock, fishing, biology, chemistry, processing and distributive industries,
and above all, with health. It therefore has a multidisciplinary character and
includes concepts and facts of an economic, technical, health-related, political
and legal nature. During the whole process, a plurality of agents intervenes
FOOD POLICIES AND CONSUMER SAFETY 75

and participates in the activities that bring producers and consumers together;
their interdependence means that each and every individual decision affects
and has repercussions on everyone.
In the legal sphere, food must be subject to preventive regulations that
simultaneously consider nutritive, sanitary, economic and technical aspects.
Nevertheless, the evolution of food and consumer protection policies in the
European and Spanish context responds to the saying «every cloud has a silver
lining,» as it cannot be denied that both on the community and national level,
policies for food safety have been reactive and not preventive, the fruit of food
crises which have led to action by the authorities.
Food safety is a global problem which affects everyone, which means that
in a globalized market, the intervention of public powers is fundamental to
guarantee to each person, from one end of the world to the other, that the foods
they consume are really healthy and safe. Consumers have the right to know
how food is prepared and produced, above all with the incorporation of new
foods whose origin or techniques of preparation are unknown. For this reason,
it is advisable to consume foods that are locally grown and seasonal, those
for which control is always easier. It is said that people who consume locally-
grown products are helping to save energy, reduce greenhouse gases and to
assure the sanitary and quality control of the products consumed.(1)
The food crises which took place in the 1990s provoked consumer insecurity.
Consumers perceived a loss in quality of foods as they learned of contamination
problems from chemical products, intoxications from salmonella, lysteria or
dioxins, mad cow disease, swine fever and hoof and mouth disease. Industrial
production, retail, and safety systems have been put in doubt and are subject
to unprecedented pressure with repercussions for their operators and in
the economic, administrative and policy sectors. Consumers have become
suspicious of food safety and are demanding more information and control
so that they can eat well and safely, but also in a way that is environmentally
healthy. It must also be remembered that in a large part of Europe, the economic
and sanitary importance of food is joined with the importance of food as one
of the bases of culture and civilization.
(1) Report State of the World 2005, World Watch Institute. http://www.worldwatch.org/taxonomy/term/38.

The increase in production, the growth in trade, higher standards of living
and food crises have altered the concept of diet, giving rise to changes in the
traditional diet, the appearance of new eating syndromes and a more demanding
consumer. Within sociology, food encompasses different dimensions:
economic (it has a price that can make it accessible or not to the population
group that wants to consume it); physical (its external aspect is determined
by the colour, smell, texture, shape and taste); social (it is a part of codes of
prestige and opportunity for consumption fixed by the group); psychological
(the acceptance or rejection of food in function of its inclusion or not in a
catalogue of common foods of the consuming group, being sanctioned by the
food culture itself); food safety (guaranteeing the suitability of consumption
by good hygienic-sanitary conditions) and the ease of use (must respond to
consumer demands for simplicity in handling).(2)
Food demands special procedures regarding its control, as it can directly
provoke massive health problems that immediately impact on markets.
The 21st century scenario of the globalisation of the international food
trade necessitates a common framework for the food system because of the
increasingly close connections between health and consumer confidence. As a
result, it is advisable to analyze the evolution of food policies at the national,
community and international level that have led to existing food law.
Health problems bring about supranational legal protections through the
actions undertaken by the WHO, the Food and Agricultural Organization of
the United Nations (FAO), the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE),
The International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC), the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) and, above all the Codex Alimentarius Commission.
At the start of European construction, food safety was already a concern,
and it continues to be so today, although with a change in perspective. In a
few short years, the common market made hunger and food scarcity a thing
of the past. This was a result of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP),
the industrialization of the agricultural sector, the elimination of tariff and
phytosanitary borders and, above all, growth in the market and consumption,
which put economic interests above consumer health. What began as a fear
(2) Nutrición saludable y prevención de los trastornos alimentarios, at www.msc.es/ciudadanos/protecciónSalud/

docs/guia_nutrición_saludable.pdf, p.19.

of not having enough food to feed the population became over time a concern
for the quality of foods and their effects on the health of consumers (Sobrino,
207: 13). Community policies, after following a complicated path through
multiple obstacles originating in conflicting national interests and economic
challenges, are now trying to reconcile a higher level of health and consumer
protection with the functioning of the internal market, adopting supranational
guidelines in defence of food legislation which defends the lives and health of
persons and animals.
In Spain, between the enactment of the Food Code and the General Law for
the Defence of Consumers and Users, a series of intoxications occurred which
left the lack of protection of consumers clear. The subsequent incorporation of
Spain into the then European Community in 1986 coincided with the beginning
of the food crises and the necessary incorporation to its national law of the
acquis communautaire, as well as subsequent acceptance of Community food
law. This has meant that Spanish food policy has been influenced by numerous
factors which have led to the legal reality which we will examine below.
3.2. Antecedents: The Spanish Food Code and the General Law for
the Defence of Consumers and Users
During the 1950s the work developed by the WHO, the FAO and the International
Commission for Agricultural and Food Industries (CIAA) was disseminated,
which led to numerous countries drawing up their respective national food
codes. In 1960 Spain created a Sub-commission of Experts within the Inter-
ministerial Health Commission with the objective of drawing up a food code
to be presented to the government. This project would be sanctioned through
Decree 2519/1967, 21 September, which approved the text of the Spanish
Food Code although its entry into effect was delayed until the publication of
Decree 2519/1974, of 9 August, about the entry into effect, application and
development of the Spanish Food Code. It was the first compendium in our
country that systematized the basic regulations regarding foods, condiments,
stimulants and beverages, as well as for their corresponding raw materials. It
established definitions, determined the minimal conditions foods had to meet
and the distinct procedures for preparation, packaging, distribution, transport,
advertising and consumption.

For its practical application, this body of food regulations needed the previous
development of its articles through specific provisions. This does not mean
that the Code was not directly applicable in regards to its general provisions
and with respect to the precepts which regulated concrete products. This code
has been partially repealed, modified and developed with the objective of
adapting it to new scientific, social, political and legal realities.(3)
The enactment of the Spanish Constitution on 6 December 1978 marked a
milestone in reference to the protection of the health and safety of consumers
(as in other aspects), furthermore establishing titles regarding powers on
the matter of food safety. Article 15, placed within the fundamental rights
(Chapter II of Title I), proclaims that «everyone has a right to life and physical
integrity.» Among the guiding principles of social and economic policy
gathered in Chapter III of Title I, three precepts are framed which, together
with the previous, form the constitutional basis of Spanish food safety: article
43, which recognizes the right to preventative health protection; article 45,
which establishes the right of all to enjoy an adequate environment; and article
51 which introduces the defence of the consumer.
The distinct location in one or another chapter has important effects, as the first
and second sections of article 53 determine the rights and liberties recognized in
Chapter II of Title I, among which are found the right to life and physical integrity,
binding for all public authorities and which may be regulated only by law which
shall, in any case, respect their essential content, – although any citizen may assert
his or her claim to protect their rights and liberties by means of a preferential and
summary procedure in the ordinary courts and, when appropriate, by submitting
an individual appeal for protection to the Constitutional Court. While according to
what is established in section 3, recognition, respect and protection of recognized
principles in Chapter III (right to health, an adequate environment and defence
of the consumer) will inform the substantive legislation, judicial practice and the
actions of public powers, but only can be invoked in the ordinary courts in the
context of the legal provisions by which they are developed.
The state of autonomous communities proclaimed in the constitution has
made it necessary to distribute powers, a distribution that on matters having
(3) See Código Alimentario Español y disposiciones complementarias (2006), en Legislación Alimentaria, Seventh
Edition, updated by Deleuze Isasi, P. Madrid, Tecnos.

to do with food has raised interpretive difficulties that the case law of the
Constitutional Court has had to resolve, highlighting the 7th Legal Basis
of the STC 71/1982, of 30 November which states that «the regulation of
food products, objects of specific regulation applicable in all the national
territory, pertains to the area of state competence, because on the indicated
rule on the definition and regulation of the use of ingredients, components and
additives, and on the precision of this rule with respect to food products with
a market that exceeds the area of the Autonomous Community, one of the
main points of the system of health protection related to food is established.»
From all this it can be deduced that basic legislation corresponds to the state,
and legislative development and execution of this basic legislation to the
autonomous communities within the framework of their respective statutes
of autonomy. The local government can regulate some matters on food safety
through ordinances.
In 1981 a series of intoxications occurred that made the deficiencies of
Spanish food policy clear. In May, the death of a child marked the beginning
of the tragedy known as the «Colza Case» or toxic syndrome and represented
the appearance of a new illness in Spain that affected a growing number
of persons. In the first few days, diverse hypotheses about the cause of the
epidemic emerged, but then the government announced that the cause was
found in a batch of denatured rapeseed oil distributed by street vendors.(4)
It is believed that around one thousand people died and 25,000 became ill
from «atypical pneumonia» from consuming the oil with no apparent clinical
solution.(5) In September of that same year a massive case of food poisoning
from mussels affected 5,000 persons.
As an immediate reaction, the Government enacted Real Decree 1945/1983,
22 June, which regulates infractions and sanctions on matters related to
the protection of the consumer and agrifood production, stressing that the
Congress had agreed to a plan of urgent measures to protect the health of
(4) The rapeseed oil that presumably caused the intoxication was imported from France for industrial activities,
for which it was tinted so that it could be differentiated from oil destined for human consumption. It underwent a
chemical treatment to return it to the color of the edible oil and with this transformation it was put into circulation
in Spain. It seems that this process of tinting and de-tinting damaged it, making it harmful for human health. See:
http:// perso.wanadoo.es/webde1981/sociedadnot3.htm.
(5) See Moreno, S. (1987) «Juicio de la colza. Kafka en la Casa de Campo.» Magazine Cambio 16, no. 800, 30
March 1987, and Faber-Kaiser, A. (1988) La ocultación de la verdadera causa del Síndrome Tóxico impidió la
curación de miles de españoles ©, at http://personal.telefonica.terra.es/web/fir/arti/st.html.

consumers, among which would include the revision and updating of all
regulations in force in matters of inspection and surveillance of food activities
and sanctioning of infractions. To achieve this mandate, a series of regulations
and provisions were updated on distinct matters, which were related to the
protection of public health, consumer protection and the legitimate demands of
industry and trade. The new legislation also took into consideration technical,
economic and social conditions that surround the products and services that
are provided to consumers and that need a clear demarcation of obligations and
responsibilities in their provision to avoid the defencelessness of individuals
and collectives before fraud, adulteration, abuse or negligence.
However, it was the coming into effect of Law 26/1984, 19 July, General
Law for the Defence of Consumers and Users (LCU), which responded to
the saying «every cloud has a silver lining,» as this was a response to the
lack of protection of the Spanish consumer. Formally, its aim is to fulfil the
constitutional mandate of article 51 CE that requires government to guarantee
the protection of consumers and users, protecting by means of effective
procedures their safety, health and legitimate financial interests, giving the
necessary legislative development to this guiding principle. This law has only
recently fulfilled its institutional task with the support of subsequent provisions
fomenting the protection of the consumer and above all supported by the
position adopted by the Spanish courts which in general have been favourable
to the protection of consumer rights. Throughout the years, there have been
various modifications to the articles of the law in order to fit its mandates,
either to the interpretation of some of the precepts of the jurisprudence of
the Constitutional Court, or to the transposition of European Community
directives focused on the protection of the consumer after Spain’s admission
into the European Community.
The LCU, together with other complementary laws, was abrogated by Real
Legislative Decree 1/2007, 16 November, which approved the revised text
of the General Law for the Defence of Consumers and Users and other
complementary laws (TRLCU). This new law entered into force the first
of December 2007 and merits separate treatment to highlight community
influences on food matters.

3.3. The admission of Spain into the European Community and the
food crises
The admission of Spain into the European Community in January 1986 was a
factor in the modernization of the whole of Spanish law because as a previous
condition for entry, Spain, like the other countries, had to accept as a whole
the «acquis communautaire» or the total body of existing community laws
(which included food laws that were not at that time too comprehensive).
From the start, the Community accepted the importance of food safety due
in part to the economic importance of the agrifood sector. It was recognized
that the application of different legislation in each country would slow down
trade and the flow of goods, particularly when health problems were used as
an excuse to protect national markets. In a first stage, the Community tried
to base the free movement of foods on a policy of harmonization based on
article 100 in the Treaty of Rome (TCE). The formula used was to submit
foods to the same rules referring to their denomination, composition and
presentation; in that way harmonizing the norms relative to chocolate, sugar,
honey, fruit juices, coffee, jellies and jams, mineral waters, and oils and fats.
This situation raised some problems as it did not include all foods and because
many of the norms that formed the basis of the CAP(6) as an important part of
the incipient Food Law had a clear economic vocation and were not based on a
food policy protective of consumers. Though there may not be a contradiction
between the rights and needs of consumers and the economic objectives of
the market, their final aims are divergent in many respects. The establishment
of the free movement of foods starting 31 December 1992 obligated a period
of adaptation of the different national food laws, whose harmonization was
essential for the free movement of foods in the European economic space. But
how could this be achieved?
(6) The first CAP (1958) has identical objectives as the Agreement made by the FAO. The reform made in 1962 co-
incided with the new round of GATT negotiations which announced the beginning of the WTO. The CAP of 1998
was justified to have a better negotiating position before the following round of the WTO and for the first time the
safety and quality of foods was included among its objectives. Since the approval of the Agenda 2000, scandals
and food crises have cast doubt on the productive model of the CAP and the CAP itself, incapable of dealing with
the loss of consumer confidence. In 2003, the ministers of community agriculture reformed the CAP in-depth,
changing the way the EU supports the agricultural sector, centering on the consumer and tax-payers and giving
liberty to European farmers to produce what the market demands. See http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/capreform/
index_es.htm y Costato, L. (2007), «La progresiva descentralización de la PAC y la concentración de competencias
por la Unión Europea en materia de producción y comercio de alimentos», in Derecho Agrario y Alimentario espa-
ñol y de la Unión Europea, Coord. Pablo Amat Llombart, Valencia, Tirant lo blanch, p. 471- 483.

European food legislation and consumer strength
The TCE contains no direct mention of consumer protection. It is only referred

to in an indirect form in setting the objectives of the CAP which was intended to
assure the supply of food to the consumer at a reasonable price. Nevertheless,
although it was not foreseen in the treaties, the time for consumer protection
had to arrive.
Only when the Single European Act (1986) was approved and introduced article
100 A into the founding Treaty was it possible to talk about a true European
consumer policy; in section 3 of this article, true legal support for the creation
of an internal market based on the harmonization of member states’ national
legislation appeared for the first time. The Commission was given the task of
formulating proposals on matters of health, safety, environmental protection and
consumer protection with the goal of achieving a high level of protection. It is
vague and imprecise regarding the role of the Commission, but it has undeniably
strengthened the subsequent development of consumer protection.
The Maastricht Treaty (1992) treated health as a priority that must be
guaranteed through a high level of protection in the definition and application
of all community policies and activities. Therefore the Community must act
toward this end. To do so the pre-existing legal base was reinforced through
the incorporation of Title XI dedicated to the protection of consumers and
users, whose article 129 A meant the adoption of actions which would
support and complement the policies developed by member states within the
framework of the principle of subsidiarity (so that member states could adopt
or maintain measures that meant a greater level of protection), and according
to the codecision procedure that demands that Community provisions must
now be adopted by the Council in cooperation with the European Parliament.
The Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) recognized consumer policy in its own right
to a much greater extent than before, and the currently in force Treaty of Nice
(2003), without ostensibly changing the previous situation, dedicated Title XIV
to consumer protection, reflecting in section 2 of article 153 its transversal or
horizontal character, stipulating that «in defining and executing other community
policies and actions the requirements for consumer protection will be taken into
account.» The promotion of the interests of consumers is now found at the core
of all community policy aimed at improving the social and economic well-being

of the citizens. But consumer policy will also have to take into account more
general concerns related to the environment to guarantee measures that promote
sustainable guidelines for production and consumption.
Although economic motives initially made food safety an object of special
attention, the crises suffered in the last decade of the 20th century revealed
the existing legislative fragmentation and the lack of an overview of the needs
arising from this situation. The shadow of food insecurity loomed over Europe
despite the progress achieved and the availability of advanced technologies
in relation to human and animal foods. The social impact of the crises tested
control systems and the capacity of national and European authorities to
watch over the safety, hygiene and healthiness of foods. They revealed the
lack of harmonization in national control systems, the shortage of analytical
and technical resources, and most importantly, the risks for the health of the
consumer, who saw how his/her spending power could have grave economic
consequences on the food sector (De León, 2007: 67).
Consumers questioned the actions of the European political class before the
inexistence of a unified food control in the internal market. They demanded
a regulatory scheme and stricter actions for compliance on the part of all
operators in the food chain. They also demanded more information on the
evaluation and management of short term and long term risks and on methods
of production, demanding the right to participate in the decision-making
process for policies regarding the harmlessness and quality of foods. They
asked for the possibility of requiring a series of obligations from the producer,
distributor and retailer of foods bearing directly on product safety so that only
harmless products are placed on the market. They insisted that measures be
adopted in case of risk for the consumer such as identifying product batches, or
establishing instructions, warnings and indications about preventable risks.
The situation led to reflection on the part of the European Commission and
member states. They wanted to detect and localize errors to correct them,
complete regulations on matters that still had not been dealt with, establish
mechanisms for effective and rapid action and adopt a common organisational
model on matters of food safety, with the aim of restoring consumer confidence.
But they also wanted consumers to perceive public powers as effective in
carrying out regulations and in watching for and sanctioning market deviations.
To achieve this, they needed a structured method that integrated the application

of anticipatory systems and reactive control systems. In addition, they imposed
new models for relations between the distinct interested parties of the food
chain so that there would be intercommunication between public powers and
consumers themselves with the objective of maintaining control over food
quality. With these premises, the Commission included among its political
priorities a reform of the sector that would increase safety and that would
eliminate the differences among member states’ legislation on the matter, as
well as existing gaps in previous regulation.
Economic development and consumer food behaviour
There are also factors of social change which are determinants regarding the
orientation of European food production, such as the influence of economic
development and the increase in the standard of living, the appearance of
new eating disorders, the inclusion of new foods and the development of
an ecological consciousness. These factors affect directly or indirectly the
formation of opinion, which results in changes in consumer behaviour.
Economic development establishes models for the behaviour of citizens in
relation to the consumption of food, which in turn influences food production.
The increase in the standard of living of families, due in part to more members
of the family working, implies greater purchasing power which determines the
type of demand for food and transforms eating habits. Families dedicate and
have less time for cooking, which increases the demand for foods produced for
immediate consumption and the number of meals eaten in restaurants.(7) This
situation also raises some problems related to health and bad eating habits in
specific social collectives. This is due in part to the aculturalisation produced
in the «global village,» where the pressures from multinationals that make
advertising a powerful instrument of persuasion establish uniformity in dietary
habits, especially among young people. The most common example of this is
fast food.(8) New pathologies have emerged like anorexia, bulimia, obesity, or
(7) There is an increase in demand for foods considered to be healthy for being a part of the «Mediterranean diet,»
which is living through a great time, candidate to be included on the list of Immaterial Cultural Heritage of Humanity
of UNESCO, supported by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (see the electronic journal
Consumer.es Alimentación, 28 June 2007, at http://www.consumer.es/web/es/alimentacion/2007/06/28/164221.php).
(8) The documentary Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock is about the experiment of the director: he spent one
month, under doctor’s care, eating only what was offered at a fast food hamburger chain to test the effects this
would produce on one’s health. During this we see the deterioration of his physical and emotional condition. See:
www.supersizeme.com.

orthorexia, eating disorders capable of damaging physical and mental health,
whose incidence is on the increase. The inclusion in the market of new foods,
many of them the fruit of genetic engineering, has created fear in the consumer
over their potential danger, due in part to organised campaigns against these
foods by some special interest groups and the lack of information about their
utility and effects.
Many consumers are also conscious of the environmental repercussions from
food production due to the contamination of raw materials, the effects of
bad practices, and the consequences resulting from certain types of farming.
They are therefore demanding a return to a better balance with nature through
revising the role played by agriculture, livestock and fishing in the conservation
and maintenance of the environment and through the application of non-
aggressive food practices integrated with the environment. We are seeing a
new importance given to traditional and organic farming.
The consumer of reference in community regulations and in

the doctrine of the Court of Justice of the European Communities
Before examining the unification of community regulations on matters of

food safety, it makes sense to try to specify exactly who this protected subject
called the consumer is.
In the community sphere, there is a general lack of definition of the concept
of the consumer, and in the case of the consumer of foods, this is worrying.
From the analysis of regulations regarding consumer protection in which there
exists a definition of a protected subject, we can deduce that the concept that
they refer to has common characteristics that include all physical persons,
that acquire property or services for their use or final consumption with the
objective of satisfying personal or family needs.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, according to consistent case law of the
Court of Justice of the European Communities (CJEC), consumer protection
is established through the information that consumers receive through
advertising, labelling or other procedures. This is considered to favour free
trade in an internal market open to competition which makes it possible for
consumers to inform themselves on their own about the nature, qualities and
characteristics of products so that they can make intelligent choices. The free

circulation of goods between member states constitutes a principle foundation
of Community law, so that a measure of protection against the risk of consumer
fraud can only prevail over the demands for the free movement of goods if the
risk is sufficiently serious and therefore justifies the obstacles to trade.
Who is the consumer of reference to determine if a mention on a food label
can lead him or her to error? The CJEC Gut Springenheide, of 16 July 1998,
establishes the now famous concept of the «average consumer,» by indicating
that to determine if said information can induce an error, it must be taken
into consideration that «the average consumer of the category of products
concerned is deemed to be reasonably well-informed and reasonably observant
and circumspect,» an interpretation that seems to be based on a high opinion
of the average consumer and it seems that «the European Court of Justice is
interpreting the notion of consumer in a way which ignores the protection of
the most vulnerable, the illiterate or poor consumer» (Hondius, 2007: 89).
For this reason, one of the fundamental aspects of food protection is the
information that must be included on the label of commercialized foods.
The label information must be legally established, both in regards to general
regulations about labelling, presentation and advertising of the products,
and in relation to warnings about risks, advice, handling, conservation and
consumption of the products, and in particular, about the raw materials used,
the form of production, the origin of the products and the controls carried out
over them. It is assumed that this generates a greater degree of confidence
and safety. Consequently, the labelling is constantly in transition, as it goes
through small continuous changes to adapt to all the modifications that are
produced, both from technological and legislative perspectives, as well as
from advertising (Carbonell et al. 2003: 111).
Modification of European food regulations:

Regulation 178/2002
Community institutions began to consider that the pair formed by food chain
and consumer confidence is equal to comprehensive food safety in two ways;
first, in relation to supply through the increase in production and improvements
in logistics, and secondly, in relation to health. Thus food safety is not only
about looking for technical solutions, but food safety must be perceived by
the consumers to gain their trust. This sense of food safety is more complex

and demands close coordination between all the agents of the food chain. For
this reason the new focus of European food policy is radically distinct from
previous policy. Its focus is now on trying to guarantee a high degree of food
safety to recover the trust of consumers regarding food products, as the free
movement of safe and healthy foods is considered an essential aspect of the
internal market because of its contribution to the well-being and health of the
citizens. To do this it is necessary to harmonize food legislation to arrive at
a high level of safety that bears directly on the quality of foods, while at the
same time assuring the free movement of goods.
Community regulations on food safety have acquired a qualitative and
quantitative importance, as although up to the year 2000 legislation did
exist which covered the primary production of agricultural products and the
industrial production of processed foods, in analyzing this legislation it can be
seen that there was no harmonization of the concepts and processes of food
safety. As a result member states could start from different concepts of safety
and also have distinct safety processes.
The first attempts to write a single regulatory text that would establish the
fundamental principles of food legislation were at the end of the 1980s.
However, it would take more than another decade for the idea to become
reality; a decade marked by food crises which would be the trigger for the
reforms (again, «every cloud has a silver lining»). Reforms which would
follow the consultations and debates brought about by a Green Paper and a
White Paper from the European Commission and culminating in the adoption
of Regulation 178/2002 which established the general principles applicable in
this area at the community and national levels.
The Green Paper on the general principles of food law in the European Union
(1997) reviewed the existing food legislation and proposed its simplification,
rationalization and improvement. It was not a draft of community legislation, as
its fundamental objective was to initiate a public debate over the future of food
law that would allow the Commission to propose measures to be developed
and establish as basic rules of functioning the principles of independence,
excellence and transparency.
The White Paper on Food Safety (2000) introduced the legal framework
through which future modifications of community law would develop. Its

principal objective was to guarantee a high level of food safety and recover the
trust of consumers. Aspects considered essential were instituting food traceability
procedures and laying the foundation for the definitive modernisation of safety
mechanisms for consumer protection through a plan of legislative actions with
the goal of improving and making the existing legislation coherent, covering
diverse areas such as food for animals, the well-being and health of animals,
food hygiene, contaminants and waste, novel foods, additives and flavourings,
packaging and irradiation of foods through a comprehensive and global focus
on the whole food chain, that takes into consideration all the phases of a
foodstuff (production, processing and marketing and sales) to answer the needs
of new forms of industrial production in matters of hygiene. It raised the need
to have a competent body that would provide solutions in situations of crisis,
anticipating «the establishment of a European Food Authority responsible for
providing scientific advice on all aspects related to food safety.»
The European Commission proposed a series of legislative measures to be
passed within a period of three years. This legislation would concretise the
principles of food safety, the responsibility of different economic operators
including the manufacturers of animal feed, the analysis of risks and the
application of the precautionary principle. It would be done in a way that
would lead to the gradual implementation of a new legal framework with a
comprehensive, integrated approach throughout the food chain. The objective
is the provision of exclusively safe foods and would include taking measures
to protect the environment because of the effects its lack of protection can have
on human health. The concepts, principles and procedures of food legislation
must converge throughout the community, with the aim of achieving an
identical and high level of protection «from farm to table» while ensuring the
effective functioning of the internal market.
From this moment on, community institutions developed new and broader
food legislation, opting to a large degree for the Community Regulation as
a unifying vehicle of the new regulations. The Community Regulation is the
most complete and effective of the range of instruments available as it has
general application; it is binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all
member states after its publication in the Official Journal of the European
Union. This instrument has rarely been used on matters of consumption.

The enactment of Regulation (CE) No. 178/2002 of the European Parliament
and the Council, on 28 January 2002, which established the general principles
and requirements of food safety, created the European Food Safety Authority
and laid down procedures in matters of food safety; it had as an objective to
complete the mission of unifying all of the European Union, placing food
safety on the agenda of priorities of the member states and the European
Commission through the introduction of basic elements of food law, among
which standout the following:
• The establishment of definitions that gather together prior conceptual
divergences among member states, unifying the concepts of food, food
law, food business, food business operators, animal feed, risk analysis,
evaluation of risk, risk management, risk communication, hazard, or
traceability. This means the possibility to track foods and their ingredients
throughout all the stages of the human or animal food chain, with the aim
of establishing a safe process «from farm to table.» When a danger emerges
(for example, a toxic food infection), those in charge of risk management
must be able to locate the dangerous food, proceed to its rapid withdrawal,
inform the consumers and the food control officers and, if it comes to
it, search the whole food chain to determine the origin of the problem
and resolve it. By rapidly identifying the products that pose the risk, the
exposure of consumers can be limited, and the economic effects that these
measures can have on businesses can be limited as well.
• The operator of a food business is considered to have primary responsibility
for the lack of product safety(9) But this responsibility extends to all the sectors
implicated in the food chain (farmers, producers of animal feed and the food
industry) and to government, in such a way that although the operators of
food and animal feed businesses are the first in responsibility for food safety,
member states have to supervise and control them and the Commission has
to put to the test the effectiveness of the capacities and aptitudes of member
states to carry out this control through inspections and audits.
(9) The conclusions of the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health, of 20 December 2004,
point out that the responsibility of the operators of food businesses must derive from the failure to comply with a
requisite of the specific food regulation and the regulations related to civil or criminal responsibility of the national
legal system of each member state, basing the proceedings on responsibility on legal grounds included in the legal
system and in the specific legislation that has been infringed.

• One of the wisest decisions of the EU was the creation of the European
Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the maximum community authority on
matters related to food safety with headquarters in Parma, Italy, and which
controls the safety and health policies of the Member States. Included
among its missions are, the adoption of the precautionary principle,
traceability, admissibility of novel foods or the evaluation of the principal
risks of novel foods that need to be assessed. It was constituted as an
autonomous and independent source for scientific evaluation, serving as
a point of reference in regards to assessment of food risks. It is a coherent
and centralised authority with credibility, which responds when a problem
or food emergency erupts by putting into action a response network,
whose objective is to inform member states of possible risks in the least
time possible, so that they can rapidly and effectively adopt safeguarding
measures to face food emergencies. It has also laid the foundation for a
new system of rapid response, modifying the one in place since 1978 by
setting in motion a response system in the form of a network, with the
aim of notifying of any direct or indirect risk for human health resulting
from food products or animal feed. The EFSA works in collaboration with
diverse institutions and scientific bodies of member states, as the creation
of national food safety bodies was also planned with its establishment.(10)
These national bodies have to adjust their powers in function of the
requirements of the EFSA, as well as adapt the concepts, principles and
procedures on food safety in their respective regulations.
• The Regulation establishes the general principles of food safety. To
this end, it contains a set of explicit principles that are imposed on public
authorities, in addition to other principles whose existence is implicitly
confirmed and reinforced.
Among the explicit principles there is the precautionary principle, based on the
philosophy that in the case of doubt it is better to wait, and which is applicable
when definitive, conclusive or sufficient scientific data is not available, and
(10) Member states have established their own Food Safety Agencies (in Spain within the autonomous regions
also) with the aim of establishing a single state body responsible for all of the issues related to the health of foods.
Through DF 8 of Law 44/2006, 29 December, on the protection of the consumer rights, the law through which the
Spanish Food Safety Agency was created (Law 11/2001, of 5 July), was modified and that agency has now become
the Spanish Food Safety and Nutrition Agency (AESAN), broadening its powers to plan, coordinate and develop
strategies and actions to promote information, education and promotion of health in the field of nutrition and, in
particular, in the prevention of obesity.

when preliminary scientific evaluation concludes that there can exist potentially
dangerous effects for the environment, human, animal or plant health, according
to the criteria of established protections; the principle of transparency, which is
divided into the principle of public consultation about food legislation and into
the principle of communication to consumers about certain risks; the principle
of risk analysis based on the evaluation of risks grounded in available scientific
proofs that are made by the EFSA; and the principle of consumer protection,
given that food legislation must assure that consumers are provided with a base
of knowledge of the foodstuffs they consume, avoiding fraudulent practices and
any other practice that can lead to consumer error.
Among the implicit principles should be stressed the prevention principle and the
principle of harmlessness of foods and of protection of health. These principles
should prevail over the free movement of goods, as although the determining
parameters of the safety of a food are going to be related to its harmlessness
and its aptness for human consumption according to criteria established by
specific regulations, and although its sale will be prohibited if it does not comply
with said regulations, the safety of a food does not exclusively depend on its
accordance with the applicable provisions as even in such a case it may still be
taken off the market if the competent authorities consider it to be unsafe.
As much from the perspective of consumer protection as from that related to the
correct functioning of the internal market, it is critical that the law is applied on an
equal basis and, in this sense, the choice on the part of the community law maker
of the instrument of the Community Regulation instead of a General Directive
(as was at first considered) is significant. Also critical is the uniform application
and interpretation of its mandates on the part of the competent authorities of each
member state. With this aim the Guidance on the implementation of articles 11,
12, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 of Regulation (EC) No 178/ 2002 on General Food
Law was published at the end of 2004, approved by the Standing Committee on
the Food Chain and Animal Health. But it has not been as useful as hoped for,
as it is an informative document that is not binding, which permits the continued
existence of distorted interpretations in different member states.
The so-called novel foods are included in the Regulation and those which are
derived from the application of biotechnology (genetically modified) became
the object of a moratorium, specifically on permits to introduce GM crops in
the European market. This has been an issue of on-going intense public debate.

The biotechnology industry argues that genetically modified crops involve
little risk and offer huge potential benefits; ecological associations denounce a
lack of knowledge and understanding of the environmental risks, and consumer
associations complain that such products have been imposed from above and
that the labelling system is not transparent which makes choice difficult when
shopping. European consumers, in the majority, are against the approval of
genetically modified foods and crops. Official surveys of the European Union
show that 94.6 percent of citizens want to have the right to choose, 85.9
percent want to know more about GMOs before consuming them and 70.9
percent simply do not want to consume genetically modified foods(11) for fear
of possible side-effects. Consumers are demanding to be adequately informed
about these products, about their composition as well as the techniques used
for evaluating them and their safety, and they want ethical, environmental,
social and economic considerations be taken into account.
For this reason, the authorisation procedures and supervision of products
intended for human or animal consumption that contain GMOs are the
object of specific regulation from various perspectives, either to permit
member states to protect their conventional and organic crops from the risk
of contamination by GM crops, or through the incorporation on the label of
specific, clear and complete information, as demands Regulation (CE) No.
1830/2003 of the European Parliament and the Council, 22 September 2003,
regarding the traceability and the labelling of genetically modified organisms
and the traceability of foods and animal-feed products from them, for which
Directive 2001/18/CE was modified. This means that all foods that contain
in any of their ingredients more than 0.9 percent of GMO must be presented
as such through the inclusion on the label of statements such as; «This
product contains genetically modified organisms» or «This product contains
genetically modified [name of the organism];» which also must be reproduced
in advertisements or elements of product presentation.
Information on the effects of a specific food or category of foods intended for
consumption is an essential element in the prevention of food risks, and this
is communicated to the consumer through labels that contain more and more
precise information and data. The label is considered to be an important means of
(11) See europa.eu.int/comm/research/press/2001/pr0612en-report.pdf.

food safety control. Regulation (CE) No. 1924/2006 of the European Parliament
and Council, 20 December 2006, in regards to statements about nutritional or
health properties of foods, states that the use of nutrition and health claims may
only be used on condition that such claims are based on generally accepted
scientific data and these claims cannot be false, ambiguous or misleading.
Food safety and the revised text of the General Law for the Defence
of Consumers and Users and other complementary laws
The TRLCU fulfils the prevision set out in the fifth final Provision of Law
44/2006, 29 December, for improvement of the protection of consumers
and users, which authorized the government within a period of 12 months to
proceed to consolidate into a single text the LCU and rules of implementation
of Community Directives dictated on matters of protection of consumers and
users that bear on regulated aspects in the LCU, with the intention of clarifying
and harmonizing the legal texts that have been consolidated.
Article 8 of the TRLCU establishes the basic rights of consumers and states
that among them are (in section a) «protection against risks that can affect
consumer health or safety.» Article 9 emphasizes that public authorities will
protect «first and foremost» the rights of consumers and users when it has some
direct relationship with goods or services of common, ordinary or generalised
use or consumption, such as foods.
Chapter III of Title I of the first Book of the TRLCU is specifically dedicated
to the protection of the health and safety of consumers and contains articles
11 and 16. Article 11 establishes the general responsibility for safety at a
«high level of protection of health and safety of persons,» demanding from
business the following precepts: the duty to inform consumers about the risks
of the goods and services put on the market through appropriate means, such
as instructions or indications for their correct use or consumption, warnings
and foreseeable risks, also including additional obligations regarding the
maintenance of necessary controls, in such a way that the origin, distribution,
destination and use of potentially unsafe goods can be confirmed rapidly and
effectively, those that contain substances classified as dangerous or those
subject to obligations of traceability, with the aim of establishing a safe
process «from farm to table» in clear allusion to the demands of Regulation
(CE) No. 178/2002.

The right to information acquires essential importance, because as we have
pointed out, from community judicial proceedings the average consumer is
considered to be informed and an «observant and circumspect» consumer
who can decide knowledgeably about his/her consumer options. In this sense,
article 18.1 requires that the labelling and presentation of goods and services
and methods to carry them out must be of such a nature that they do not lead the
consumer or user into error, especially regarding the characteristics of the good
or service and, in particular, about its nature, identity, qualities, composition,
quantity, duration, origin and mode of fabrication or of obtainment; or attribute
effects or properties that the good or service doesn’t possess, in reference to
what is indicated in Regulation (CE) No. 1924/2006.
The label of foodstuffs must include the following information: origin, nature,
composition and end, authorized additives that are incorporated, quality,
quantity, usual category or usual designation or commercial description
if it has one, expiration date, and instructions or indications for its correct
consumption, warnings and foreseeable risks.
Globalisation of food safety: the Codex Alimentarius
In 1963 the Codex Alimentarious Commission was created(12) by the FAO

and the WHO, with the aim of attaining globalised food safety through the
standardisation of the quality and forms of food production according to
scientifically tested techniques. This would be achieved by eliminating
contaminating elements from the productive process through the development
of food standards, guidelines and other related texts under the Joint FAO/WHO
Food Standards Programme (ALINORM), a process in which 168 countries,
the European Union, numerous entities representing the food industry and non-
governmental associations representing the interests of consumers participated.
The main purposes of this programme are protecting the health of consumers,
ensuring fair trade practices and promoting the coordination of food standards
agreed on by governmental and non-governmental organisations. From its
beginning, the Codex Alimentarius Commission, together with its auxiliary
committees, has been responsible for the elaboration of standards related to
food products which assure fair trade in food trade at national, regional and
(12) See www.codexalimentarius.net/web/index.

international levels, and which are used as a reference in all agreements that
are adopted about food trade.
3.4. Conclusions: better to prevent than lament
• Food policies at all levels have been more reactive than preventative.
• Sanitary problems have brought about the supranational legal protection of

the WHO and the FAO.
• Food intoxications such as the «Colza Case» led to the Law for the General
Defence of consumers and users in Spain.
• Food crises have been the trigger for European food policies as they
generated distrust in consumers, who through their spending power put the
internal market in danger.
• Consultations and debates brought about by a Green Paper and a White
Paper of the European Union culminated with the adoption of Regulation no.
178/2002 which established the general principles applicable in this area on
the community and national levels.
• The concept of food safety is an evolving concept that necessitates an analysis
that goes beyond the strictly technical-scientific.
• Concern for the safety and healthiness of foods must be placed within the
overall protection of the consumer in an increasingly dynamic and international
market.
• The 21st century, scenario of the globalization of international food trade,
needs a common regulatory framework for the increasingly narrow connection
between health and consumer confidence.
• It is the power of the consumer which has made it possible to change the
premise «every cloud has a silver lining» to the more effective «better to
prevent than lament.»

IV. Industry and Food: from referential
advertising to functional foods
Cecilia Díaz Méndez y María González Álvarez
(University of Oviedo)
4.1. Introduction
Many papers have been written on the relationship between advertising and
consumption, and some of these specifically explore food advertising.(1)
Interest in this type of research has usually been sparked by the importance for
businesses of adjusting their supply to the changing demands of consumers.
But from the sociological perspective there have been attempts to show the
link between advertising and change in the society, as well as the origins and
subsequent development of consumer society in Spain.(2)
It is well known that businesses grant advertising the role of disseminating
information about their products or services (or their presentation in the
media) with the aim of influencing the purchasing behaviour of the recipient
in acquiring the products of the business. As Santamaria says, (2002:83)
advertising is «the privileged voice in the world of goods.» Among other
objectives, sociologists have tried to offer an explanation about the relationship
between the changing aspects of society in different periods and the images
that advertising projects about the consumer.
With this orientation in mind, we would like to put the emphasis on the changes
in the profile of the consumer by looking at the advertising discourse offered
to him/her. In order to do this, we will analyse the most characteristic features
(1) It’s more a theme of marketing but it has been examined in relation to food by Gracia Arnaiz (1996), who has
reviewed the European literature in this field. This was in the first diachronic study (1960s-1990s) carried out in
Spain on social change, food advertising and the evolution of discourse and practices. Gracia Arnaiz has done
several studies on food advertising (Gracia Arnaiz, 1998, 2002).
(2) Among others there is Arribas Macho (1996), who describes advertising in the periods prior to industrialization
in Spain; Callejo (1994) and Alonso and Conde (1997), a primary reference on the origins of the consumer society
in Spain and its later development.
INDUSTRY AND FOOD: FROM REFERENTIAL ADVERTISING TO FUNCTIONAL FOOD 97

of advertising discourse in food advertisements between 1960 and 2007.(3) In
this way we can come to understand the expectations and motivations of the
consumer, who are the recipients of the advertised messages specific to each
period. Another aim of this chapter will be to establish the link between values,
preferences, and expectations shown in food advertising and the changes that
analysts in the sociology of consumption describe as typical of the changes in
consumers during this same historical period.
It is necessary to place food advertising in the context in which it was and
is produced because this recreates (more or less precisely) the context of
consumption and the meanings that are culturally relevant for the consumer.
Food problems of recent years have raised diverse questions that are difficult
to answer without an analysis relating food and social change, something
which has not been previously explored.(4) There are important gaps in some
historical periods (between the 1960s and the 1980s, in particular), whose
clarification can help in confronting some of the food problems of recent
appearance.
Advertising is the dominant system of representation in the field of food, revealing
with its images the totality of food values and conceptions about food, health
and well-being in each historical moment. But the study of food advertising is
also especially interesting as a way to analyse consumer society in greater depth.
In the case of food, for example, the relationship between necessity and desire
is more subtle, which makes food products an optimal field of research for
understanding the trajectory of the consumer in consumer society (Alonso and
Callejo, 1994). Even though food products are subject to specific regulations in
production, distribution, consumption and even in advertising, they constitute
a good field of exploration in order to find out if their specificity differentiates
them from other goods or if, on the other hand, they have similar characteristics
to those consumers look for in other products or services.
We can’t forget that the consumer’s response to advertising is not mechanical
so that examining the consumer in this way implies a certain bias in the
analysis. We are exploring «what advertisers believe the consumer to be.»
(3) The period studied corresponds to what is normally considered to be the beginning of consumer society in
Spain (Alonso and Conde, 1997).
(4) One explanation about the delay in Spanish sociology in the analysis of food can be seen in Diaz Mendez
(2006).

which might not be what «the consumer is.» Contrary to being a problem
though, this becomes a starting point. What we are interested in is what
businesses (represented here through the advertising of their products) think
about consumers. We believe that advertising intervenes in the consumer’s
decision-making about which foods to buy, and is permeated by the social
factors with which it coexists and which affect the consumer.
4.2. Analysis of Advertising
The search for material has focused on compiling food and non-alcoholic
beverage,(5) advertisements from 1960 to 2007.(6) The first source of information
was the Internet (pages consulted cited in the bibliography), including 248
images. The second source was books on advertising.(7) which primarily
served to correlate the information obtained with the dates of creation of the
ads, as well as to broaden the documentation for specific time periods. From
these texts we have included the analysis of 63 advertisements. We took 112
advertisements from magazines for the information from 2006 until June 2007,
(see bibliography). In addition, we checked the web pages of international
food and non-alcoholic beverage businesses, although no references were
taken from any of them, and they basically served to confirm the launch dates
of the advertisements selected from the other sources. All of the advertising
consulted refers to advertisements that appeared in the written press; therefore,
we have worked with printed images.
The selection criteria were first oriented around a systematic collection of all
the food and non-alcoholic beverage advertising presented in the media and
were examined without any pre-established criteria. Secondly, a classification
(5) Regarding beverages we have also included an analysis of beer advertising.
(6) One has to take into consideration certain biases from the start in all analyses of advertising, which are difficult
to overcome. Advertising is costly (especially TV commercials). This is an obstacle for small and medium-size bu-
sinesses not able to assume these costs. We have attempted to overcome this problem, at least partially, by looking
at regional magazines (in our case in Asturias) in which one can find advertising from local and medium-sized
business. It is also important to remember that fresh foods are generally not advertised. We have found very few
advertisements of fresh fruit, vegetables, and fish with the exception of institutional advertising campaigns (with
limited presence in the first decades analyzed and associated with institutions starting in the 1990s). Although
it is difficult to know the repercussions this has on consumption, it would not be presumptuous to consider as a
hypothesis that the decrease in the consumption of fresh food could be intimately related to its lack of promotion
in the channels used by the rest of the food products.
(7) The book of the Nestle Company (VV.AA., 1992), Una Historia de la publicidad Española: Reflejos de más de
un siglo de Nestlé. Also El libro de la publicidad Gráfica (VV.AA., 1995) or the work of Bassat (1993), with his El
libro Rojo de la publicidad, as well as that of Campo (2000) on Cien años de Publicidad en Asturias.

by decade was carried out. The dominant presence of food products for
children and babies made a third selection necessary. The objective was to
give differential weight to these types of products and to verify their evolution
in terms of number through the years, without reducing the importance of the
other products in each period analyzed. We have tried to maintain the same
number of images analyzed for each decade, although without losing sight of
the comparative importance of advertising in each historical period.
Advertising images were analyzed as a whole, considering the written message
emitted and using the photographs or pictures in each advertisement to
contextualize the sentences and words used. Ads were selected by decade with
the objective of observing their evolution and making a comparison among
them, as well as doing a year by year comparison to detect the characteristics
of the messages in shorter periods of time.
4.3. Advertising by decades: from the 1960s to 2007
The 1960s and the food industry
In the beginning years of consumer society in the 1960s, food advertising

discourse consisted primarily of introducing modernity through consumption,
following the same line used to promote other types of products (Alonso and
Conde, 1997). Although this decade is considered by analysts to be the period
of Spain’s industrial takeoff (even though 40 percent of the active population
was still employed in agriculture) and the political situation continued to be
practically the same as twenty years before, advertising presented itself as the
path to modernity and freedom.
In this decade the agricultural sector was still directly and strongly connected
to the agrifood system in such a way that the products of the land were still to
a great extent goods for final consumption. As the decade advanced and then
decisively in the 1970s, as Sanz Cañada (1997: 357) affirmed, «a growing
differentiation was produced between ‘agricultural product’ and ‘food
product,’ adding to the former a whole series of transformations and features
that modified it substantially and that brought greater prominence to the food
industry and to food distribution.»

One of the main characteristics of food advertising at the beginning of
the consumer society in Spain was the way that it affected the progressive
industrialization of food. Advertising had to promote the purchase of
manufactured products for a consumer with little training in shopping habits.
In this decade advertisements were based on variety, something which fit well
with the monotony of the diet of the period. Consumers were encouraged to
purchase the products available on the market with words such as «healthy.»
«pure» and «natural» in an attempt to avoid their rejection of industrial
food. There is a constant reference to flavour in the messages, a formula that
demonstrates the fears of the industry more than its potential. Showing the
advantages of a new way of eating, far from the land where the food was
produced, was a great challenge for the agrifood industry.
Food was presented as an inexhaustible source of new sensations for the palate.
In 1964, Nesquick was presented as «light, tonic, digestive and so tasty!» In
1965, Knorr talked about «the flavour of the best natural products, the flavour
of a well-made soup» and «a delicious and nutritious soup.» In 1965 Tulipan
also alluded to flavour, describing itself as a food that «makes everything
more appetizing.»
Consumers threw themselves openly and unreservedly into the consumption
of all these new products, which in their advertising messages offered what
was not possessed, the freedom denied by the political regime at the time
(Alonso and Conde, 1997). The food industry’s hope was to set itself up as the
symbol of modernity, and to do so it made use of various marketing strategies.
The first was the appeal of industrial manufacturing techniques. The process
of modernisation with the increased use of technology by the industry was
going to mean a diet «designed by science» and would be a reference of
reliability decisive in gaining the trust of the customer. The other strategy,
clearly targeted at the housewife, had to do with the use of products in the
home, focusing especially on the rapid preparation of food and the practicality
of these products. Quick and easy preparation offered the cook more free time
and less work in the kitchen, which was very valued by young wives and
mothers who also wanted to modernize domestic life and find new uses for
their brand new urban homes. Royal in 1966, explained to its customers that
its flan «is made by itself» and that «you don’t have to bake it, add costly
ingredients, or watch it.» Skol Beer, in 1966 said that «it’s easy to open, no

can opener needed and it takes up less space.» Along the same lines in 1966,
Riera Marsa in their ads for mashed potatoes asked its customers, «Why waste
time if Riera Marsa does it for you.» The reference to comfort and convenience
also incorporated another characteristic aspect of the decade, large families,
by offering products that came in special sizes. In 1967, the Fanta soft drink
company offered one of its products in an economy-size bottle, «So ‘familiar’
(family and economy size), so big, and so economical.»
It should be added that the idea of modernity was intimately linked to
everything that was not Spanish, a characteristic that was already identified in
studies about the beginning of the consumer society (Alonso and Conde, 1997).
The quality of being «foreign» was a way of demonstrating the modernity of
the product, so foreign brand names were used. There was a clear duality:
Spanish was associated with backwardness, the rural, and a lack of freedom
while foreign was associated with modernity, the urban and openness. Take
a look, for example, at Ritz crackers which in 1967 were sold as «the world’s
favourite cracker,» denoting worlds faraway from the hard Spanish reality of
the times and close to the idyllic paradise of American freedom.
Another key to the advertising of the decade was alluding to the origin of
the ingredients. The reference to a product’s natural origin created trust in
the consumer who saw how products were moving farther and farther away
from their origin. The consumer was quite knowledgeable about the origins of
products (given his or her own rural origin), and his or her dietary references
continued to be rural. Therefore, advertising anchored products’ in their natural
origins. It was very common to find the adjectives «pure,» «natural,» «fresh,»
to describe a soft drink as well as oil or butter. In 1965 the butter Arias said
that it came from «pure cows’ milk.» In the same year, the oil Vetusta was
described as «pure olive oil,» and in 1967 Kas presented its products as «pure
fruit juice,» stressing the «real flavour of fresh fruit.»
It seems like a basic advertising premise that products must be presented in a
way that relates them to purity and authenticity in order to convince customers
of their naturalness and distance them from industrial artificiality, but this was
especially the case for the consumer born in a rural world who knew very well
the products’ origin and traditional production methods.

The 1970s: brands as guarantee
In the 1970s the separation between the agricultural and the industrial
sectors was consolidated, and the food industry as well as the distribution
industry acquired a decisive weight in the national agrifood system. Even
though the agricultural sector significantly increased its production it could
be said, using the words of Sanz Cañada that «a vertical shift occurred in
the economic importance and decision-making power from the agricultural
sector to industry and distribution that led (…) to a transfer of income and of
participation in the final deman» (Sanz Cañada, 1997: 357). In this new logic,
along with the increase of agricultural production, there was also an increase
in the mechanization of the food industry that facilitated the presence of new
and varied products on the market through the standardization of industrial
production. Products with some type of previous processing (such as cut,
tinned, cooked, and packaged) and frozen products made their appearance on
the market.
Homes also improved as the decade of the 1970s was the period of the food
refrigeration revolution as it was during this decade that refrigerators became
common in Spanish households (Castillo Castillo, 1987).
The first references to a lost rural life, full of longing, began to appear in
advertising messages. Although there was again the intention to distinguish
industrial food from the artificial stamp of the factory, now there was also an
attempt to search for the immaterial aspects of the products’ origin. Hence
the return to origins associated with the positive aspects of the traditional
rural world. In 1972 the company, Central Lechera Asturiana [Asturia Central
Dairy Company], asked its customers «How many years has it been since you
drank real milk?» And in 1978, there was an ad to promote Kas Apple that
said «We have to go back to the natural.»
The change to an adult and more hedonistic consumer was clear in this
decade, as messages in which the pleasure of food as the main characteristic
of consumption began to appear. The message changed its orientation; if
before happiness was offered in exchange for consumption, now happiness
came in the act of consuming (Alonso, 2004). Nestle made it very clear in
1972, inviting the consumer to eat something sweet simply «because today is
today.» It is interesting that in the previous decade only soft drinks targeting

young people transmitted the notion of joy and happiness in their advertising,
but now in the 70s with the consumer society in place, need gave way to
desire, and images associated with enjoyment and pleasure were introduced
into the ads for all products. One example of this was with coffee, «the good
moments, Nescafe» in 1973; and happiness arrived through that star product,
Coca-Cola, «the spark of life,» in 1972, (a translation from the original, It’s
the real thing), that in 1970 had been sold in Spain under the slogan «the
flavour of life.»
Brands became consolidated during the 60s and the first years of the 70s,
appearing at first as guarantors of quality and as a result, security for the
customer. This was possible thanks to the referential value that the consumer
gave to advertising in its first years and the fact that advertising was considered
to be a source of reliable information (Ibáñez, 1985).(8) But later in the 70s this
orientation gradually changed as a loss of consumer confidence in advertising
messages began to appear.
In the 70s, children’s food was strongly tied to health, which meant at that
time physical strength and growth. Children as well as elderly people and
adolescents appeared as a sector of the population that required special
diets, and the connection between food products targeting these groups and
improvement in their physical condition was strengthened. For this reason
advertising focused its attention on the energy provided by products. Sugar
performed well in this image of strength, energy and physical development,
as expressed in the ad «stronger with ColaCao,» from 1971, or in the dairy
products of Danone presenting yogurt as a product to be strong and healthy
and grow with the 1978 slogan, «healthy people grow with yogurt: stronger,
healthier.» Sweets were advertised as food and it was recommended to mothers
that they offer them to their children as afternoon snacks or for breakfast.
Bimbo already said it, commenting on their little cakes, Bucaneros, in 1974,
«the sweet that nourishes.» Petit Suisse appeared in 1972 and Danone custard
in 1974, two «classics» in sweet foods for Spanish boys and girls.
(8) Ibañez spoke about referential advertising as that which refers to objects and is characteristic of industrial
capitalism. He compares it with «structural» advertising, common to consumer capitalism, in which ads no longer
refer to objects (to products), but to what they mean. «Structural» advertising refers to itself and constructs a world
of meanings around the object.

The decade of the 1980s: the television revolution and the definitive
expansion of mass consumption
A decisive aspect of consumption in the 1980s was the spread of television

into Spanish households (Castillo Castillo, 1987). The children born in this
decade were the first to be «trained» in advertising communication. Our
research confirms that print advertising was a reproduction (sometimes literal,
other times versional) of television commercials.
This is the period in which democracy was consolidated and important social
changes were achieved. The divorce law in 1981, the decriminalization of
abortion in 1985, the progressive incorporation of women into the labour force
or the entrance of Spain in the (EEC) European Economic Community in
1986 were among the transformations that took place and that had important
effects on Spanish society. These references help us to understand the changes
that occurred in advertising discourse.
In the business sector, food production was moving further and further away
from the consumer. Industries that mediated between the two acquired a
decisive weight in the supply of food in the Spanish market. In this period
the saturation of consumption began to become evident because of low prices
and higher incomes but neither of which explain demand. Quantity became
secondary to quality for a consumer that «had it all» or rather, «wanted it all»
(Callejo, 1994). This consumer was looking for differentiation, and demand
became more personalised. Business responded by segmenting the market
and offering a growing variety of containers, sizes, brands and packaging
(Rodríguez Zúñiga and Sanz Cañada, 1992) for the growing diversity of
consumers. The profile of the recipient of advertising changed, and food was no
longer targeted exclusively to women as housewives; other profiles of women
appeared with more varied roles and also other types of consumers. There was
a change from the model of a single type of family (the nuclear family) as the
primary target of food advertising messages to the utilisation of new kinds of
homes with young people without children, or of single occupant homes. In
this period, specifically in 1987, Findus launched the first pre-prepared meals
in individual portions or in two portions, «presented in practical individual
bags.»

There were also important changes related to the organisation of meals and the
limitations imposed by work and school hours. Quick and easy preparation was
integrated into food advertising in order to facilitate the new pace of work, the
growing increase in leisure time(9) and the extension of schooling years for young
people. For quick preparation the slogans of the 60s were reproduced with a
different flavour because now they were directed toward a consumer (either man
or woman) busy working outside the home and arriving home with little time,
tired from a long day’s work and with no one to share the evening meal. Maggi’s
ad in 1985 said: «Five minutes and time to eat, with no need to cook.»
In this decade the first worrying symptoms related to eating began to appear,
and some businesses began to echo government in pointing out certain eating
habits as problematic. This was the case related to the organisation of meals, in
which the diminishing importance of the breakfast meal was noted, leading to
institutional campaigns promoting breakfast; for example, Nestle in 1986 had a
campaign in which they published a book called Good morning breakfast! (10)
As society grew further and further away from nature and the world of
agricultural and livestock production, businesses began to laud the values
of traditional food, particularly by referring to origin. The return to origins
was the return to natural products and to products difficult to acquire in a
scene in which agribusiness was becoming dominated by the global market
(Bonano, 1994). Many products were identified by their origin, and brands
were presented to the consumer as offering security based on the origin of
the product. Carbonell in 1982 described its oil as «the origin, the original.»
Throughout the decade Nestle offered its products through the reference to
their origin; in 1981, «Columbia, Africa and Brazil together in Nescafe;»
and in 1988, «with a careful selection of cocoa from the tropics.» This type
of advertising was reinforced because of consumer distrust caused by the
problem with the adulterated rapeseed oil in 1981.
Another characteristic of advertising discourse of the time was to include the
number of calories in the product description. This revealed the consumer’s
preoccupation with physical appearance and more specifically with thinness
as the dominant aesthetic value. In 1981 the first low-calorie dairy products
(9) This was the decade in which the so-called «English week» appeared with the Monday to Friday work schedule
and the weekend for rest.
(10) Arribas Macho carried out a review of Nestle food advertising (2005).

appeared, from the company Sveltesse. In 1985 Danone launched its 0 percent
fat-free product. And in 1987, Findus published a book The most appetising
recipes under 300 calories as part of its Light Cuisine campaign.
On the other hand, advertising discourse was also becoming more and more
scientific and rooted in the fields of health and nutrition.(11) There were ads
describing food properties and the nutritional composition of the products.
In 1988, Danone launched its first yogurt with active bifidus «that help to
regenerate the intestinal flora,» and La Asturiana in 1983 talked about the
properties of legumes in nutritional terms: «For their protein content, legumes
are the most nutritional product.»
This scientific discourse would enter into the presentation of the products as
well with explanations about the advantages of new techniques in industrial
packaging such as the tetra brick or the vacuum-packed product. They were
offered as a sign of healthiness and quality, but above all as technologies that
preserved the properties of the products. The process of the industrialisation
of food was associated with something positive, and the decisive role played
by industry became obvious; this was a new scenario in which there were
no other reliable intermediaries between the consumer and the product other
than the agrifood industry. La Asturiana in 1983 said: «Quality, selection and
packaging are basic for the product to reach the home in optimum condition.»
In 1989, La Polesa spoke about milk in the same way: «Times change. Fresh
pasteurized milk in a more practical package.»
There was no lack of hedonism in this decade. Judging by advertising, pleasure
was the decisive factor in the food choices of the decade. Nescafe in 1980
encouraged people to enjoy life by consuming its products: «The best way to
understand and enjoy the pleasure of life.» But moreover, the decade of the 80s
was a peculiar period in Spain because of important property developments
(in part based on land speculation), and an important idea in society at the time
was transferred to advertising, that of obtaining profits easily and effortlessly.
Many brands offered easily obtainable gifts; Lion in 1988 with its ad, «you
can win a trip to New York,» and Nestle launched one of its most emblematic
campaigns with Nescafe in 1985, «a salary for life.»
(11) The medical-nutritional discourse had begun in preceding decades (Gracia Arnaiz, 1998) and would become
more widely developed starting in this decade. The medicalization of advertising, its direct relationship with the
healing properties of the product took shape.

The 80s were the years of enjoying consumption with little reflection, but they
were also years in which the consumer ended up feeling saturated and seeing
him/herself as indulging in excess (Alonso, 2005). These years gradually gave
way to a more reflective decade in which businesses began to recognise the
role of a consumer who thought about what he/she could attain and about what
he/she could reject. However, the development of this new role would find
its maximum expression in subsequent years because even entering into the
1990s, the characteristics of the most consumerist period in Spanish history
continued to be evident in advertising and consumption.
The 1990s and the end of the century: aesthetics as social value
and the role of the new consumer
If in previous decades the agricultural sector had given way to the food
industry, this decade was characterised by the growing power of distribution
in the agrifood system. Decision-making and demand came closer and closer
together. This situation gave power to large agrifood business, with its effective
distribution methods which not only enabled it to respond to high demand
but also to variations in demand almost «in real time.» The availability of
information technologies (particularly in large companies) combined with
the capacity to handle wide distribution changed the roles of businesses in
a globalized agrifood system (Bonano, 1994; Sanz Cañada, 2002; Langreo,
2005, 2005a).
Social changes in the decade also began to have an effect on eating, and this
became visible in the society. Concern about changes in eating habits arose
at this time, as the destructuring of eating and dietary changes in some social
groups –in particular children– became apparent. As a result, institutions had to
turn their attention to food disorders (Díaz Méndez and Gómez Benito, 2004).
It is impossible not to think about the 90s as the decade in which the first
global food crisis appeared, with bovine spongiform encephalitis or as
it is more commonly known, «mad-cow diseas» in 1996. This and other
subsequent international crises sparked a general distrust of the agrifood
sector, since investigations into the origin of these cases revealed the dubious
procedures used in food production and the unethical behaviour of producers
and businesses in the handling of foodstuffs. The proliferation of marketing

strategies at the service of agribusiness also helped to create a general climate
of distrust toward advertising during the 90s.
However, this would be complemented by businesses taking a closer more
attentive look at the consumer and his/her role in the agrifood chain. For
this reason, in the 90s there was finally backing for consumer associations
(which had first appeared in the 80s), and government also became more
active in creating new bodies and implementing strategies with the objective
of supporting the consumer. At the end of 1988, The General Advertising Law
was passed with the aim of controlling false advertising, and replacing the
already expired Advertising Law of 1964.
It is not strange that in this context advertising discourse sought to recover
consumer confidence. Big agrifood businesses positioned themselves in the
market by appealing to their long term presence in the Spanish market and
seeking through this the support and loyalty of a consumer who had begun
to completely distrust everything and everyone. Businesses turned to quality,
tradition and to what was known about them in the domestic market. An example
of this was the advertisement for La Muyerina legumes in 1991, «Legumes
selected through many years of experience (…) Legumes with nothing
more than trust, without problems», or Camy in the same year advertised its
products as «the legacy of tradition.» Of course, the traditional Nestle (always
a pioneer in advertising discourse trends) didn’t stop reminding the consumer
of these key points with its 1992 slogan, «Children’s Food, Safety and Trust.»
They offered advice to consumers through books such as The Child’s Book
(1992), in which they explained these values as did Danone with The Sport
Book (1992). Big businesses took the initiative by creating food institutions
that supported their advertising strategies and the position of their products
in the domestic market. Danone created the Danone Institute in 1992, and the
Pascual Group created the Tomás Pascual Institute for Nutrition and Health
in 1997.(12)
Along with these prestigious well-known brands with seniority in the market,
the not so well-known brands were also looking for consumer confidence by
(12) In the next decade we would witness the proliferation of organisations of these characteristics, but it would
be above all starting in 2005 with the publication of the NAOS Strategy (Strategy for Nutrition, Physical Activity
and the Prevention of Obesity), when the majority of agrifood businesses echo the reports of the WHO against the
increase in obesity by creating different organisations with the aim of promoting a healthy diet.

emphasizing the geographic origin of their products (those that would later
be called «products from the land»). The concept of origin represented the
experience of know-how and reliability coming from the natural origin of the
product; both attributes distanced products from the artificiality conferred on
them by industry. Birba biscuits in 1994 described itself as «more country
than a plough.» Pizzas had to come from Italy, milk from the north, and oil
from Andalusia. The milk company, Granja in 1991 advertised itself as «the
most Asturian.»
In the field of advertising there was a slogan that marked advertising
communication of the 90s and that crossed the frontiers of advertising itself;
this was the «Danone bodies» advertisement of Danone. Even though this was
not the first time advertising connected eating with one’s physical appearance,
it was in the 90s that advertising went beyond the more rational aspects in the
search for thinness and became submerged in the imaginary in terms of beauty.
The «Danone bodies» (a young man and woman, practically nude, sitting
beside a pool) that appeared in a yogurt advertisement in 1992 constituted
the public confirmation of a new model of beauty. The perfectly formed
slender bodies moulded by sport were the standard for men and women. This
ad offered at its time an aesthetic model demonstrating the almost obsessive
desire of the Spanish population to attain perfect beauty (obviously connected
to thinness). The desire to be thin, according to sociological studies of the
time, became a generalised value and one that was on the rise in the decade
(De Miguel, 1994 and 1996).
Eating became connected to dietary restrictions aimed at achieving the
perfect body. This was the decade of weight-loss diets, the expansion of light
products, the wide diffusion of saccharine and the consolidation in the market
of products that stand out for their lower calorie content. In this scenario
Nestle came out with its Slender line in 1992; «The new line of foods for diets
to lose weight with all the flavour and the minimum of calories.» And the
saccharine Suita also in 1994 declared in its advertising «nothing so sweet.»
In 1992 Petit Suisse launched its product with «less than 4% fat» and Bimbo,
the same year, its wholemeal bread Silueta, «because healthy eating means
eating intelligently.»
If the previous decade had ended with the feeling of having had enough of
consumption, the 90s closed with the sense that control (over the body, food,

consumption in general) was not only possible but in fact desirable and came
about through control over one’s own body. In just a few years we passed from
waste to restriction; from the pleasure of letting oneself go to the pleasure
brought by self-control. However, eating now took on a new dimension as it
changed from being a means to achieve something (eating a varied diet, being
strong, healthy, thin, depending on the moment) to being an end in itself.
The new century: health as the goal
The new century has continued to be characterised by consumer distrust of

industry and advertising as there have been repeated food crises. Nevertheless,
scientific discourse from the health field has entered in the discourse on food
to the point that eating has taken the leading role in the consumers’ desire to
achieve perfect and lasting health. In this century concern about being healthy
has become as important as the obsession with thinness was in the previous
decade.
Moreover, the beginning of this century has been characterised by the
importance of new values such as solidarity, ecology, and sustainability
among others, which have promptly been applied in food advertising. In the
year 2000 bananas from the Canary Islands were presented with the slogan,
«solidarity with our own,» and the image was of a banana peel forming a bow,
like those worn by people to show their support for various causes (the red
bow for the struggle against AIDS, the blue one against terrorism). The profile
of the new more committed consumer has not gone unnoticed by business. El
Ventero cheese in 2007 affirmed that it was «healthy even for those who don’t
try it because we emit 50 percent less CO2 in the atmosphere.» In 2005 Nestle
introduced a line of products called YOCO with the slogan: «Commitment,
nutrition, and growth.» Even the State Ministry of Health with its 2006
campaign «Wake up, eat breakfast,» and Channel Five, from its website
«Twelve months, twelve causes,» made eating and diet the cause. Everyone
agrees on the objective of confronting the dietary problem that has been
branded an epidemic, childhood obesity. The concern about children’s diet
and the transmission of good eating habits has set in motion new campaigns to
make people more conscious, among others the NAOS Strategy (2005), which
brought businesses and institutions together in order to face the problem of
childhood obesity.

Medical discourse has impregnated food advertising in recent years and through
arguments on the beneficial effects of their food products and components
on health businesses have regained the trust they had lost (Díaz Rojo, 2003;
Gracia Arnaiz, 2001). Functional foods have appeared on the market. Perhaps
the most typical of these has been Actimel from Danone already present in
Spanish advertising in 1995 with the slogan «L. Casei immunitas helps to
strengthen your defences against outside attack.» Others came later offering
direct and immediate benefits to health; for example, Burgo de Arias in
2006 with the ad, «For low sodium diets,» or Danacol that in 2004 stated
«It has been scientifically demonstrated that Danacol reduces cholesterol,»
and further added «Danone’s investment in reducing cholesterol easily and
effectively.» In 2005 Bimbo «incorporates soluble fibre in Silueta wholemeal
bread to help the growth of intestinal flora.» Naturlinea a product of Central
Lechera Asturiana stated that «thanks to the active ingredient tonalinit, it
helps to avoid the formation of fat and reduces fat already accumulated in the
body,» or Vivesoy from the Pascual Group, «a source of isoflavons that help
to regulate menstrual symptoms and prevent the effects of menopause.»
Arguments are reinforced by scientific opinion and testimony from different
associations in the field of health and nutrition. For example, the ad for Sierra
Cazorla Water in 2006 said, «Do you know what the latest scientific studies
say?» Or in 2007, Vitalinea offered the backing of an association with the
following ad, «Miracle diets fail 95% of the time, backed by the Spanish
Association of Dieticians-Nutritionists.»
If experts affirm that it is necessary to eat several pieces of fruit a day, businesses
offer the magical portion in a convenient package; if science says that cholesterol
is reduced by eating the components contained in blue fish, industry provides
food that concentrates in a reduced serving the benefits of these substances and
adds «omega 3» to milk, or anti-oxidants to fruit. It could well seem that it is
the product itself that achieves the objective of being healthy.
Due to the new pace of work and the possible deterioration of diet, highlighted
by government and associated with (among other things) the increase in eating
out, businesses react by offering products that are a cross between soft drinks,
juices, and yogurts and that are offered as a healthy alternative for the hours
outside the home. In 2000 Pascual launched the «Yosport,» a liquid yogurt
for children, adolescents and/or young athletes. And in 2001 Danone offered

a new version of «DANUP,» with the slogan: «Your recharger,» promising
that it is «enriched with 6 vitamins to increase the energy level of those who
consume it.» The natural properties of products, however, have begun to be
insufficient for achieving the objectives of optimum health. In recent years,
with this trend toward a functional and medicalised diet, there has been no
attempt to return to the natural, but rather we are assured that something better
than the natural has been attained, as Minute Maid in 2007 stated, «Because
Nature is wise, but not so wise.»
With the implantation of scientific discourse, the format of advertising has
changed significantly. Advertising has passed from the use of the image to
strengthen the message to the primacy of the explanation through public
information reporting, one of the new forms of media on the rise. In these ads,
medical or nutritional discourse is used, and the change that has taken place
related to health is palpable. Lengthy advice on how to have healthy lifestyle
is offered, such as Vitalinea in 2007 indicating the steps to follow: «(1) Take
advantage of good weather and walk to work. (2) Drink water between and
during meals. (3) Eat vegetables. (4) Make your salads more delicious by
dressing them with light sauces made with Vitalinea yogurt. (5) If you go out
for ‘tapas’, choose the lightest ones...»
On the one hand, in this new context the search for beauty and its connection
to food has not disappeared but has become a component of health. Thinness,
equivalent to beauty in the 90s, is not enough in itself, but rather it becomes
important as a reflection of a healthy body and mind.
On the other hand, the consumer acquires a more autonomous character and
in this sense he or she is no longer the object of false advertising, nor can his
or her intelligence and capacity for reflection be minimised. It is necessary to
offer reliable information (more like news than advertisement) supported by
scientific findings for a consumer who expects explanation and who reflects
on the advertisement’s message.
A clear orientation toward this new consumer profile was offered in the Danacol
advertising in 2007, which gave five reasons to buy the product: «1) Because if
I don’t, I can end up suffering from heart disease and this will limit my quality
of life; 2) Because in the end, health isn’t a question of luck but of care; 3)
Because fortunately, I have the means at my reach to propose it and attain it;

4) Because taking care of ourselves, we are also taking care of and protecting
the ones we love; 5) Because there is no intelligent reason not to do it.»
A message directed to the informed and educated middle class, sensitive to
the values of solidarity, capable because of their economic situation and social
position of finding for themselves what they want and offering it to others, all
an argument for the new consumer in a society «where consumption isn’t far
from citizenship» (Alonso, 2005: 108).
4.4. Conclusions: food advertising, a complex and problematic path

toward food modernity
The hypothesis proposed in the beginning of this chapter was whether it is

correct to consider food as having been treated similarly to other consumer
products in advertising over time and in terms of form, even though it has
other specificities which we summarize next. There are three areas that are
relevant to understand the changes in food advertising; first of all, we can
describe the profile of the consumer to whom the information is directed;
secondly, the most significant keys in the discourse of the agrifood businesses
in each historic period; and third, the conception of food in each decade.
This trajectory allows us to affirm that agrifood businesses have followed
the same advertising strategies as other types of businesses in what concerns
the consumer to whom their advertising is directed. Nevertheless, there are
peculiarities that are only attributable to changes in conceptions about health
and diet in each historic moment.
First Phase
In the 1970s at the beginning of the consumer society, food advertising

messages reflected an incipient but growing industry which offered its
products to a consumer guided in his/her eating habits by the mother in the
family. In this period, characterised by great imbalances in the consumption of
goods among the population,(13) the housewife had a limited range of options to
vary the diet. Advertising showed new products with extraordinary flavours,
which came to represent the possibility of introducing into a homogeneous
(13) Based on class, income and geographical location of residence, as shown by Jose Castillo Castillo (1987).

diet a variety not offered by local agricultural production. But moreover,
the food industry presented itself to the consumer as the ideal medium to
achieve modernisation, also in food habits, and its products became symbols
of a modernity that came about necessarily through the technology used by
industry to handle agricultural products. In this way the housewife trusted the
messages and possibly felt supported in her expectations of improving her
own life and that of her family through these messages loaded with products
with new flavours and with the guarantee provided by hygiene and industrial
treatment. In this beginning of consumer society, advertising was accepted as
a way of providing information about existing products and it was perceived
with the confidence that its referential function provided (Callejo, 1994).
Second Phase
During the initial development of the consumer society, housewives continued

for some years in the role of caretakers of the home and their families, and
food advertising continued targeting them.(14) For this reason, taking care
of children and helping them to grow up strong and healthy formed part of
the message of food businesses. The messages offered the possibility of a
physical improvement of children and young people of the new generation
and encouraged mothers to distance their children from the food deficiencies
which characterised their own generation. At the beginning of the decade the
quantity of foods represented a stimulus for food consumption, while by the
end of the decade, new and more sophisticated products appeared that did not
respond to basic food needs, but rather to a clearly superfluous consumption
(Castillo Castillo, 1987).(15) For this reason, sweet products did well at this time
as they represented abundance (compared to the food deficiencies of earlier
periods) and status (an indulgence and not a necessity).
Perceptions about food changed, and abundance became the most evident
sign of well-being that a family could offer to their children. But moreover,
arbitrariness in the selection of some food products would be a sign of
economic possibilities for some families still economically vulnerable and
who were beginning to see in consumption the opportunity for improvement.
(14) Especially food for children, as Gracia Arnaiz reminds us (Gracia Arnaiz, 2002).
(15) Important inequalities continued to exist (now particularly in different regions) and an important technological
gap (in number of televisions, refrigerators, telephones, etc.) with respect to other European countries (Castillo
Castillo, 1987).

The market developed as a space of freedom (Alonso and Conde, 1997)
as it offered what the Spanish society did not have at the time, permitting
«freedom» in the act of purchasing. Superfluous food products offered the
component of whim, indulgence to the diet, far from necessity, but above all
they offered families the possibility of manifesting their social status in their
community. What was now important was to have everything, even things
that were not necessary.(16) Freedom was also offered to women housewives,
and businesses made a special effort to promote products that saved time in
preparation. Their intention was to show women the possibility of freeing
themselves from domestic obligations. Nevertheless, the beginning of loss in
confidence in advertising was becoming evident. In this decade quality would
be offered in exchange for security, and they would continue focusing on
the rural and traditional origin of agricultural products, but in fact food was
becoming less and less rural and more and more industrial.
Third Phase
This framework of pleasure and freedom would be ideal for fully developing
consumer society, and one of its most typical characteristics, voracity in
consumption (Alonso and Conde, 1997). Gradually, everything seemed to
come into reach for everybody. The development of the food industry made
it possible to offer everything at a low price which meant that anything could
be bought or sold, but moreover there was no reason not to do it. We could
say that at that time there appeared in the area of consumption and food what
Galbraith called «the affluent consumer» (Galbraith, 1987): «a consumer
who has everything and who wants everything» Desire replaced necessity as
principal motivating factor, even in food, the «basic» product par excellence
and «necessary» for survival.
However, trust in advertising began to break down as the proliferation of
products made the marketing strategies to gain market share very obvious
through the profusion of similar messages, which were confusing to consumers.
Advertising followed what Callejo called «the model of semiotic motivation»
(Callejo, 1994), in which advertising images, more than actual products are
(16) There was an important economic crisis in the decade, but this did not slow down consumption (Alonso,
2004).

being consumed. Fiction is accepted as part of the rules of the game in the
market and valued especially for its aesthetic aspects.
Businesses would turn to the support of experts to gain consumer confidence,
and advertisements would be filled with doctors and nutritionists. The
discourse would become more sophisticated in the form of a presentation,
and foods would be differentiated by their nutrients and their capacity to
bring about benefits or problems in the health of the consumer. Calories
would be seen as the enemy to defeat, and appearance and thinness would be
the goal. This was the age of the proliferation of diets and the expansion of
light products.
The reference to thinness and the consumption of low-calorie products
showed an adult consumer who selected food products for him or herself. This
consumer obsessively looked for everything that would allow him or her to
achieve a desired weight and physical appearance through non-fattening diets
and products. The voracious consumer immersed him or herself in the area of
health. Weight as an attribute of uncertain or accidental origin could be altered
and correctly controlled. It was possible to achieve the perfect body through
the consumption of certain products. Nutrition was at the service of thinness
(not health), if we take into account the proliferation of messages for products
containing more or fewer calories and describing in detail the nutrients they
provided (Gracia Arnaiz, 1998).
At that time the consumer was not as homogenous as in the past and the
person of reference (at least for advertising) – the traditional housewife who
cooks thinking of the well-being of others – had disappeared. In an exercise
of the imagination advertisers divided the market and offered everything for
everybody. The variety of individuals and homes was shown clearly in the way
food products were offered: for single young men, for couples without children
or for impulsive adolescents; all of them in a hurry, with little time for eating
and cooking, with a lot of time spent on work and studying, with no gender
differences. But this proliferation of products would be accompanied by a
huge number of symbolic attributes allowing the products to be differentiated
in an objectively homogeneous market, but with clear distinctions subjectively
speaking. Food products would be differentiated according to the profile of
the consumer which the product targeted, and values would fit with the desires

of each group through food, making clear that the product and the consumer
have something to say to each other, that they are connected in some way.
Fourth Phase
This period of excess (corresponding approximately to the 1980s and first

years of the 1990s) would give way to one that was more contained and
rational in its consumption.
Advertising messages at this time would connect food and eating to health,
but to a different concept of health. Now health was considered to be
something attainable (and not something that came about by chance) through
knowledge, by making an effort through behaviour that channels consumption
toward what is most suitable and paying attention to individual circumstances.
Effort, intelligence and individualized care seemed to be the keys to health
in this period of Spanish consumer society. Food played a principal role in
this conception because through knowledge about its preventative or curative
powers one could obtain good health, longevity and well-being. To do this it
was necessary to know the healthy properties of food but also the consumer
would have to act in order to achieve that desired well-being, giving to food
consumption an aspect of self-control, the opposite of the «sadistic ultra-
narcissism,» in Alonso’s words (2005: 84), of the previous years.
Businesses offered food as a good at the service of health. The proliferation
of «functional food» advertising showed messages in which food contained
the formula to attain health. The message was supported by scientific studies
indicating the medical properties of the product. This was the beginning of the
medicalization of food.(17)
Food disorders, the obsession with thinness and diets have not disappeared
with the change in how food is presented, nor have the increase in food risks in
the first years of this century disappeared. The consumer has reacted by looking
for security in the areas where this has not been achieved and by demanding
institutional intervention to confront food problems, but also demanding the
possibility of acting autonomously in relation to his or her own health. Now
(17) A process with important paradoxes, as Gracia has demonstrated (2007: 241): «One of the paradoxes in
the process of the medicalisation of food in the industrialised societies is that, although the spread of a balanced
diet has penetrated in the social framework and has even given meaning to non-expert discourse about what is
considered to be good to eat, it has not been able to change eating habits.»

we find ourselves before a consumer who asks for support from government
to stop or at least control conduct which the consumer has no way of changing
but which, through the consumption of food, endangers his or her health.
Business has responded to these concerns in two ways: by looking for
institutional support (from the government, businesses or prestigious private
entities) or by offering messages of solidarity and commitment that show their
participation (real or not) in solving these problems. Examples of this include
the NAOS Initiative advertisements which count on the collaboration between
business and government, or the ads which offer guarantees of respect for the
environment and for fair trade, all of which are no more than new strategies
by food advertisers to deal with growing consumer distrust.
To conclude this historic survey of the different periods in food advertising,
we have summarized the most significant aspects in table 4.1.
In light of these characteristics that describe the evolution of food advertising,
it is possible to consider that the gradual problematization of food is a
characteristic that is demonstrated in the whole process of modernisation of
Spanish society. It is also interesting that it has happened as Spain has become
a society with an abundance of food and distant from hunger and shortage.
It is possible that this progressive and persistent problematization of eating
is none other than a consequence of the inclusion of food in the dynamics of
consumer society.

TABLE 4.1
Characteristics of food advertising in Spain
FIRST PHASE SECOND PHASE THIRD PHASE FOURTH PHASE
Characteristics Rural housewife Urban woman, Diversity in Diverse and

of the consumer with sole with main the make-up individual
responsibility responsibility of the home, consumer.
for family food. for food in New patterns of New values of
the home. leisure, work commitment
and study. and solidarity
also in
consumption.
Guidelines Innovation The brand as The appearance Scientific support
for obtaining and variety a synonym of the label that justifies the
consumer of products. of guarantee. and the food functionality of
confidence Advertising as Indicators of composition foods. Strategies
a source of distrust toward tables. for collaboration
information. advertising. Advertising as business
consuming. institutions.
Conception Industry Foods offer new The importance The
of food guarantees generations of thinness as medicalization
and of health safety through improved a social value. of foods as a
hygienic and physical fitness. Foods can aid means to achieve
safe treatment Quantity and in being thin. health. Foods
of food. variety are key at the service of
to maintaining health.
health.
Source: Produced by Díaz Méndez, C. and González Álvarez, M.

V. Obesity, beyond the consumer:
structural roots of the food
environment
Emilio Luque (UNED)
5.1. Introduction
Between the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2004 in the halls and offices of the
headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva a tough health policy
battle was being fought centred on the causes and consequences of obesity. The
terrain in which it was taking place was in the diagnoses and recommendations
that the WHO would make in its Process for a Global Strategy on Diet, Physical
Activity and Health, in the face of a global change toward an unbalanced diet with
serious consequences for non-transmissible degenerative illnesses, such as the
declared «pandemic of obesity» (WHO, 2004; Popkin, 2006). One of the fiercest
disputes was focused on the recommendation of limiting the caloric contribution
from added sugars to 10% of the total of daily caloric intake. This proposal to
limit added sugar consumption was harshly attacked by organizations close to
the producers of sweetened beverages and other large businesses in that sector.
The pressure exerted by the agrifood lobby ended up endangering the financial
contribution from the United States to the WHO budget (Norum, 2005).
The designated NAOS strategy (Strategy for Nutrition, Physical Activity and
the Prevention of Obesity), coordinated by the Spanish Food Safety Agency, is
the translation of this global strategy of the WHO to Spain. In it the association
is made between the growth in obesity and pathologies such as cardiovascular
illnesses, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and certain types of cancer, and
the growing costs in economic and human terms of this trend. When we look
at the description of the causes, the analysis of NAOS stresses the dietary
«habits» and physical activity of the Spanish population. Nevertheless, they
point out that agreements arrived at with the food production and distribution
industry have led to industry collaboration in the transmission of «information»
OBESITY, BEYOND THE CONSUMER: STRUCTURAL ROOTS OF THE FOOD ENVIRONMENT 121
on labels, and in the diffusion of «messages» to those that are entrusted with
the task of modifying destructive habits.
This relationship between habits, behaviour, information and knowledge
in the analysis and prevention of obesity places us in very complex terrain.
Dietary habits, like many others, are very resistant to change, precisely for
their character as automatic or semiautomatic response within a more or less
stable environment (Verplanken and Wood, 2006). In this chapter we will
emphasize the structural component of our dietary habits, in other words, the
historical and economic logic that has been shaping these stable environments,
within which our habits are established. This is not to say that we lose sight of
the capacity of individuals to reappropriate the meaning of their activities, also
in relation to food, from the social and cultural relationships in which they are
inserted; but it does seem that the hegemonic focus, centred on information
and education tends to leave these structural dimensions in the dark.
One crucial element of the problem of obesity centres on defining the nature of
dietary problems as either public or private, two positions that are in conflict in
what Kelly Brownell (2003) has called the «food fight.» It is about trying to define
the large frames within which we understand the roots and solutions of our shared
problems (Lakoff, 2004). The food industry, the huge fast-food restaurant chains
and their allies maintain that the achievement of a diet and a level of physical
activity which leads to caloric balance, weight control and health is fundamentally
a personal responsibility. However, there are reasons to think that, considered as
a whole, the recent global trend toward obesity has its roots in an «obesogenic
environment» (Swinburn et al., 1999) that promotes the growing ingestion of
calories, while at the same time reducing the energetic expenditure associated with
physical activity at work and in our moving around, and which to a great extent
escapes individual control. From a bio cultural perspective, this environment is
also, in terms of our evolutionary and genetic history, radically new and we find
ourselves maladapted for it, genetically predisposed as we are – with very important
inter-individual variations (Friedman, 2003) – to prefer foods of high caloric content
and their subsequent storage in the form of fat (Ulijaszed and Lofink, 2006).
Any detailed description of the global problem of obesity begins by pointing
out that this basic arithmetic of calories ingested minus calories burned is
deceptively simple (González, 2005). On the one hand, we are just beginning
to understand the biochemical and genetic logic of the organism’s storage

of energy reserves. On the other hand, it is evident that the components of
caloric balance have undergone huge transformations in recent decades tied
to socioeconomic dynamics of a structural character. There are far fewer farm
and industrial workers with jobs that demand great physical effort, and the
great majority of jobs are more sedentary. The movement of the majority of
the population to cities, the reduction in the opportunity to move about on foot
within them, and the consolidation of the automobile as a means of transport
even for short distances, reduces even more the average daily expenditure
of calories. Forms of entertainment based on passive audiovisual reception,
in particular television, form part of this pattern of a generalized reduction
of physical activity. In the terms that economists use, technological changes
have made food cheaper and exercise more expensive (Zywicki et al., 2004).
Concerning the forms in which we acquire, prepare, cook and ingest our meals, two
important trends have been suggested to explain the presence of excessive caloric
levels in our diet: the increase in eating out, particularly in fast-food restaurants,
and the use of completely processed meals at home, due to recent advances in
the preparation and distribution of foods which puts at our disposal a wide and
growing array of prepared meals which require little or no preparation time.(1)
The triumphal introduction of microwaves into the kitchens of the industrialised
world has also reduced the time spent on cooking, an increasingly valuable time
because of the greater monetary value of women’s time now integrated into the
labour market; all this leads to a greater aggregate consumption of food, which
is aggravated by the fact that these prepared foods tend to be more calorically
dense than those that are completely prepared at home (Newby, 2007).
Nevertheless it is very complicated to visualize all the processes and
connections that link this «obesogenic environment,» defined as the «sum
of influences that the environment, opportunities, or life conditions have in
provoking obesity in individuals or in the population» (Swinburn et al., 1999:
564), with the built environment(2) on the one hand, and with the regulation,
(1) In Spain the proportion of these types of foods in spending on food has tripled since 1987 (Sylvia Resa, «Los
platos preparados viven su momento de oro», Distribución y Consumo, no. 71 July-August.
(2) «The built environment includes our homes, schools, workplaces, parks and recreation areas, business
centers and roads. It extends over us in the form of electric cables, under the ground in the form of dumps and
underground transport, and in the countryside in the form of highways […]. It affects the interior and exterior
physical environments (for example, climatic conditions and the quality of interior and exterior air), as well as the
social environment (for example, civic participation, community capacities and investments) and therefore our
health and quality of life» (Srinivasan et al., 2003).
production, distribution and marketing of foods on the other. It however seems
difficult to disassociate the pandemic of obesity from the growing availability
of relatively low-cost agricultural raw materials, and the fact that the profits
of businesses in the agrifood sector are based on the increase in the price and
quantity of products that consumers end up buying and eating.
It is important to emphasize that in this area a trend toward the increase in
caloric intake sustained over time, even when not very large in number of
daily added units, could result in noticeable accumulations of fat. Although the
interaction between genetic and metabolic physiology and caloric balance is
very complicated, as has been pointed out by authors such as Claude Bouchard,
other works point out that a surplus of even only 100 calories a day can produce
an increase in body mass of just under one kilogram annually (Hill et al., 2003a,
2003b; cf. Butte and Ellis, 2003). We think that for a person with a height of
1.70 meters that starts from a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25, at the upper limit
of normal weight (meaning a weight of 72.25 kilograms) at 18 years if age,
would at that slow rhythm exceed a BMI of 30 which signals the beginning of
obesity at 36 years of age, with almost half a century of life expectancy in front
of him/her… or more likely, with a lower life expectancy due to the impact of
non-transmissible illnesses associated with obesity such as type 2 diabetes.
The «food fight» is not the only area in which we find a strong emphasis on
the level of responsibility of the individual on the part of agents interested in
there being no substantial changes in current structures. The environmental
crisis is a paradigmatic example of this individualization of the forms of action
and understanding in facing public issues (Maniates, 2001). The role of critical
sociology has to be precisely to point out the structural connections that bind
us, and make us responsible in a collective manner (Young, 2006), with the
objective of opening to public debate and democratic control all of these areas.
From this perspective, this chapter will review some of the factors that should
lead us to include structural factors in a decisive manner in the analysis of obesity.
This broadened focus is immediately relevant to the measures that ought to be
taken in relation to obesity. As Marion Nestle points out (2004; 360), «if diet is
an issue of individual freewill, then the only appropriate remedy for a bad diet
is education, and nutritionists should concern themselves with teaching people
to take personal responsibility over their diet and health, and not with how to
establish social changes that can make this easier to achieve for everyone.»

On the other hand, a wider focus on the obesogenic environment leads us to
consider policies and strategies that range from «pigovian» taxes on the products
most associated with obesity (González, 2005) to innovative proposals that
hold manufacturers of products with a high content of fat and sugars directly
responsible for the level of childhood obesity, through «results-based regulations»
(Sugarman and Sandman, 2007), or to the necessity of rethinking the design of
our cities and towns along with the policies of «commercial urbanism» (Dearry,
2004) and the reorganization of subsidies and aid to farmers (Miner, 2006).
The argument presented in this chapter will be developed and organised in
the following way:
1) Considering obesity as the result of a «structurally defined» model of diet
and physical activity permits us to better understand its relationship to social
inequality. We will briefly explore this idea beginning with the configuration
of the built environment, and the unequal opportunities for physical activity
that it makes available to distinct economic strata.
2) That obesity is associated with lower socioeconomic levels in the advanced
countries (Drewnowski and Darmon, 2005; also in Spain see Gutiérrez-Fisac,
1998) also reinforces its connection with a strongly industrialized agrifood
system that counts as one of its achievements having put on the market cheap and
attractive calories. A fundamental part of the obesogenic environment is the result
of agricultural and industrial policies that have raised agricultural productivity
and pushed the technologization of the food industry. We can talk about a
«political economy of obesity» that leads us to deal with a series of structural
dimensions – including subsidies for corn and sugar beet production, the extension
of soy crops in degraded areas of the Amazon jungle, or the redistribution of
power within food chains from the producers to the processors and distributors
– in continuity with the important processes of change in public health. This
does not mean, of course, that the modern agrifood regime is the direct or only
cause of the generalized increase in the Body Mass Index of individuals; but it
does mean it needs to be introduced into the centre of the overall analysis. The
political history of agrifood systems is therefore relevant to our discussion.
3) In the interest of the big distributors, growing protagonists in the food
chains, we are seeing the shaping of a «foodscape» in which foods high in
sugar and fat predominate, as they tend to be more profitable for the large
stores, to be highly advertised, and to be found in the positions designated as
«impulse zones» (in particular, areas near the check-out) (Winson, 2004).
4) Consumers, thanks to the contributions of the sociology and psychology of
consumption, the economics of behaviour, and even evolutionary psychology
and anthropology, emerge as agents who have difficulties with consciously
controlling their caloric intake in their daily environment, and consequently
are susceptible to pressure from retailers and restaurants to spend more on
food (Wansink, 2006).
5) The sophisticated marketing of the huge food industry is a powerful socio-
cultural force, which participates in the organization of the symbolic space
within which we understand ourselves and others, through foods and their
«daily mythologies» (Alonso, 2005). This influence is particularly worrying, and
becomes even more objectionable in the case of childhood obesity (Schor and
Ford, 2007), in the case of childhood obesity (see Serra Majem et al., 2003, for the
diagnosis of the Spanish case based on the study enKid). Several important
dimensions derive from this capacity to shape our food culture, introducing what
we will call a «triple invisibility.» In the first place, we don’t know where our food
comes from or how it is produced, and we are forgetting how to prepare it ourselves.
Secondly, the imaginary projected by the agrifood industry refers us to a «bucolic-
pastoral» stage of agriculture and livestock which is radically disconnected from
modern industrial processes. Lastly, it makes us distrustful of cultural guidelines,
age-old culinary traditions that have regulated our relationship with food, which
are now substituted by an external expert knowledge that is offered as the only
guide in the food labyrinth, and is at the hand of commercial interests.
5.2. The built environment, physical activity, obesity and inequality
The places where we reside and in which we work, study or shop, the roads
and transport systems with which we move from place to place, the existence
of spaces for exercise or sport, and the distances that separates us from them,
all these are elements that are inscribed in the urban weave, and determine our
opportunities for physical activity, and therefore the component of calories
burned in our caloric balance, and as a consequence our final weight.
A recent line of analysis (Gordon-Larsen et al., 2006; Jackson, 2003) points
out the association between the configuration of our built environment and

opportunities for physical activity. According to one of these studies (Frank
et al., 2004), for each hour spent driving daily, we have a 6 percent greater
possibility of reaching a Body Mass Index above 30; on the contrary, for each
kilometre we walk, we will be 5 percent less likely to become obese.
The city resident finds him/herself inserted in different urban scenes, in
which distinct forms of land use, residential densities and road intersection
densities are mixed. If these factors in the urban structure are combined into a
«walkability index,» we can explain some of the differences in the time spent
on moderate physical activity among individuals that live in distinct zones.
In an empirical study done in the North American city of Atlanta (Frank et
al., 2005), 37 percent of the people who lived in areas with a high walkability
index (those areas that were in the top 25 percent in terms of walkability, in
other words, the upper quartile) were able to meet the recommendation of
doing at least 30 minutes of physical activity per day. On the contrary, only
18 percent were able to meet this healthy criterion in the lower quartile (areas
in the bottom 25 percent in walkability). The inhabitants of the first type of
zone were two and a half times more likely to reach the minimum threshold
of activity mentioned than those from the second type of zone, even when
controlling for other sociodemographic factors.
Built environments are also very unequal in factors which are relevant to the
composition of diet, with serious consequences for the prevalence of weight gain
and obesity. What is most accessible to us: a fast food restaurant, a supermarket,
or a «convenience store?» The answer has statistical consequences for our Body
Mass Index. In the United States an association has been detected between
healthy diets, containing a greater proportion of fruit and vegetables, and the
proximity of supermarkets and specialized shops (Cheadle et al., 1991). Persons
who live in the poorest areas and from disadvantaged ethnic groups have half
or less of the possibility of finding a supermarket nearby than those that live in
high and middle income areas – although they are three times as likely to have
an establishment selling alcohol nearby (Morland et al., 2002).
5.3. A political economy of obesity
Modern agriculture is one of the great successes of modernity in terms of

productivity. As an example we can look at Spain. In 1950 a Spanish farmer
produced food for 5 inhabitants; in 2004, his/her production would cover
the needs of 43 persons (Gómez Benito and Luque, 2007: 27). This increase
in productivity is based on the implacable economic logic of the agrifood
system; as in other sectors of the market, economic agents look to increase
their profits by maximizing income and minimizing costs. This happens within
the framework of a complex environment of public policies, technological
and sociocultural changes, intranational and growing international relations
between producers, distributors and consumers.
Public policies have contributed in a decisive manner historically to shape our
current caloric surplus at the population level. We are reminded, however, that for
centuries the problem was the reverse; attempts to assure the supply of food have
been a permanent part of the guiding principles of state actions, and from this, a
good part of the agrifood industries have developed. Beginning approximately in
the decade of the 1970s, a contradiction between policies promoting productivity
in food production for the market and public health criteria began to make itself
evident. For example, while the market provided growing quantities of corn at
low prices, boosting intensive stockbreeding(3) and therefore the consumption of
meat, nutritional recommendations(4) in some countries began to point out the
need to reduce the proportion of animal protein in the diet.
An interesting historical example of the association between public policy
and food is that of the sugar beet. At the beginning of the 19th century, the
British Armada was blockading the European continent, impeding France from
receiving imports of cane sugar from its colonies. «Napoleon responded in 1811
by ordering a crash programme for breeding and growing beets. When the cane
sugar trade to France was restored after 1815, France restricted imports in order
to protect the domestic production of beet sugar. Other European states were
quick to see the strategic military importance of having a domestic supply of
sugar» (Jenkins, 2001: 2). The shape of the Common Agricultural Policy, with
its protectionist barriers for beets is an inheritance of this historic strategic role,
which has had a crucial role in the consolidation of important centres of the
(3) Nevertheless, animal feed made from corn is not a feed well tolerated by cattle and sheep because it acidifies
their digestive systems. This makes them more inclined toward infections, provoking the massive use of antibiotics,
which together with the altered pH of their rumens generate strains of bacteria resistant to the antibiotics, such as
the unfortunately famous E. coli (Déiz-González et al., 1998).
(4) See the article by Díaz Méndez and Gómez Benito in this volume for an in-depth analysis of the sometimes
contradictory evolution of dietary recommendations.

current agrifood industry. This protection is the principle reason that beets have
been viable as a crop in Europe despite their lower profitability in comparison
with other sources of sugar, such as cane or high-fructose corn syrup from corn.
The more recent policy history of the agrifood system is also important for
understanding the overabundance in the industrialized countries of commodity
crops, marketed and standardized foods of which corn and soy are basic
cases. The brief crisis in the United States caused by a rise in food prices
in 1972-1973, acted as a catalyst for a new form of regulation of state aid to
agricultural production – and in a special manner, to corn – and is one of the
key episodes in this story of agrifood policy.
In the fall of 1972, after a series of bad harvests, the then Soviet Union acquired
30 million tons of North American cereals. Combined with bad climatic
conditions in the North American «bread basket,» this increase in demand
provoked an enormous hike in the price of basic agricultural products, which
was being passed on to consumers throughout 1973. Protests were organised
in supermarkets in view of increases of more than 26 percent annually,
and consumers boycotted beef. The Secretary of Agriculture in the Nixon
Administration, Earl Butz, initiated a series of reforms that remodelled the
American food system, «driving down prices and vastly increasing the output
of American farmers. What had long been the dream of agribusiness (cheaper
raw materials) and the political establishment (fewer restive farmers) now
became official government policy.» (Pollan, 2006: 52).
Butz’s message was clear: farmers should plant from «fencerow to fencerow.»
In terms of the agricultural policy employed to drive this process, the change
consisted of dismantling the system of price controls inherited from the
New Deal, based on loans and guaranteed purchase of grain by the state and
obligating farmers to leave land fallow, and the establishment of a system of
direct payments to farmers. This system was enthusiastically supported(5) by
the agrifood processing industry from the start, as it depended on a growing
flow of cheap raw materials for its expansion (Glenna, 2003). This system, says
(5) «The processors of agricultural products united with agribusiness suppliers to demand an end to controls over
supply and the expansion of the market for export. In his appearance before the Joint Economic Committee, Vernon
McMinimy of A.E. Staley Manufacturing Co. stated that his company, processors of corn and soy, «depended on
a reliable supply and a reasonable price for corn and soy as raw materials. Therefore, it is very important that the
agricultural program contains reasonable programs for these products.» «Reasonable» here means programs that
increase the production of corn and soy» (Glenna, 2003: 22-23).
Pollan, «is designed to maintain high production and low prices. In fact, it is
designed to bring prices down, given that giving compensation payments to
farmers [deficiency payments] […] encourages them to produce as much corn
as is possible, and then dump it all on the market without taking into account the
price: a practice which inevitably drives prices down» (2006: 62).
The result of this complex process of transformation of the U.S. agricultural
regime, following the case of corn, is the strongly subsidized production(6)
(more than 5 billion dollars annually) of 250 million tons of corn (a bit less
than one ton per person a year), which passes through a chain of transformation
controlled in great part by only two businesses, Cargill and Archer Daniels
Midland (ADM). If at the beginning of the processing chain we find ourselves
with an «excess of biomass» (Manning, 2004), by the end we find processed
products with high fat and sugar content and relatively low prices,(7) and whose
final destiny tends to be the pantries (and fat reserves) of low income persons.
«In the general population, consumers select foods on the basis of taste, cost,
convenience, health, and variety. However, among low-income households
and the unemployed, it is taste and cost that are the key determinants of food
choice. Low-income families attempting to maintain food costs as a fixed
percentage of diminishing income will be driven in the direction of energy-
dense foods and a higher proportion of foods containing grains, added sugars,
and added fats» (Drewnowski and Darmon, 2005: 903).
Perhaps now we begin to see the structural bases that historically have generated
these enormous mountains of corn, soy and other commodity crops that enter into
the world agrifood system (not only in the United States), and which assure great
profit to those processors and distributors that are capable of taking advantage
of their low prices, converting them into products with a great added value,
and managing to sell them to consumers in growing quantities. We can now
see from closer up the point at which foods, after travelling long distances and
going through an unimaginable level of processing, meet up with the consumer,
in particular in «foodscapes» made up of huge retailers and fast food.
(6) Although it does not form part of the central argument of this chapter, it must be mentioned that the distortions
introduced by the structure of agricultural subsidies, especially in the United States and Europe, go well beyond
being a factor in the global obesity pandemic. Among many other effects, the quotas of corn sold beneath real cost
impoverishes wide rural areas of other countries (ironically, among them is Mexico, the «parent-country» of corn),
provoking migratory currents to the cities within or outside those countries.
(7) It would be interesting to observe if the recent increase in price due to the competition from biofuels stabilizes,
making the networks of producers, processors and distributors of foods co-evolve in other directions.

5.4. The «foodscape» of the consumer: the hypermarket
and the hamburger
Winson (2004: 301) defines the «foodscape» as «the multiplicity of sites where
food is displayed for purchase, and where it may also be consumed.» With
important variations in different countries, these spaces are made up, to a growing
extent, of the large retail chains and fast food restaurants. To adequately situate
the relevance of these food distribution channels, we must remember that four
out of every five food purchases in Spain are made in a large retail chain.
The largest of these businesses controls one out of every four food purchases
(Informe Exporetail, 2006). In short, recent years have established the decisive
role of the large retailers in the framework of the agrifood system: from the
enormous purchasing and logistical capacities of these chains, their technical
capacity to manage information, the importance of the financial dimension of
their marketing strategy, the eruption of «generic brands,» to the globalization
of the supply market, which accentuates the displacement of power within the
food chains toward these actors (Langreo, 2002).
How do the processing industry and the hypermarkets assure their profitability?
As we would expect, they centre their advanced marketing strategies on the
products that offer the greatest profit margins. And among these standout
precisely those products that concentrate higher quantities of saturated fats,
added sugars and salt. The salty and sweet snacks, for example, that are often sold
in the so-called «impulse zone»(8) near the check-out line in the supermarkets,
are hugely profitable for the retail chains, representing at times more than
10 percent of total profits. The key concepts are those of «high rotation and
advertising»: they sell a lot and are associated with enormous investments in
advertising which makes them immediately recognizable (also to children,
with their «pestering power», one of the great allies of this industrial and
commercial segment). They are also products that do not require any special
preservation conditions (refrigeration or absence of light, for example), which
means somewhat lower costs for retailers.
(8) As proof of the relevancy that the strategies based on the psychology of marketing have for these types of products,
we can point out that in the course of the control procedures for the corporate fusion (Regulation (EEC) No 4064/89
Merger Procedure), Philip Morris (tobacco company that had acquired food businesses like Kraft Foods and General
Foods) and Nabisco (manufacturer of Oreo cookies and Ritz crackers) affirmed that there existed intense competition
for its chocolates with sugary and salty snacks. «Consumers choose between all the snacks available at the exit of the
stores to satisfy a “whim” or a “small luxury,” whether for immediate consumption or to have later at home» (p. 3).
This permanent presence of the most profitable products for retailers and
new forms of distribution (vending machines, presence of snack foods in gas
stations) shapes a «foodscape» with a growing caloric density. As we will see
below, visibility is one of the variables that most directly explain consumption.
If we imagine the average consumer following the typical path of the western
city dweller, we will see that the last three decades have been characterized
by the configuration of a food landscape marked by the primary colours of
sugary soft drink vending machines and fast food restaurants, or the increasing
number of supermarket shelves full of colourful packages of cookies, crisps
and sugary cereals: an obesogenic kaleidoscope. As a high executive of a soft
drink business pointed out, «to increase the omnipresence of our products, we
are going to put our cold brands in reach of everyone, wherever they look; in
the supermarket, the shop where they rent videos, the football stadium, the gas
station,…everywhere» (sited en Nestlé y Jacobs, 2000: 19).
5.5. The consumer’s limited capacity for control
What real conscious control over diet do consumers have? The answer to this
question would have to be «high» or «very high» control for us to consider
obesity as basically an individual problem, and the conscious reorganization
of the now-known components of the expenditure and intake of calories as the
adequate strategy to solve it. However, there is an important line of empirical
research that underlines the degree to which we cannot control a series of
environmental cues, patterns of sociability and implicit norms (you should eat
everything on your plate if everyone else does, regardless of how much you
have on your plate).
In a recent experiment (Kahn and Wansink, 2004), two groups were offered
two different assortments of 300 pieces of coloured chocolate candies
(M&Ms). The only difference between the two assortments was that in one,
the candies were of 10 distinct colours and in the other, only 7. The group
that had the candies of greater colour variety consumed 43 percent more (91
pieces compared to 64). It is surprising that just the presence of a greater
variety of «colours» – the taste was the same – could induce such a great
difference in consumption. But also factors such as how food containers are
grouped can produce great differences in the ingestion of foods, as those in

charge of marketing for the big retailers know and utilise. In another study,
the families that have a greater number of units of food products in the home
(typically packets that contain various «tetra pack,» or bags of salted snack
foods) consume them on average 112 percent faster than families that have
fewer of the same foods at home (Wansink, 2004: 468).
These analyses and other similar ones reveal that the real capacity for
conscious decision-making by the consumer is much less than we imagine,
much less even that what the consumer him/herself imagines. It is important
to emphasize that higher levels of information cannot counteract the implicit
norms of consumption, those perceptual cues from the environment that we
do not process on a conscious level and that lead us to «eat without thinking»
as Wansink describes (2006). In one his experiments, in which the subjects
were nothing less than members of a university department of Food Sciences
and Nutrition, subjects were provided with two sizes of spoons and bowls to
serve themselves ice cream. Those that used a larger bowl served themselves
and ate 31 percent more than those that received smaller bowls; and those that
were given larger spoons ended up eating 14 percent more than those with the
smaller spoons. If large bowls and large spoons were combined, the subjects
took an impressive 58 percent more ice cream than the others (in all cases,
about 92 percent of the ice cream served was eaten). As the authors point out,
«small environmental factors can have a big impact on consumption […].
What is critical to note, however, is that people – even these nutrition experts
– are generally unaware of having served themselves more. This attests to
the ubiquitous nature of these environmental clues» (Wansink et al., 2006).
An additional point of interest is that in one of Wansink’s experiments on the
unconscious effect of the size of portions, plates or receptacles, the subjects
had heard a lecture on this very subject a month and a half before.
In short, we are pretty disastrous if we count the amount of food we buy, serve
and eat, and also its total caloric content. This has paradoxical consequences
for the development of «low-fat» or «low-calorie» food technology, whose
production is clearly the first line of defence of the big corporations in the sector,
together with their promotion of physical activity. In his characteristic line of
empirical investigation which calls into question the reassuring affirmations
and proposals based on the technology of the food industry, Wansink and his
collaborators again show that «foods labelled as low fat increase the quantity
of food ingested by increasing the number of servings, and reducing the
anticipated guilt associated with their consumption» (Wansink and Chandon,
2006: 614; see also Geyskens et al., 2007).
To sum up, the capacity of the consumer to manage the parameters of his/her own
diet is much more limited than what would be necessary for an individualized
framework of prevention of obesity to be viable, in which the conscious control
of the ingestion of foods would be the only or principal strategy. This does not
mean that we consider the average consumer to be defenceless, without skills
and social and cultural guidelines to orient him/her in the «food labyrinth,» but
rather as an agent submitted to powerful influences that shape in a determinant
manner the environment in which he/she finds and consumes food. As we will
now see, these influences go beyond the physical organisation of food choices
presented by the agrifood industry, large retailers and fast food restaurants, and
affect the very way in which we understand ourselves in our social and cultural
spaces and the legitimacy of our knowledge about food.
5.6. The triple invisibility of the agrifood system
The sophisticated and well-financed marketing of the food and retail industry
has completely entered the symbolic terrain and intervenes in the sociocultural
fabric, especially through advertising directed at children. The correlation of
forces in the field of advertising is enormous: just PepsiCo alone allocated
1.7 billion dollars during 2004 to advertise products such as Lay’s potato
chips and corn chips. The following year, the Spanish Ministry of Health and
Consumer Affairs spent 1.2 million euros (approximately 0.08 percent of the
previous figure based on exchange rates at the time) on its campaign to prevent
childhood obesity, «Preventing childhood obesity has a prize: health.» Here
the contradictions emerge more sharply between the freedom of choice of the
consumer and the control of choices at the cultural level on the part of the industry.
How do we assign personal responsibility to children who at two years of age can
completely recognize McDonald’s logo and mascots? As Schor and Ford (2007:
16) note, «The shift to symbolic marketing of food is worth considering for a
moment. What it implies is that children are being persuaded to eat particular
foods, not on the basis of their tastiness, or other benefits, but because of their
place in a social matrix of meaning.»

Very briefly, we will explain the keys to the «triple invisibility» of the agrifood
system in relation to the consumer. The first barrier to the citizen developing
competency with respect to what he/she eats is the very complexity of the
chains of food supply. The form in which large corporations make the flow
of raw materials more calculable, efficient, predictable and controllable, as
they are processed and distributed, presents the paradox pointed out in other
chapters of this volume, of a system increasingly more reliable, and of a citizen
increasingly more distrustful. It seems reasonable, however, that distrust is an
expected reaction before the opacity of the commercial and industrial processes
that are behind the food that we acquire in any of the huge hypermarkets.
We are only conscious in a confused manner that the food we consume has
travelled hundreds or thousands of miles, having been disaggregated into
distinct components, many now unrecognizable, to later be combined in
manners difficult to imagine.
This invisibility is of course deliberate, and a second layer of invisibility is
added to it in the food system: its idealization in terms of an agriculture and
traditional craftsmanship now practically disappeared.
«A typical device used by advertisers to hide the real nature of the production
process is to present idealized, stereotypical images of some imagined rural
past, or of a romanticized ethnicity […]. This imagery is intended to introduce
a sense of trust, connection and authenticity – and to lead us to believe that this
food was produced by caring human hands, rather than by the industrialized
processes of highly capitalized agriculture and food processing factories»
(Jaffe and Gertler, 2007: 154).
Lastly, the nature of the food itself is filled with tensions: What are we eating
in this toast- bread, carbohydrates, or «lipoactive fibre?» The sociocultural
definition of foods has expensive consequences when it translates into
changing market quotas. The current privileged framework for public
communication of the large corporations in the sector supplants traditional
knowledge about food with the expert knowledge of the laboratory. This
framework has in reality been operating for decades in other countries, such
as the United States. As the social historian Harvey Levenstein sums it up, the
food model cognitively dominated by the association of experts, authorities
and industry has the following characteristics: that likes and taste are not a
certain guide to what we should eat; that one should not simply eat what one
likes; that the important components of food cannot be seen or tasted, they can
only be detected in scientific laboratories; and that experimental science has
generated the rules of nutrition that will impede illness and promote longevity
(see Pollan, 2006: 300).
5.7. Intervention models
Given that the argument developed up to this point has been concerned with
pointing out that the problem of obesity is to a great degree of a structural
nature, what type of actions against the spread of obesity should be considered?
Here we will note only one of the many possibilities, some of which are now
being put into action or being studied, such as the prohibition of the sale of
«junk food» in schools in Britain or the United States.
The so-called «pigovian taxes» (for their first proponent, the economist Arthur
Pigou) set out to correct externalities, the negative effects that agents who do not
benefit from an economic transaction suffer. The classic example is that of the
contamination from a factory that does not include in the price of its products
the cost, for example, of the sewage treatment plant down river made necessary
by its dumping. If a pigovian tax was applied to these products, their production
would be restricted to levels more compatible with their optimum social utility.
One evident problem is establishing what would be the adequate tax level; this
means that legislators must have very precise information on the consequences
of the externality they intend to correct. On the positive side, it is possible to use
public money obtained from these taxes to alleviate the negative effects, or even
to reduce fiscal pressure in other areas, such as salaries; this is what is called
the «double dividend» of taxes of this type, whose most typical application is
related to the environment (Bovenberg, 1999).
In the case of obesity, fiscal measures could be taxes on unhealthy foods or
subsidies to healthier foods (possibly with the income derived from the taxes
on unhealthy foods). Mytton et al. (2007), in a recent study analyzed three
scenarios for applying these taxes in the United Kingdom. In one of them, the
tax was only applied to foods with high levels of saturated fats; however, the
researchers detected that these foods could be substituted for others that were
almost equally harmful. In the second, an unhealthiness score was calculated

for all foods (for example, spinach scored a –12, and the chocolate cookies
of the digestive type a +29). A surcharge was applied to all the foods above
+8. In this case, the model showed that the cost of food for families increased
3.2 percent, but in exchange, they could prevent 2,300 deaths annually from
cardiovascular illnesses, diabetes, etc. The third scenario, in which the tax was
applied to foods that scored even lower on the scale, was the most effective
based on their calculations, preventing 3,200 deaths annually, while increasing
family food expenses by 4.6 percent.
Other types of structural measures have to do with correcting what we have
pointed out as the growing contradiction between two areas of public policy:
aid to agriculture and public health, increasingly menaced by non-transmissible
illnesses associated with obesity. In Europe the cases of sugar and dairy are
paradigmatic. They are both subsidized by the Common Agricultural Policy:
«The dairy sector in the European Union is an example of how agriculture
subsidies can lead to negative health effects in Europe as well as in developing
countries. The European Union spends almost €2bn (£1.4bn, $2.4bn) a year
to maintain production levels at 20 percent above the domestic demand and
at prices twice as high as on the world market. Without subsidies, production
would quickly adapt to the level of demand» (Elinder, 2005: 1934).
Lastly, the novel proposals of performance-based regulation (PBR) (Sugarman
and Sandman, 2007) are based on allocating responsibility for the rates of
childhood obesity prevalent in a specific group of schools to producers and
retailers of foods associated with that obesity (defined as foods with more
than 30 percent of their calories coming from fats or more than 40 percent of
their calories coming from sugars). Perhaps what is most interesting about this
proposal is that it deliberately looks to institutionalise a frame of interpretation
of the problem of obesity in which the responsibility is shared with the
agrifood industry: «One of the goals of the PBR approach to childhood obesity
is to frame this as a problem for which the food industry has an important
responsibility, and not a problem for which families alone are responsible»
(Op. cit., p.176).
5.8. Conclusions
In one of the classic texts of sociology, C. Wright Mills (2000 [1959])

distinguished between individual problems (personal troubles) and public
issues. Mills gave examples of this distinction, «perhaps the most productive
with which the sociological imagination has worked,» pointing out that the
unemployment of a single individual among many was the personal problem
of the individual, and the solution would be in his/her character, capacities
and immediate opportunities. On the contrary, if 30 percent of a population is
unemployed, we would be before a public issue. «The structure of opportunities
itself has collapsed. Both the correct description of the problem as well as the
range of possible solutions require from us that we consider the economic and
political institutions of the society, and not only the personal situation and
character of a collection of disperse individuals» (Mills, op. cit., p.19).
Obesity is one of those public issues, and its analysis is inseparable from an
environment of agrifood policy and economic and industry logic in the face of
which, assignment of personal responsibility, and consequent policies based
on information and awareness are fundamentally incomplete. On the other
hand, the position that privileges personal responsibility in nutrition assumes
that sources of information are, at a minimum, available without cost to the
consumer, that the consumer has the capacity to process them, and that all the
information is reliable and does not contradict itself. Nevertheless what Marion
Nestle (2004; 360) points out is true; after accepting that food decisions are in
principle the responsibility of the individual, «we do not make food choices
in a vacuum. We select diets in a marketing environment in which billions
of dollars are spent to convince us that nutrition advice is so confusing, and
eating healthfully so impossibly difficult, that there is no point in bothering
to eat less of one or another food product or category.» We must confront
obesogenic environments with the democratic tools of open debate and the
subsequent formulation of public policies that will go beyond the tactics of
dietary recommendations and move on to strategic actions similar to those
that were so successful in their time at elevating agricultural productivity and
consolidating the food industry.

Part Two
THE CONSUMER’S
RESPONSE
VI. Preferences and food consumption:
pleasure, convenience and health(1)
Jesús Contreras Hernández and Mabel Gracia Arnaiz
(The Food Observatory)
6.1. Introduction
Most of our social behaviour is articulated by norms that tell us what we can
or should do at each moment, about what is considered desirable, appropriate,
or advisable. This does not necessarily mean that the norms are followed, as
sometimes they can be interpreted according to one’s own interests. It is the
same with eating. In relation to food, our behaviour is articulated through two
different and at times contradictory types of norms: social norms and dietary
norms.
«Social norms» refer to the totality of social conventions – social agreements –
related to the number, type, moment, place, composition and structure of the
different types of food intakes and the conditions and contexts in which their
consumption is produced. For example: distributing the food during the day in
one intake or various; establishing a definite timetable according to the type
of food; considering some ingestions as more important than others; adopting
particular forms when eating with respect to our physical appearance; eating
with the fingers or cutlery depending on the dish or food; establishing a food
calendar according to festive occasions, etc.
(1) The statistical data that we provide in this chapter comes from two studies carried out by the Observatorio
de la Alimentación (Food Observatory) with the motive of the V (La alimentación y sus circunstancias: placer,
conveniencia y salud [Food and its circumstances: pleasure, convenience and health] and the VI International
Food Forum (Comemos como vivimos: alimentación, salud y estilos de vida [We eat how we live: food, health and
lifestyles]), held at Alimentaria 2004 and Alimentaria 2006 respectively. Both studies were coordinated by Jesús
Contreras and Mabel Gracia. The principal objectives of the research reports consisted in knowing the factors and
circumstances that orient and determine the new ways of eating of the Spanish, characterizing them and finally
revealing the existing differences between eating norms and practices. To do this, different but complementary
methodological approaches were combined. The first, ethnographic, was done through group discussions (20) and
in-depth interviews (20) and the second, statistical, consisted in using two questionnaires given to individuals in
PREFERENCES AND FOOD CONSUMPTION: PLEASURE, CONVENIENCE AND HEALTH 141

«Dietary norms» refer to the set of prescriptions based on scientific-nutritional
knowledge and disseminated through the health media. More or less fluctuating
over time, varying according to the discoveries and social influence of those
who prescribe them, dietary norms describe, in quantitative and qualitative
terms, what is an adequate, balanced diet and how the daily consumption of
food should be organized to maintain a good state of health. Dietary norms
include the following: eat fruit, vegetables, cereals; consume blue fish, foods
with fibre, olive oil; use techniques for cooking the foods that avoid the loss
of basic nutrients; avoid the consumption of saturated animal fats or refined
sugars; adjust caloric intake to our energy needs; maintain the recommended
balance regarding the proportion sugars, lipids and proteins; etc.
From the perspective of the norms which exist today, the principal meal is a
unit consisting of three categories: first course, second course and a dessert. A
more complex version – of four or five courses – is for special occasions or
celebrations (holiday menus, diverse celebrations, etc.), which become festive
occasions precisely for their variation from this very simple structure. The
first type of structure is the most habitual; we find it, for example, in all school
menus, in hospitals, in business cafeterias, in restaurants, in the dietetic-culinary
proposals in newspapers and numerous books. Also at home this ternary structure
constitutes «the normal meal.»
Studies carried out (Fischler, 1995) about dietary behaviour in the United States
demonstrated that one of the essential difficulties in gathering data in the food
field is precisely the serious difference between what people «declare they do»
and what «they really do:» while the number of food intakes in one day can easily
be up to 20, nevertheless, the majority of the participants would state that they
had «only» 3 meals a day. In effect, regarding a question like «how many times
did you eat yesterday?» the spontaneous response refers to «internalized norms»
that can be both social and dietetic: 3 instead of 20. The same thing happens
different autonomous communities of the Spanish state. One consisted of a weekly notebook of food consumption
from a simple of 917 individuals representative of the Spanish population. The weekly notebook of consumption
meant the gathering of information regarding 26,811 food intakes. The data regarding these ingestions were put
into a data base created with the ACCESS 2002 program from Microsoft®. For this article we have taken into
account only the data of each one of the intakes of food reported by the individuals regarding food and drink
ingested, with a total of 26,811 entries. The other consisted of a questionnaire regarding food tastes of the Spanish
population. The questionnaire consisted of a notebook which included a list of food groups, a list of specific foods
and a list of ways to prepare those foods. The answers offered were limited to three options; «like», «don’t like»,
«okay.» The questionnaire was given to a sample of 1,040 individuals based on variables of age, gender and place
of residency.

when people are asked what they have eaten. Thus, if they are asked, «What
did you eat and how often did you eat certain products yesterday, last week or
in the past month?» The typical response would be «a little bit of everything,
vegetables, meat, fish, dairy, cereals…» Again the spontaneous response refers
us to foods and not dishes, to isolated products, without referring to their handling
and location in the broader context of food consumption.
For all these reasons it is necessary to distinguish between «real practices»
(objectified) – either through direct observation or indirectly through analysis of
socioeconomic variables – and «declared practices» (internalized). Comparing
the one with the other, we see that declared practices are often subject to
change, to semantic restructuring, forgotten, or even subject to negotiation or
concealment. Taking these observations into account, we present some of these
«declared» or internalised practices of the Spanish population regarding ways of
eating. After, we will look at the results regarding «recorded practices,» so that
we can see the most outstanding differences.
6.2. Food preferences and criteria of choice
Food is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon. Because of this the

factors that influence food choices are very diverse. Among these should be
highlighted (Eurofic, 2005: 17): 1) biological factors such as hunger, appetite
and taste; 2) economic factors such as cost, income and accessibility to
different types of foods; 3) social factors such as culture, religion, family,
equality and lifestyles; 4) type and degree of knowledge and or skills related
to food in general and cooking in particular; 5) psychological factors,
circumstantial ones such as mood or guilt or more permanent ones such as
character or stress; and 6) attitudes, beliefs, general values and knowledge
(tolerance/intolerance, individualism/family, conventionality/informality, the
role granted to science and/or religion, etc.) and the attitudes, beliefs, values
and knowledge related to food in particular (value of sharing meals, nutritional
or dietetic knowledge, etc.).
Today, in wealthy countries, the central question about food is no longer can
one eat, but rather what to eat. This question – What to eat? – is a relatively new
one for a large part of the population. The fact that individuals «can» choose

what they eat makes the study of their choices and food practices interesting in
the context of our current society. But the fact that they «must» choose is also
very interesting. In our modern abundant society individuals can satisfy their
appetites in many ways and hunger no longer guides our eating. In addition,
religious proscriptions (fasting days, days of abstinence), which framed dietary
practices in the past, have disappeared or have lost much of their force. At the
same time, economic dynamics are unceasingly broadening and diversifying
the supply of foods available to increasing numbers of persons. In this context,
anything is possible for the contemporary diner. In fact, statistics show that
on the one hand, consumers are increasingly fuller (satisfied) as they spend
a smaller part of their budgets on food; and on the other hand, it seems they
are eating more of what they feel like as the food available diversifies. But
although one is free to eat anything, this does not mean that society does
not propose «good reasons» for eating some foods instead of others. These
«reasons» are constructed within a socioeconomic framework with a huge
capacity for adaption to the evolving society. As diverse surveys on food
practices carried out in many different countries (Ascher, 2005: 82-104) seem
to reveal, we are seeing the abandonment of traditional food models. This
results from the consumption of products that are easy to consume anywhere,
as well as a reduced consumption of lipids but increased energetic consumption
due to the attraction of foods which generate eating pleasure such as sweets
and pastries.
Independent now of considerations of a more general character about the
determinants of food choices, the motives that our interviewees declared
when choosing a food or a dish are the following: more than half, 52.8 percent
declared that the primary factor they take into account is «health;» 29.1
percent considered the primary factor to be their «personal preferences;» 13.7
percent «the price;» 2.1 percent «caloric value» and 1.9 percent the «ease» of
preparation. Although the possible responses offered to the interviewees were
not the same, it is worth it to compare the answers obtained in our survey with
those of the Pan-European Survey of Consumer Attitudes to Food, Nutrition
and Health of 2004 (Food Today, 43 (1)). For the whole European population,
the declared criteria of choice were the following: «quality-freshness,» 74
percent; «price,» 43 percent; «taste,» 38 percent; «eating healthy,» 32 percent
and «it’s what my family likes,» 29 percent. In any case, apparently the Spanish

population would be more concerned with health than the overall population
of Europe (52.8 percent versus 32 percent) and much less concerned with
price (13.7 percent versus 43 percent). Clearly, as has been said, one thing is
what one says and another is what one really does or thinks, but in any case,
the percentages are significant as in both cases they deal with «declarations»
not «practices.»
A majority of 52.8 percent state that health is their principal criterion for
selecting food – the answer that responds to the dominant trend in our society
today – but in second place an important 29.1 percent say that it is personal
preferences which determine their choices. This percentage acquires even
greater significance when one takes into consideration the 91.2 percent who
say that «the foods they consume coincide with the foods they most like or
desire» and only for 1.1 percent do they not or almost never coincide; also, a
scant 7.7 percent state that the foods they consume only sometimes coincide
with what they most like.
In relation to the planning of meals, although the majority (64.3 percent)
of the sample identify with the statement «we try to plan for the different
meals of the week that we prepare at home,» those that supposedly do not
plan make up a significant 33.3 percent; 13.3 percent of this group identify
with the statement «it is difficult to plan meals because each person has
different tastes regarding vegetables, fish, meat, etc.,» 12.4 percent identify
with the statement «because we work outside of the home we don’t plan
the meals,» and finally, 7.8 percent identify with the statement «at home we
don’t plan the meals, for example, at night everyone gets home and grabs
what they can.»
When doing the shopping planning is important, although with a certain
flexibility depending on the supply of foods available. In filling the basket
of goods, 30.6 percent declare that they buy only those products that are on
their list, although a similar proportion, 32.2 percent, state that they do buy
products that they like that were not previously on their list. The written list,
however, is only one of the options, and not always the primary one as there
are a considerable percentage of people, 20.8 percent, that do their shopping
as they go, buying what they see they need, while another 15.3 percent of the
total interviewed state that they only buy what they fancy.

From all this the importance of personal «preferences» emerges, and therefore,
also personal «likes.»(2) For this reason, it is very important and necessary to
know what are the liked and, still more important, the «disliked» or «rejected»
foods of the Spanish population to compare them with those foods which are
really consumed. Before, however, we will look at some complementary
issues. Liking and/or rejecting a specific type of food does not manifest itself
in absolute terms, rather it is influenced by other factors, including the mode
of presentation and/or cooking. Thus, for example, onions can be liked or
disliked in absolute terms, but it is very probable that their acceptance or
rejection is affected by the way they are presented or prepared (fried, roasted,
boiled, sautéed…). The same happens with many other types of foods such as
vegetables, legumes, meat or fish.
The role played by taste preferences responds to a very specific cultural logic,
connected on the one hand to the expansion of the food supply and on the other
to the increase in individual preferences. In effect, food today is not conceived of
as an imposition but rather as an activity in which different choices and types of
satisfaction are possible. The foods most liked, particularly in the case of children
and adolescents, not only do not coincide with nutritional recommendations,
but up to a certain point are contrary to them. The most recommended foods
from a nutritional perspective (particularly vegetables, legumes and fish)
are precisely those that show the lowest percentages of acceptance. For the
population as a whole (graph 6.1), the percentage of acceptance («I like it»)
for vegetables, legumes and garden produce is 56.3 percent, 58.6 percent and
60.9 percent respectively. The importance of personal likes to explain the low
consumption of vegetables and legumes is reinforced because of the fact that
the «least preferred» ways of cooking or forms of preparation of foods (graph
6.2) are boiling and stews, which are precisely, the habitual ways of preparing
vegetables and legumes. They are also the ways which require the most time.
The most preferred forms of preparation are «baked,» «roasted,» and «grilled.»
This would indicate that the question of likes (acceptance/rejection) is closely
tied to the forms of preparation of the products themselves.
(2) In agreement with Rozin (1995) we understand that «preference» implies a situation of choosing and refers to
which of two or more foods is chosen. «Like» is normally measured on verbal scales and refers to an emotional
response to foods and constitutes one of the determinants of preference.

On the other hand, meals are increasingly less imposed and apparently less
structured. 69.9 percent of those interviewed identified with the statement
«now our meals are more informal and each one eats what they want, when
they want and where they want. We are more autonomous. There is more
freedom.» Nevertheless, in 80.6 percent of the homes they say that the meals
that are prepared are the same for everyone and everyone eats the same things
and regarding meals made at home, 55.5 percent say they eat «what there is»
without problems. As a huge majority (91.2 percent) say that the foods they
consume coincide with the foods they most like and desire, the explanation
for this paradox lies in assuming that the food that is put on the table has
been previously consented to or that given that there are multiple meals made
at home, on some occasions the likes of some are satisfied, and on other
occasions the likes of others. In addition, it is possible to assume that if the
majority of Spanish are highly satisfied with their own diets, and 94.3 percent
declare that they feel very or quite happy with what they eat, it is because what
they normally eat is what they like.
All this is not incompatible with the fact that, in 66.8 percent of the cases
mothers and/or wives decide on the menu or the different meals that are eaten
each day. In effect, it appears that their «authority» or «freedom» to decide is
not excessive as it stems from knowing the preferences and aversions of all
the members of the domestic group when doing the shopping or cooking. In
this way it can be stated that the woman, wife or mother, more than being the
person responsible (although other members of the home may consider her in
that way) for the food decisions (shopping and cooking), is a negotiator who
«looks for a consensus» in the home which facilitates her decisions about
food.

GRAPH 6.1
Acceptance/rejection of different food groups
By percentage
I LIKE
POTATOES
BREAD
EGGS
FRUITS
PASTA
SOUPS
COLD MEATS AND SAUSAGE
DRIED FRUITS AND NUTS
CHEESES
WHITE FISH
SEA FOOD
RED MEATS
SWEETS
CEREALS
BLUE FISH
PASTRIES/BAKED GOODS
GARDEN PRODUCE
LEGUMES
VEGETABLES
HERBAL TEAS
ORGAN MEATS
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Source: Observatorio de la Alimentación (Foro Internacional de la Alimentación, 2006).

I DON’T LIKE
ORGAN MEATS
HERBAL TEAS
GARDEN PRODUCE
SEA FOOD
BLUE FISH
VEGETABLES
LEGUMES
PASTRIES/BAKED GOODS
CEREALS
WHITE FISH
RED MEATS
CHEESES
SWEETS
SOUPS
PASTA
COLD MEATS AND SAUSAGE
EGGS
FRUITS
POTATOES
BREAD
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

GRAPH 6.2
Acceptance/rejection of different ways of preparing foods
By percentage
I LIKE
BAKED FOODS
ROASTED FOODS
GRILLED FOODS
FRIED FOODS
IN A STEW
DRESSED/SEASONED FOODS
BOILED FOODS
MICROWAVED FOODS
RAW FOODS
PRECOOKED FOODS
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

I DON’T LIKE
RAW FOODS
PRECOOKED FOODS
MICROWAVED FOODS
BOILED FOODS
DRESSED/SEASONED FOODS
IN A STEW
FRIED FOODS
GRILLED FOODS
ROASTED FOODS
BAKED FOODS
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
A pyramid of food likes

Based on our data about food preferences, we propose the following «pyramid
of likes.» The different foods have been placed in the pyramid from the base
to the apex based on the percentages of preferences, from more to less.

GRAPH 6.3
The pyramid of likes
By percentage
<60%
60%-68%
68%-76%
80%-85%
>85%
6.3. Description of the eating day
The number of daily meals
The majority of persons state that they eat between three and four times a day,
while 21 percent say they eat five times a day. In the case of those that have
three meals, the meals are breakfast, lunch and dinner. When it is four meals,
they add the afternoon merienda (a late afternoon snack) in the majority of
cases. When there are five meals, in addition to the previously mentioned
ones, usually a mid-morning «breakfast» is added. The three meal a day
model is strongly internalized as frequently answers would be given in these
terms: «I have three good meals and an aperitif;» «three meals and two little

GRAPH 6.4
The most frequent eating days
By percentage
Breakfast + 3 meals +
large late morning snack + dinner mid-morning snack +
mid-afternoon snack
2.3%
1.2%
3 meals +
mid-afternoon snack Others 3 meals
2.3% 13.4% 31.2%
3 meals + merienda +
mid-morning snack dinner
3%
3 meals + large late morning snack

+ merienda 3 meals + merienda
8.8% 17.8%
3 meals + large late morning snack 3 meals +

mid-morning snack
9.3%
10.7%
snacks;» «three meals and an afternoon merienda;» «breakfast, lunch, dinner

and extras;» «normally three, and sometimes a merienda;» «three: breakfast,
lunch and dinner, although I snack on something midday;» «breakfast, lunch
and dinner; sometimes a small merienda, not much;» «three, a little something
mid-morning and sometimes an aperitif.»
In any case, the most common eating day (graph 6.4) is composed of three
meals, followed by eating days that are made up of three meals and a
merienda. In third place, there are the eating days composed of three meals
and a light mid-morning snack; then, three meals plus a big late-morning
snack and finally, three meals plus a big late-morning snack plus a merienda.
Other important combinations are: three meals plus merienda plus a light mid-
morning snack; three meals plus a light mid-afternoon snack; breakfast plus
lunch or late morning snack and dinner and, three meals plus a mid-morning
and mid-afternoon snack.

The average number of daily intakes is 4.19, which means a total average of
29.33 intakes per week. If we look at the days of the week separately we see
that the number of intakes decreases on Sundays to 4.06, while on Saturday
the average is similar to the other daily averages. For this reason we cannot
speak of a difference between work days and weekends but of a difference
between Sundays and other days.
Breakfast
The ideal ingredients for a good breakfast are milk, cereal, toast with oil, fresh
fruit or juice. There is widespread agreement on this. However, when one looks
at what the real breakfast of each person is, the nuances and/or exceptions are
frequent.
–For me, I have to have juice, cereal, and fruit, but…
–For me it would be ideal (milk, cereal, toast with oil, fruit…), but I don’t eat
it because I don’t have time.
–At least I always have the same breakfast. I get up and have a coffee and
…perhaps…I always have some cereal at work if I feel like snacking on
something. And, after, breakfast at eleven.
–In the morning I would like to have a good breakfast…but, I, simply have a
coffee with milk and a few cookies. Then, mid-morning, maybe I go down to a
bar and have a little something or some toast, a coffee with milk, something. I
would like to have a good breakfast to avoid this intermediate step, but I can’t
get up early and have toast, an egg, fruit, I can’t…
Thus, although there exists a general consensus about what is considered to
be a «good» breakfast, both in strictly energetic terms and in terms of what
is healthy, a majority of persons recognize that they have problems or there
are conditions which make it difficult for them to eat such a breakfast. «A
lack of time» or, «a lack of time and laziness» make it difficult to have what
is be considered a «good breakfast.» Effectively, many people consider the
time dedicated to breakfast as time that could be spent sleeping…Which has
something to do with the «amazement» that is felt for those family breakfasts
with all the family sitting around the table.

GRAPH 6.5
Breakfast foods
By percentage
PASTRIES/BAKED GOODS,
BISCUITS AND SWEETS
BREAD AND TOAST
CEREALS
OIL, BUTTER AND MARGERINE
COLD MEATS, SAUSAGE

AND CHEESES
FRUITS
DAIRY PRODUCTS
VEGETABLES AND GARDEN

PRODUCE
CHOCOLATE AND COCOA
EGGS
MEAT
PASTA AND RICE
SALADS AND GASPACHO
FISH
POTATOES
SEAFOOD
DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS
LEGUMES
SOUPS
PRECOOKED MEALS
SAUCES
OTHERS
0 10 20 30 40 50
Despite what is considered to be a «good breakfast,» the most habitual foods

in breakfasts (graph 6.5) are those which fall into the category of «pastries/

baked goods, cookies and sweets.» In second place, are bread and toast, cereals
and oil and butter. The consumption of cheeses and cold meats is less but
significant. Despite the dietetic recommendations related to the advisability of
having fruit at breakfast and despite the fact that a majority of the population
think that a «true breakfast» should include fruit, only 4.7% do include it in
their breakfast.
The two most habitual drinks (graph 6.6) are coffee with milk and milk and
other dairy beverages. Other drinks frequently consumed are black coffee and
juices. Again, it is interesting to note, related to the discrepancy between what
is considered a true breakfast and what is really consumed, the low percentage
that juices represent.
All in all, breakfast ends up being a light and sweet meal accompanied with
coffee and/or milk. Breakfasts are composed basically of pastries, cookies and
sweets and to a lesser extent, bread and toast with oil or butter and cereal.
GRAPH 6.6
Breakfast drinks
By percentage
COFFEE WITH MILK
MILK, CHOCOLATE MILK,

DAIRY BEVERAGES
COFFEE
JUICES
WATER
HERBAL TEAS
SOFT DRINKS
BEER
WINE
OTHERS
NOTHING
0 10 20 30 40

Lunch
To begin with, the disparity in the responses gathered should be pointed out.
Some people responded in terms of structure and types of foods for each one
of the courses, others, only in terms of products or foods; and finally others
simply responded by referring to what would be an «ideal» lunch in terms of
quantity or quality. Some people, to characterize a «true lunch,» talked more
about forms than about foods, for example, «seated at the table, chatting and
sharing.»
The majority of people interviewed referred to a ternary structure, in other
words, a first course or starter, a second course and dessert. Nevertheless, in
numerous cases, they talked directly about the types of products they consider
appropriate for the mid-day meal without mentioning any structure, although
this could be implicit: «salad or vegetable, meat or fish, fruit and coffee.»
It is evident, on the other hand, that it is the principal meal of the day as
numerous people made reference to this meal in these terms: «dishes you eat
with a spoon and, above all, meat;» «something hot, like potatoes, vegetables,
meat or fish;» «a main dish and salad; meat and potatoes, pasta and meat,
vegetables and eggs;» «it is the main meal of the day: meat and something
made with pasta, with salad;» «a good main dish;» «above all meat, as lunch
tends to be heavier;» «something heavy;» «heavier dishes than at dinner: rice,
meat;» «a main dish and something light;» «a stew with meat or vegetables,
something very solid.»
With less frequency, the answers referred to lunch in more directly nutritional
terms and more or less in agreement with dietetic norms: «carbohydrates,
milk, fats and minerals.» In this sense, the terms employed reveal a certain
internalisation of dietetic norms: «a meal that helps you grow: legumes, soups
and salads;» «the foods that give you strength, don’t increase fats and contain
vitamins;» «based on legumes, pasta, or cereals (rice) and that contain proteins
and meat, eggs, fish and fruit;» «it has to be nutritious, with an adequate
quantity, well cooked and not an excessive quantity;» «a balanced diet that
contains all the food groups;» «it has carbohydrates, proteins and fats;» «a
good dietary complex that is complete: meat, rice, pasta;» «from proteins, in
other words, legumes, potatoes, pasta or soup and fruit.»

Some comments reveal the relationship between the social norms of our
food culture and the increasingly present dietary norms or recommendations:
«varied foods, solid food;» «salad and something light, but that’s good and
nutritious;» «healthy things;» «healthy foods;» «above all, varied;» «non-
fattening;» «nutritious, or that has vegetables and fish or salad and meat.»
Although they represent a minority, there are also those persons that minimize
the importance of the mid-day meal. They say that they’ll eat «anything» at
lunch: «something to snack on;» «something fast and easy to eat like prepared
meals, sandwiches…;» «something that cooks fast, soup or pasta, grilled meat,
fruit;» «something fast, today there isn’t time for anything more.»
Related to the types of products respondents say they eat for lunch, we have
the following results:
• For the first course or, starter: the most common food is legumes; followed
by pastas and rice; third, vegetables and soups; and finally, salads.
• For the second course or main course, the most common food is meat
(59 percent); followed by fish (44.5 percent). Eggs were mentioned by a
very small number, and even fewer mentioned cheeses and cold meats.
It is significant that bread is only mentioned by 1.5 percent of the people
interviewed.
• For dessert, the most frequently mentioned food is fruit (37 percent).
Only 2 percent of the respondents mentioned dairy products.
• Independently of the type and/or order of the dish, 19% of the people
interviewed mentioned the use of «prepared foods» to deal with the mid-
day meal.
• Water is the most frequently mentioned drink, together with wine or
wine with carbonated water. In second place are mentioned sodas and
juices. After the meal, coffee is the most frequently mentioned drink. It
is surprising that other alcoholic drinks like beer, champagne, liquors or
spirits are not mentioned.
In any case, lunches are not thought of nor are they described individually,
meal by meal. People are conscious that their lunches are integrated into
«cycles» of at least a week, in such a way that the contents of a «true» or

«acceptable» lunch has to be considered taking into account the contents of
the other meals in the cycle. Or in other words, in accordance with the different
circumstances or existing conditions of some of the meals, the deficits of some
can compensate for the excesses of others. Thus, for example, a «meal served
on one plate» can be considered an acceptable lunch, or «when you eat out, a
first course, fruit and coffee,» but «for not for every day» or, the opposite:
–«I have the menu of the day and don’t vary it, and normally it includes
a choice of four first courses and four seconds, I go changing from one to
another, but you get to a point where you want a “meal on one plate” or you
go to a Chinese restaurant or to a pizzeria, but you can’t do that every day.»
These types of considerations are also valid for the different ways of
compensating between lunch and dinner, and likewise they affect the different
types of drinks that are considered appropriate for each type of meal. For
example:
–The day for gourmet eating is Sunday… In my house, Sunday is chaos. At mid-
day everyone has a good lunch…grilled meat or paella, something substantial.
But at night, it’s chaos. Then, it’s take what you like, make yourself a sandwich,
open the fridge…what I say is: today no work, hey! At night, everyone does
what they want.
The foods that are really consumed at lunch are the following (graph 6.7):
Meat is the food most frequently consumed and together with fruit, these
two foods can be considered the most typically eaten at lunch. Next, a fairly
high percentage of people have vegetables and produce; slightly fewer have
pasta and rice, and salads and soups. Fish, potatoes and to a slightly lesser
extent, legumes are all also habitual foods in Spanish lunches. In the graph
that follows it should be pointed out that 0.4 percent corresponds to «bread
and toast» and refers to the presence of these foods in the dishes and not to
bread which complements the meals. As we will see, bread as a complement
is present in 86.7 percent of the meals.
Water is the drink consumed by the majority of Spanish at lunch (graph 6.8).
The second most consumed drink is wine, alone or mixed with carbonated
water. Other drinks which accompany lunch, although in much smaller
percentages are sodas, beer and fruit juices.

In short, the mid-day meal is the meal of the day in which meat and fruit are
the most important foods as they are the most regularly consumed, along with
water. Other foods which are frequently consumed at lunch are vegetables and
GRAPH 6.7
Lunch foods
By percentage
MEATS
FRUITS

PRODUCE
PASTA AND RICE
SALADS AND GAZPACHO
POTATOES
FISH
LEGUMES
EGGS
COLD MEATS, SAUSAGE
AND CHEESES
DAIRY PRODUCTS
SOUPS
SEA FOOD
BISCUITS AND SWEETS
SAUCES
OIL, BUTTER AND MARGERINE
PRECOOKED MEALS
BREAD AND TOAST
CEREAL
CHOCOLATE AND COCOA
OTHERS
0 10 20 30 40 50 60

GRAPH 6.8
Lunch drinks
By percentage
WATER
WINE
SOFT DRINKS
BEER
JUICES

DAIRY DRINKS
COFFEE
COFFEE WITH MILK
HERBAL TEAS
OTHER ALCOHOLIC DRINKS
SPARKLING WINE
OTHERS
NOTHING
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
produce, pasta and rice, and salads and gazpacho. Regarding drinks, water is
the most common, although wine is also consumed in a high percentage of
meals. The most typical lunch is reflected in graph 6.9
Dinner
Dinner, although generally not as important as lunch, does have the status of a
meal and is one of the ingestions included in the repertoire of almost all of the
persons interviewed. In some cases, however, it has the same importance as
lunch, although different foods are eaten: «it complements what I didn’t have
at lunch;» «it complements the foods eaten at lunch.»
Many people say that they deal with dinner in the quickest and/or simplest
manner. For example, there are many people who say they eat «something,»

GRAPH 6.9
Typical lunch profile
By percentage
MEATS
FRUITS

PRODUCE
PASTA AND RICE
SALADS AND GAZPACHO
POTATOES
FISH
LEGUMES
EGGS
COLD MEATS, SAUSAGE

AND CHEESES
DAIRY PRODUCTS
SOUPS
WATER
WINE
SOFT DRINKS
BREAD
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
and only 0.4 percent of the people interviewed say they do not eat anything for
dinner; in other words, they skip dinner.
Regarding dinner, there are fewer references to the ternary structure, and a
binary or even unitary model appears more often. At dinner it appears that
there are also a wider range of foods consumed without any apparent order or
without a clear structure in terms of first course or starter and second course,
for example. Thus things like cereal with milk, or a piece of fruit appear. In
short, in dinners we find a much wider diversity of situations and different and

contrasting combinations: people that only eat vegetables and fruit or on the
contrary, those that eat «an omelette of whatever and meat or fish.»
If the most frequently used adjective for describing lunch is that it be «filling,»
followed closely by «varied» and «nutritious;» in the case of dinner, the most
frequently used adjectives fall within the semantic area of «frugality.» The
dinner should be eaten with the end of aiding digestion. Dinners should be light,
not heavy, not abundant, fast in their preparation (boiled, sautéed, raw…) and
varied: «something light (fresh cheese, deli foods, vegetables);» «something
that aids in digestion such as fruit, omelette, puree, vegetables;» «nothing
heavy, or you won’t sleep well;» «something light, that’s not frozen such as
vegetables, dairy dessert and nothing prepared;» «what you normally eat, but
always less than at lunch;» «whatever, but small quantities, almost always
some vegetables;» «something easy to digest, that’s light to aid digestion;»
«make sure they are foods that are easy to digest;» «not too filling or rich.»
The concept of «easy» also appears in a more or less direct form. In fact,
the reference to «what ever» or «anything» is already sufficiently indicative:
«easy to prepare foods, boiled fish and some dairy product or fruit,» «fast.»
The types of products most referred to for dinner are notably different
from those mentioned for lunch. In general, there is a wider distribution of
percentages between the different categories, which makes one think that the
products related to dinner are less well defined than those related to lunch. The
most frequently mentioned foods are fish, vegetables, and fruit, followed by
eggs (in particular in omelettes), cold meats and cheeses. Prepared dishes are
mentioned at a similar rate (20 percent). Interestingly, meat is only mentioned
in 8 percent of the cases. Legumes don’t appear at all and references to pasta,
rice, potatoes, vegetables and bread are few (in comparison with the mid-
day meal). However, and contradictorily, there are numerous mentions of
the consumption of sandwiches, hamburgers, pizzas and frozen foods. The
consumption of dairy products, in particular yogurt, is significantly higher
than at lunches.
Dinner is the second most important meal. Its composition (graph 6.10) is
similar to that of lunch, although fish, cheeses and cold meats substitute meat,
pasta and rice. Fruit is by far the most habitual food in Spanish dinners. The
foods consumed with certain regularity for dinner are vegetables and garden

GRAPH 6.10
Typical dinner profile
By percentage
FRUITS

PRODUCE
COLD MEATS, SAUSAGE
AND CHEESES
FISH
SALADS AND GAZPACHO
DAIRY PRODUCTS
MEAT
EGGS
POTATOES
PASTA AND RICE
PRECOOKED MEALS
SOUPS
WATER
WINE
SOFT DRINKS
DAIRY DRINKS
OTHERS
BEER
JUICES
BREAD
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
produce, cold meats and cheeses, fish, salads and soups, dairy, meat and eggs.
Water is again the drink which most frequently accompanies dinner; in 58.2
percent of the cases people drink water. Wine is the second most consumed
drink, followed by soft drinks, milk and other dairy drinks, beer and juices.

This pattern looks a lot like the one observed for lunch with the principal
difference being that milk and diary are consumed a lot more at dinners than
at lunches.
Snacking between meals
«Snacking» or «eating between meals» seems to be a relatively widespread

practice, although not everyone is conscious of it. There are also different
meanings given to these expressions. In any case, to «snack» or «eat between
meals» is looked at in different ways by the people interviewed depending
on whether they see it from the point of view of the «satisfaction» of the
momentary hunger that arises at different moments or from a perspective of
nutrition or health. The number and type of daily meals that they consider
correct and the spacing between them is also important. The answers to our
open questions can be grouped into three distinct groups:
1) Yes: often, always, frequently, often enough, almost always, very frequently,
habitually, normally...
2) Rarely, very rarely, occasionally, once in a while, sometimes, almost never,
seldom, very seldom, little, not much...
3) No: never, doesn’t happen...
Based on these groups, 35.2 percent respond affirmatively; in other words,
they say they «snack» often, enough, always or very often. On the other
hand, a significant percentage of persons, 34.3 percent provide an ambiguous
result as they admit to occasional snacking; «once in a while,» «it depends,»
«not much,» «only in the late afternoon,» «something around 12.» Finally,
25 percent say they never eat between meals. From this it emerges that, at
least for the moment, there is not a precise normative model regarding
«eating between meals» as there is for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hence it
would appear that there is a great diversity of acceptable foods for this type
of ingestion. Similarly, as there is no single normative model or there is no
dietary normative model for the majority, this could explain that regarding
snacking there is less discrepancy between what is said to be consumed and
what is consumed.

There is an enormous range of foods and drinks that seem to be consumed
between meals. The most consumed products between meals are drinks,
and among these, water is the most consumed with 44.5% saying they drink
water. On the other hand drinking water cannot really be considered as «eating
between meals,» and its inclusion is due to the insistence of the research team
on including any type of product consumed. Other drinks consumed are soft
drinks (especially colas), juices, milk, coffee and herbal teas, chocolate drinks,
dairy (liquid yogurt and other products derived from dairy); among alcoholic
drinks the most mentioned are beer in first place, followed by wine, and in
third place vermouth or simply «a drink.»
Among solid foods salty products stand out, including nuts, sandwiches, chips,
cold meats and cheeses, Spanish omelette, pizza, meat or fish pastries and
various Spanish «tapas» – olives, fried fish, sausage, etc. On many occasions
the people interviewed referred to tapas, going out for tapas or an aperitif.
Among sweets, the most frequently mentioned are «candies,» pastries,
different types of rolls with chocolate, ice cream, chocolate, cake, cookies
and cereals. Within this category, although with very different connotations,
fruit is frequently mentioned, in particular for the ingestion that takes place
between breakfast and the principal mid-day meal.
Regarding products such as «colas,» juice, beer and dairy, some respondents
(about 5 percent) add that they drink «light», products, «low in calories», or
«without alcohol.»
In snack foods, there are clear gender differences. In general, we can say that
women prefer to eat fruit or chocolate between meals, while men prefer salty
products. In these cases, however, the reasons for «snacking» have to do as
much or more with a whim or «vice» as with necessity.
–…Occasionally, a piece of fruit… some afternoons… but I don’t eat more…
–I snack at least two or three times… Yes… because if I work form eight until
three, well I won’t eat until 3:45 and then from breakfast until 3:45 I can’t go
without eating… And, then we have something, … we snack on something…
fruit or anything. And after, late-afternoon, many times also some fruit… in
particular in summer it’s good.

–… maybe… Saturdays and Sundays… Yes, because being at home… a little
bit of chocolate, if there is any, or a cookie, an apple, whatever there is…
Only 15 percent think that they should eat between meals, while 36 percent
believe the opposite. In arguments regarding why one should or should not eat
between meals (and what should be eaten) there are important variations. It is
curious to note that in some cases the reasons given for eating between meals
coincide with those given for not doing so. «Getting rid of hunger» is one
of the most mentioned reasons to justify eating between meals, or «to make
it till lunch» (or dinner). Some persons understand «eating between meals»
as a way to eat smaller but more frequent meals, which coincides with some
nutritional recommendations.
–I snack precisely to avoid eating more calories. In this way, I eat just what I
need to not get fat and all these things, getting the vitamins I need and all that,
I do it like that because I feel lighter. I don’t eat large quantities; what I want
to say is that I take the vitamins in the morning and in the afternoon, I manage
to organize myself in this way.
Other people, on the contrary, when they speak about «eating between meals,»
understand that there are «normal times» for eating and, similarly «normal
meals.» For this reason, these persons think it is «abnormal» «to snack between
meals,» or they may even consider it «poor eating.»
–Eating poorly… because… with all the things that you have to have and,
nevertheless, you are consuming a lot of calories, and this is not good. I speak
from experience. It’s time for lunch and I’m incapable of eating a dish, a
second course and a dessert… and, possibly I’ve eaten three things that don’t
provide me with what a meal should provide you with and, nevertheless, I’ve
eaten all these calories and crazy foods.
Among motivations for eating between meals, «health» is the one that is
mentioned most frequently: «It’s good to eat several times a day in small
quantities, so that your stomach isn’t empty too many hours, to maintain
constant energy, to best take advantage of the calories.» On some occasions,
it might be specified that the reason may be «to not gain weight» or «not to be
so hungry so that you eat less at the main meal.» There are also reasons related
to anxiety, the pleasure of snacking, or to feeling «weak» without it.

Among those who say they do not snack between meals, the reason mentioned
most frequently is that they do not or should not eat between meals so as to
not «gain weight,» «because it causes obesity,» because it means overeating,
etc. A bit more vague but similar, is the response that «it isn’t healthy.»
Also mentioned with some frequency is that it «produces bad habits» (for
example, «it damages the stomach», «it’s not good for you nutritionally,»
«it trains the stomach badly,» «there’s no time to digest,» «gives you bad
digestion,» «it interferes with digestion»…) or, simply, that «you don’t take
advantage of foods,» «it’s not good,» «it gets rid of hunger,» and «the more
you eat, the hungrier you are»…
Aside from the habits of each person, there does not seem to be a dominant
opinion on this issue. The ways in which people understand snacking
or eating between meals can be very different. Nor can the opinions or
recommendations of the «experts» be understood in the same manner. Thus,
there are notable differences, almost opposite positions regarding whether
one should snack or not.
–You shouldn’t snack, definitely not.
–I think you should snack.
–As I eat at half-past two and have a late dinner, then I can’t make it. At six
or around then, I have to have a drink or something to eat… a snack.
–I read it in a book that for the stomach, it’s better…to eat smaller amounts
more often and not three meals and a lot.
–But, it depends on what you eat, so that you don’t gain weight...
Gender differences and differences in work, as well as the way in which
nutritional requirements are understood seem to explain the differences
both in how «eating between meals» is understood as well as the positive
or negative assessment of this practice. Thus, for example, snacking can
be associated either with «eating garbage» – something very negative –
or with satisfying a need for energy, motivated by the specific nutritional
requirements that each person feels related to his or her activity.
–As I normally go out a lot…I understand what I shouldn’t do but…between
dinner and having a beer, well, I always eat some junk…could be nuts, or
chips…Because I go out a lot and that’s my weakness.

–Snacking is either fruit or some junk. If you eat a little bit of fish or a filet,
that’s not snacking. Eating nuts,yeah.
–A bit of cheese… Each person learns what his or her body asks for and how.
I take good care of my stomach with those yogurt drinks, and now there are
all types of these little things, during the day I’ll have three or four to satisfy
my stomach.
Eating between meals is as much part of the work day as the weekend,
although there are different motivations. On the one hand, it would seem
that working increases energy requirements and also demands periods of
sociability, of escape from the work itself. Thus, drinks like coffee, which
is energetic and social at the same time, or beer, are habitually consumed
on work days. Bottled water also appears to be a drink related to the work
day. On weekends, whether you go out or stay at home, in particular «if
there’s a football match going on,» snacking, eating chips, for example, can
be habitual.
Once more, gender differences are clear, above all, related to women’s
greater concern for health and/or avoiding gaining weight. Both concerns
can coincide in the desire to avoid eating too much.
–I don’t eat large quantities ever, but I snack during the day. I am sure there
are days that I might eat three times; and other days, seven, if you call eating
having a yogurt or snacking…
–They say it’s what makes you fat, above all in winter, you have dinner and
you basically go to bed. [In summer] there’s the pool and there’s, I don’t
know. But in winter, there’s dinner…I have dinner late and, on top of that,
I go to bed so everything stays here. It’s a habit that I would like to change.
And sometimes, I eat a little bit in the late afternoon, I get so hungry…I love
to have a sandwich or a roll or something in the afternoon…The dinners are
the worst as I am so hungry.
Mid-morning breakfast
The mid-morning «breakfast» is somewhat more solid than a breakfast eaten

at home. It includes cold meat and cheese and fruit and is accompanied
principally by water. The most frequently consumed products in the mid-

morning breakfast are cold meat and cheese, followed closely by fruit and
pastries, cookies and sweets and a bit less frequently, meat, vegetables and
garden produce and potatoes. This meal is accompanied preferably by water.
To a much lesser degree, people consume juices or soft drinks. In this mid-
morning breakfast coffee with milk is only present in 7.6 percent of the cases,
black coffee in 7 percent and other dairy products in 5.8 percent, and beer is
drunk in 6.4 percent of the cases.
GRAPH 6.11
Typical mid-morning snack profile
By percentage
COLD MEATS, SAUSAGE

AND CHEESES
FRUITS
BISCUITS AND SWEETS
WATER
JUICES
SOFT DRINKS
0 10 20 30 40 50
The merienda (the late afternoon snack)
The merienda (late afternoon snack) is lighter and sweeter than the mid-
morning breakfast. Pastries, sweets and cookies are the most frequent foods,
followed by fruit, cold meat, cheese and other dairy products, which in
no other meal have as much importance as in this. Other foods that stand
out are dried fruit and nuts and potato chips or crisps. In the merienda, the
most frequent drinks are juice and water. To a lesser degree, the Spanish
accompany the merienda with soft drinks, milk, dairy drinks and coffee with
milk. In 13.4 percent of the meriendas, no drink of any type is consumed.

GRAPH 6.12
Typical merienda profile
By percentage
BISCUITS AND SWEETS
FRUITS
COLD MEATS, SAUSAGE

AND CHEESES
DAIRY PRODUCTS
POTATOES
OTHERS
FISH
CEREALS
BREAD AND TOAST

PRODUCE
SALADS AND GAZPACHO
CHOCOLATE AND COCOA
JUICES
WATER
SOFT DRINKS
NO DRINK
MILK, CHOCOLATE MILK

AND DIARY DRINKS
COFFEE WITH MILK
COFFEE
BEER
BREAD
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

The aperitif
The aperitif in Spain is a kind of small meal in which people eat potatoes
– presumably chips or crisps – and dried fruit and nuts, accompanied by beer.
Apart from the potatoes and dried fruit and nuts, fish is also often eaten. Other
foods that may also be eaten are cheese and cold meat or pastries, cookies and
sweets. Regarding drinks, apart from beer, the most common ones are soft
drinks or water.
GRAPH 6.13
Typical aperitif profile
By percentage
POTATOES
FISH
COLD MEATS, SAUSAGE
AND CHEESES
BISCUITS AND SWEETS
SEA FOOD
PRODUCE
FRUITS
MEATS
EGGS
BEER
SOFT DRINKS
WATER
JUICES
COFFEE WITH MILK
MILK, CHOCOLATE MILK

AND DAIRY DRINKS
WINE
BREAD
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

6.4. Current food trends: new lifestyles and new ways of eating
During the last 30 years «new ways of eating» have developed in Spain as a
consequence, above all, of the following:
• The prolongation of the time dedicated to paid work and work outside of
the home on the part of women. This has not resulted in a redistribution of
tasks within the home nor has the time dedicated to such tasks decreased
in global terms, but the time dedicated to cooking has declined (in France
three hours less per week – data for Spain is not available). As women say,
«We don’t ever have vacation!»
• Modifications produced in the working day and in social rhythms in
general: «While one person arrives at one hour, someone else arrives at
another!»
• Changes produced in family structures (progressive decline in the
average size of households (from 3.5 to 2.9 between 1970 and 2000) and
the growth of households composed of only one person: «For two, I don’t
use the cooker!»
• Technological changes which have led to new home appliances
(microwaves, for example) that have contributed to «lightening the load in
the kitchen» along with «easier to prepare foods:» «You know how good
that instant Chinese fried rice is; it comes in a packet, you open it and in
three minutes … and you don’t have to do anything?»
A certain «individualization» and «simplification» of meals has happened in
three ways: First, there has been an increase in the number of meals eaten alone;
second, meal timetables have been extended; and third, the number and diversity
of places where people eat, both inside and outside the home, has increased.
Thus, food, even «family food» has individualized. This individualization of the
system of meals leads to «new forms» (Cf.: Herpin, 1988) such as, for example:
• Deconcentration «Before we had dinner; now, some fruit and a yogurt!»
or the exchange of solid meals at lunch and at dinner for «small» meals
(breakfast, a sandwich or a snack in the morning, the merienda and a
sandwich at night are the most frequent). At the same time, the menu of
the main meals has become more simplified; in this «new style» the main
meal is organized around one dish.

• Deimplantation «There are four of us and we each eat at a different time!»
The «new» meals don’t have a set time and place; neither the beginning
nor the end of the diverse meals are at set times. This impression of the
«open borders» of meal times leads to the appearance of hybrid forms like
the «merienda-dinner» or the «aperitif-lunch.»
• Desynchronisation «Dinner? Everyone has a different timetable!» Work
timetables are increasingly less coordinated so having communal meals is
increasingly difficult.»
• Delocalization («Eat on the sofa? Never! Well, okay, on Saturdays and
Sundays at night.» The «traditional meal» had its place in the kitchen and the
dining room. The «new forms» are not as specifically located in the different
spaces of the home nor outside. In the home, besides the traditional spaces
of the kitchen and the dining room, people now eat in the bedroom (0.9
percent of the meriendas and 0.5 percent of the dinners) and on the sofa
(10.6 percent of the dinners). Outside the home, besides restaurants, cafés
and the company dining room, there is now the street, parks or gardens (2.1
percent of lunches) and indeterminate spaces within workplaces.
The simplification and individualization of the mid-day meals is a common
phenomenon, above all in the cities of the large metropolitan areas. The
greater the distance between home and workplace, the greater is this trend.
It affects women and people employed in the service sector more, while on
the contrary, there is no correlation with age or purchasing power. The new
ways of eating refer to the number of times we eat during the day and to the
modification of the structure of meals, revealing an increasing simplification
of meals and an increase in snacking.
A lot of eating takes place outside the home, especially the mid-day meal,
usually at private restaurants or in company or school lunchrooms. In those
cases, the degree of meal structuration appears to be solid, and in comparison
with dinners follows more closely the norm of «a true meal.»
A characteristic of food modernity seems to be the introduction of food into
the workplace; not in the restaurant or company cafeteria, but rather into the
office or meeting rooms themselves. This tendency refers to the lunches and
intakes outside of the meal times. Eating in the workplace is developing even
more in the service sector. Foods are brought from home or purchased near

the workplace. The motivations for this practice are not economic, nor do they
have anything to do with dissatisfaction with the company lunchroom, but
rather they have to do with the organization of work time (or time in general).
Dinner is mainly eaten at home but doesn’t necessarily have the family
character of the past. In addition, dinner seems to have become the meal with
the greatest degree of innovation in its structure, both in terms of ingredients
as in the combinations of foods. The reason for these changes comes from the
fact that the majority of people, including children, have lunch which is the
main and most structured meal of the day outside of the home, which makes it
easier to eat «anything» for dinner.
6.5. Conclusion: health, convenience, pleasure…

depending on the circumstances
Although it would seem that the norms internalized by the majority of the
population are testimony to the degree to which nutritional discourses have
been assumed, dietary practices continue to be motivated by different material
and symbolic constraints in such a way that there does not seem to be a
direct correspondence between dietary recommendations with their accepted
definition of a healthy diet and actual consumption. In this sense, we can see
disequilibrium between socially acceptable eating norms and the attitudes
of the population and in particular, between declared practices and observed
practices. In addition, the complex process referred to as «globalisation» has
brought with it a progressive dissolution of some dietary sub-models related
to different socio-professional categories, cultural levels, economic means,
geographic origins, etc. This is because these social groups are endlessly
diversifying as individuals take on increasingly diverse identities and
consumers, motivated by complex and divergent rationales, are making daily
food choices that are more and more diverse, specific and irregular so that
following a specific food regime involves a very constricting routinisation,
and is therefore quite difficult. People’s lives are more irregular, dotted with
numerous events, changes in planned activities, variations in timetables, trips
of all types; all of this breaks down the support offered by dietary routines.
There is a big difference between the food eaten during the week and at the
weekend, and this is related to various issues such as the number of persons

eating, timetable of the meals and their structure and content. Regarding the
number of persons eating, this can increase on the weekend as a consequence
of having guests, particularly someone from the family, which often means
children visiting parents. Regarding structure, weekend meals can be more
complex as a consequence of having an aperitif and the possibility of a second
dessert, «a dessert a little more appreciated,» most frequently sweets or ice
cream. Regarding the content of meals, weekend meals are of a higher quality
and more elaborate; for example, they are accompanied by a better quality wine,
or if wine is not drunk during the week, wine may be present at the weekend.
At weekends and on holidays, time is not as much of a constraint as on work
days, and in addition, meals are again family meals. These two circumstances
together make terms such as «whim,» «pleasure,» «relax a bit,» «a special
day»… appear in relation to those days, while the expression associated with
ordinary days is «I’m overworked.» At weekends, there can even be «pleasure
in cooking.»
To obtain pleasure through food continues to be an important end, not on a
daily basis, but pleasure is a necessary condition on specific occasions. When
the meal is associated with leisure and/or sociability, when we «go out to
eat,» «eating well» understood as «eating for enjoyment,» is important for
everyone. We look to «enjoy,» eat what we «most like,» and dispense with
nutritional considerations. Economic limitations can have an influence but
within the means of each person, we try to «eat as well as we can.»
Similarly, people that say that in terms of health they are concerned with diet
during the week, also say that «when Sunday comes, we have a little extra.»
Thus, the «good behaviour» that is maintained during the week, represented
above all by vegetables and fruit, is counter posed to the «extra» or the «whim»
represented by «rice and everything else,» sweets, ice cream, wine, etc.
In terms of cooking, grilling, particularly in the preparation of meat, is usual
for ordinary days and also represents both convenience and health.
Convenience and health are the objectives pursued on ordinary days.
Convenience is important because of constraints on time, and health because
people are thinking about healthy eating most days. Thus, on holidays or
weekends, the concern for health or a more healthy diet declines, and there is
a greater interest in pleasurable food.

Differences exist, even conflicting ones, in the way in which the relationship
between health and pleasure is perceived. For some they can be compatible, for
others not. And for yet others, it may «depend.» In addition, the compatibility
between pleasure and health can refer to different conceptions. Some say that
if they eat «with pleasure» the meal will rarely «sit poorly.» Others associate
«tastier» and «more pleasurable» meals with foods that contain fat and require
«heavier» preparation, and both categories – fat and heavy – are considered
bad for health. Finally, a third attitude does not base the relationship between
pleasure and health on the types of foods and the form of cooking but rather
above all on the quantities consumed and the variety obtained during the series
of different ingestions. For them it is a question of avoiding excess on the one
hand, and deficiencies on the other.
Is there a contrast between pleasure and convenience in regards to what we
have referred to as ordinary days and holidays? These two aspects seem more
compatible than pleasure and health, in part because convenience can be one of
the components of pleasure. However, it is clear that there are different ways
to understand «convenience» on ordinary days and holidays. On holidays,
convenience can mean buying the dishes one likes already cooked and in this
way avoid «the inconvenience» of «having to spend the day in the kitchen.»
At weekends, there doesn’t seem to exist any incompatibility between
«pleasure» and «comfort» or «convenience.» Hence, for example, on a
Sunday, buying a «barbecued chicken,» one of the symbols of the antithesis
of gourmet, can represent the compatibility of pleasure and convenience
precisely «because it is Sunday and we have worked a lot during the week.»
It is the infrequency, the lack of repetition, being able to maximize leisure
time, which is what permits this greater compatibility between convenience
and pleasure. During summertime, this compatibility seems to be even more
important, as much for the fact that many families can go to the beach or other
places of leisure; as because in summer, with the heat, «it is much worse to be
stuck in the kitchen.» That cooking is not «an obligation» on holidays or days
of leisure is an increasingly important and shared aspiration of women.

VII. Learning to cook: culinary
do-it-yourself, letter soup,
and the audiovisual stew
Paloma Herrera Racionero (Polytechnic University of Valencia)
7.1. Introduction
The forms of transmitting knowledge and culinary knowledge in particular,

are among the aspects most affected by the modernizing process. As much in
that first modernization which occurred in Greece with the «clichéd» change
from myth to reason, as in the modernization undertaken in central and Anglo-
Saxon Europe beginning in the 17th century, or as in the modernization that is
still taking place among the extensive layers of the planet’s population where
pre-modern habits persist (or, more precisely, amodern). The transit of some
forms of expression and communication based on orality to others based on
writing induced drastic changes in all areas of life, from the political to daily
life; changes that also radically affected the world of food. Food would also later
come to be affected by the impact of the new communications technologies,
whether in the representation of foods in advertising, or in the new forms
of secondary orality(1) and of neomimesis with which the audiovisual media
(radio, television, Internet) offer culinary proposals.
It would however, be an error to think that the succession of supports in the
ways in which culinary knowledge has been transmitted (the voice, writing,
electricity and the electronic) have been accompanied by a parallel substitution
of the habits and practices linked to that knowledge. Many habits tied to oral
tradition, for example, are still maintained in force, and even more so in the
area of food, which to a great degree has since time immemorial moved at the
margins of the «learned» world from which writing emerged – and to which
(1) A term coined by W. Ong (1987). He distinguishes between «primary orality,» which developed in cultures that
lacked knowledge of writing, and «secondary orality» characteristic of technological cultures in which they main-
tain a new orality through all types of electronic devices (telephone, televison, computers…) but whose existence
and functioning depend on writing and printing.

it is principally directed. Such is the case of learning to cook by example, a
practice typical of oral traditions that writing mimics in recipes in newspapers
and magazines, or also the case of teaching by imitation, that television takes
up in the current profusion of cooking shows. There is nothing automatic that
connects – and certainly not by accident – the dominant form of the means of
communication and culinary practices.
These three types of transmission of culinary knowledge (oral, written and
electronic) don’t follow one from the other, but rather overlap and mix.
This leads to the coexistence of different forms of authority and legitimacy
(tradition, the written word, medical prescriptions, advertising, audiovisual
gourmets, public health administration…) whose messages are often in
contradiction, which submerges the modern diner in a permanent sensation of
uncertainty and anxiety before the lack of criteria from those that can evaluate
and resolve the cognitive dissonance. To this confusion before the enormity
and diversity of knowledge that is today required to eat well (medicine,
chemistry, biology…) is added the rejection of the knowledge and criteria
that the diner was used to managing before, giving rise to a sort of «learned
ignorance» that is a determinant of this dietary uncertainty.
Despite this (or perhaps precisely for this), although this current period has
brought with it a more or less chaotic restructuration of culinary learning
– as well as a redefinition of feminine responsibilities and roles –, it hasn’t
managed to break the more emotional connections associated with food.
The pre-eminence of reason and the practices and institutions which serve it
(writing, literacy, schooling, medicalization…) don’t seem to have replaced,
in the area of food, the numerous traditional reminiscences with which it
has always been supported. Despite the strong erosion of traditional ways
of transmitting knowledge and practices associated with food, this area
has resisted its formalization and rationalization: within it a multitude of
experiences, emotions, knowledges and practices are at play; a multitude of
circumstances and contexts, always specific and always unavoidable make
culinary knowledge a polymorphous and complex knowledge in continuous
re-elaboration.
LEARNING TO COOK: CULINARY DO-IT-YOURSELF, LETTER SOUP, AND THE AUDIOVISUAL STEW 179
7.2. The kitchen: a traditional place of feminine knowledge and oral
transmission
Culinary learning – and that of domestic knowledge in general – has

traditionally been based on practice and imitation. Until just a few years ago,
in that humble domestic academy, the kitchen, verbal instructions had been
intertwined with a whole repertoire of meaningful gestures and small rituals,
of implicit codes and different rhythms, of a multitude of miniscule choices
and of almost imperceptible routines that the girls of the house would imitate
and repeat until they would become their own. As with all oral transmission
of traditional knowledge, emotional identification with these small details
through their repeated emulation a thousand and one times is fundamental for
the chain of culinary knowledge to be maintained, recreated and prolonged.
Opposite to learning by abstract concepts and abstracted from context, the
traditional way of learning – «to see it done» and «to hear it said» again and
again – becomes indelibly recorded in the memory of the apprentice and
associated with a multitude of lived images, emotional situations and concrete
occasions. In this way each step in the preparation and handling of ingredients
and utensils is registered in the memory of the small apprentice, associated with
physical sensations (smells, tastes and colours), with situations and events,
and with emotions and impressions (fun, patience, stimulation, boredom,
expectation…). It is a very particular type of experience that our participants
know well:(2)
Q.: –Where did you learn how to cook?
A.: –What? Because I, for example… wel… ah… Okay I remember that when
I… it’s that… I was going to be married soon….of course… I worked long
hours in the street, in those times you did extra hours, and all that. I would
get home at eleven o’clock at night…Then, well,… my mother when… when it
was almost time for me to marry, she said: «listen, you have to learn to cook,
the day you get married you won’t know,» because… Of course, in that time
(2) The extracts that are reproduced and analyzed here come from qualitative data – semi-structured interviews
and group discussions – produced for the research project «Cambio en el consumo alimentario en España: factores
sociales que intervienen en la transformación de los comportamientos alimentarios [Change in food consumption
in Spain: social factors that intervene in the transformation of food behaviours]» financed by the R & D plan of the
Principality of Asturias and directed by Cecilia Díaz Méndez (University of Oviedo). The names that appear here
are fictitious. In any case, some of the ideas expressed in this chapter have been presented and discussed at the IX
Spanish Congress of Sociology, held in Barcelona from the 13th to the 15th of September, in 2007.

it was different, women, they had to know how to do everything when they got
married. No? Then I said to her: «but mama, If I’m marrying a Catalan…I’m
going to make Catalan food…Why do I want Andalusian food?» The things we
think, huh? Then no? But my mother she said to me: but it’s not a bother, you
learn.» Okay, in the end I learned some things…
(María Dolores, 62 years old, homemaker)
Asked where she learned to cook, Dolores answers with when, with how
and with why… Her apprenticeship is inseparable from the circumstances
in which it occurred: her mother, the eve of her wedding, the late hours, the
objections she raised, the advice from her mother not limited to cooking, the
types of cooking that were in conflict… The mother, in any case, is the constant
circumstance, the permanent presence in evoking the culinary apprenticeship
when the women interviewed answer the question «Where did you learn to
cook?»
–Me, with my mother who said, okay, girls, while I do one thing you… I
remember that it was a game.
(Aurora, 33 years old, management secretary)
Before the same question there are more than a few that introduce two features
that are of interest:
–At home, with my mother from when I was small. (…) I now see myself doing
things in the kitchen... unconsciously, that saw my mother doing, and later I
realize that... even how to save things, meals, how to organize them, a little…
with a life with a fast rhythm, which is how she did i.
(María, 23 years old, estudent)
–At home, seeing your mother since you were little. I asked: «Mama, and this,
how do you do it» and I would do it.
(Francis, 25 years old, accountant)
Learning to cook «at home, with your mother, since you were small» is the
institutional base over which traditional culinary practice is supported and
which at the same time contributes to consolidating it. As with all popular
institutions typical of societies where orality predominates, they are also
characterized by their overlapping with a multitude of other daily practices
instead of being segregated in spaces or figures separated from these practices.
The figure of «the mother,» unlike the teacher, is not a specialist in certain
types of knowledge or in certain techniques for transmitting them. The mother
teaches how to make the meal as well as – and in an inseparable form – how
to dress, behave, talk or express feelings. Similarly, the space of «the home,»
unlike the school, is not a space separated from the places where the other
ordinary collective activities develop. Although it is an eminently feminine
environment (the dominion of the «homemaker»), in the home many other
practices, values (from the criteria of what is «an order» to the way of planning
maintenance) and social relations (families, neighbours, visitors…) that
become indissolubly associated with the apprenticeship of «the girls» in the
kitchen converge: go and ask the neighbour for a little salt, how to impose order
on – make a dish with – the chaos of the leftovers from the previous day, what
to do when guests come to eat or when a special day is being celebrated, how
to adapt the rhythms of the meals with the rhythms of life. Daughters are like
that, «from when they are small,» interweaving their culinary apprenticeship
with a multitude of experiences, emotions, knowledge and practices to which
they will remain closely tied, whether they reinforce them or reject them. Few
things evoke our childhood in us like the smell of «that dish that my mother
made» or the disgust of «that liver or those testicles I had to eat.»
The second feature that we make reference to is this resort to the image in which
the importance of vision in transmitting knowledge of cooking is revealed.(3)
But what memory sees are as much objects (these things that María refers
to) as a subject (the mother: «seeing your mother»), as much actions (a «see
doing»: «I see myself doing,» «I saw my mother doing») as some ways of
executing them («how to save,» «how to organize»). They are those sequences
of actions that stay recorded and after, «unconsciously,» flow as if they were
spontaneous, as if there was no one executing them, as if it were any one or no
one: «I see myself doing…» as María said. The emotional identification with
exemplary figures, situating the transmission of knowledge in a context rich in
sensations, experiences and associations, the central role conferred on seeing
and, in general, on the practices and the habits instead of the concepts…are
characteristic features of learning by mimesis typical of oral cultural forms,
which is how Gloria also learned:
(3) These two features, as we will see, are recovered in this other form of transmission that we call «secondary
orality.»

Q.: –Where did you learn to cook?
A.: –Well, man, what I do here…what I do at home is because I saw my
mother do it. And, also, the things I do at home, is because I saw my mother
[LAUGHS], or in other words, the recipes and the things you do…it’s because
I saw her...
Q.: –And you do them the same way?
A.: –And I do them the same.
(Gloria, 34 years old, shop clerk)
This «and I do them the same» reveals another one of the common features
of cultures where the customs and uses are transmitted through collective
memory instead of being dictated by a positive written norm: the importance
of repetition so that acquired knowledge becomes a habit, like that practice
that – María says – comes out «unconsciously.» Certainly, this «and I do them
the same» of Gloria, of María and of many others is an impossibility that
only exists in the memory of all of them and of the many that have learned
traditional knowledge through mimesis. An impossibility that, however, is the
foundation itself of the oral transmission of knowledge, whether it be culinary
or any other type. Surely Gloria doesn’t cook the same as her mother, nor are
the products the same, nor the source of heat, nor the utensils in the kitchen,
nor the time she dedicates… nor will her daughter be there beside her, seeing
her doing while she does, as she will be in school not seeing anything being
done but rather reading or writing how things are done or how things are done
by whoever does them.
The inexistence of a fixed canon, which – on the contrary – writing does permit
(recitations, homogenization of dietetic criteria, expression of the nutritional
composition of foods, etc.), together with the material improbability that the
same situations are repeated (for variations in technique, in family conditions,
in the origin of the foods, etc.), make this «and I do them the same» be more
an a posteriori reconstructed identity based on the memories of the subjects
than this total absence of innovation, improvisation and research in which
many anthropologists tend to enclose these types of practices. The culinary
knowledge acquired by oral learning of the practices that compose it seems
more like that knowing-doing of the bricoleur with which Lévi-Strauss
characterized the «savage mind,» who innovates continually to adapt the
materials available in each moment to the uniqueness of each unrepeatable
occasion. How many trials and innovations would have required the creation
of mortar or gazpacho?
7.3. The alphabet kitchen or letter soup
But the oral transmission of culinary knowledge, where the kitchen is the place
of knowledge and women are the almost exclusive depositories and holders
of that knowledge, is something that has almost disappeared in the course
of just few generations. Practically none of the women we interviewed, now
modern women, have transmitted this knowledge to their daughters or sons,
often because they didn’t even receive it themselves.
The modernizing process, that has now gone on for four centuries but in our
kitchens has abruptly materialized in only one generation, is closely tied to
the passage from orality to writing. And, to the extent to which this passage
is understood as progress, it carries with it the consequent loss of prestige of
knowledge acquired by oral transmission (and of the subjects that hold and
transfer that knowledge) in favour of those knowledges that can be recorded
and transmitted through writing. But orality, as De Certeau reminds us (1994),
is not only an archaic mode of thought and expression, but also the fundamental
form of thought and expression in any society and at all times in history, as
the first that any human being develops from infancy. Writing and reading
come after, but only after, and situated over expressive, communicative and
intellectual habits of a basically oral matrix.
The centrality of speaking not fixed in writing promotes a great variety and
dispersion of customs, of ways of doing, of ways of cooking and eating, often
leaving wide margins for action. With the emergence and diffusion of writing,
cooking is also manifested in texts, a form of expression which, opposite to
the oral, is premeditated and not spontaneous, a fundamentally individual and
solitary activity. While doing the same activity through talking requires the
presence of others, involving thought with social life. In particular, writing
allows things to be codified, set and disseminated, in an established and
recognized repertoire, the practices and techniques elaborated in the heart of
determined groups. «Determined» groups because, although the diversity of
cuisines corresponds with the diversity of societies, only the complex societies,
as Goody argues (1995), were capable of producing a professional cuisine

different from domestic cooking. And «determined» groups also because even
within societies with a writing tradition, such as European societies, written
texts have been produced by and for the dominant elite.(4)
Opposite the prestige of the form of transmission of knowledge in the schools
and their promise of independence, the space of the kitchen and maternal
knowledge is today perceived as a place and a knowledge looked down upon,
when not simply as no knowledge, as modes of ignorance and submission to
a destiny – that of the homemaker – from which any modern girl flees. Anna
expresses it emphatically:
–I, for example, still haven’t made a roasted chicken, No, I told you, I manage,
also, on the weekend to go and eat with someone [LAUGHS] in the family that
cooks. There are a lot of things that I still haven’t done… I don’t know where
I was when we ate tongue and I never did it. Okay, I have no idea how to do it
nor… and if I can avoid learning it, well I avoid it.
(Ana, 46 years old, civil servant)
In this way, little by little and subtly, the loss of prestige of informal transmission
opens up a space for the demand for a formal education, the theory being
added to the practice, the kitchen at home being substituted by the classroom,
the cookbook or the medical prescription. During the 20th century, studies
regarding dietetic science have been included, with irregular success, in school
curriculums in the majority of European countries, published in specialized
journals, newspapers, magazines aimed at women, in a whole range of media
that gather and disseminate the new nutritional and health knowledge related to
food; a part of a wider movement begun in the industrialized countries aimed
at the formalization of knowledge (Mennell, 1996: 230). Science entered fully
into the diet and all types of experts (doctors, chefs, politicians, journalists…)
began to take over the transmission of culinary knowledge from the family.
A different language began to be spoken, distant from the physical sensations
and common language in which families expressed themselves, incorporating
words, concepts and formulas that were far from daily experiences and
knowledge. The popular understanding of «eating» transformed its meaning
into «nourishing oneself,» into the rational ingestion of those compounds that
(4) It’s important not to forget that in the 1950s close to 30 percent of the Spanish population was still illiterate;
the «cookbook» was stored in the collective oral memory. Currently UNESCO estimates that 800 million people
in the world don’t know how to read or write.
provide the necessary energy for the maintenance of vital and social functions
and for avoiding potential disorders and illnesses. To «nourish oneself» centres
on the nutritive substances of food and leaves aside not only pleasure but also
concrete products and their preparation and combination in dishes along with
who produces or prepares them, the how to do it and the whole complex of
symbolic values and collective practices traditionally associated with eating
and cooking.
Q.: –What does eating well mean to you?
A.: –Well this, balanced eating, you have to eat carbohydrates, vitamins,
fibre… all that; control the calories, don’t fill up on chorizo or bacon, don’t
eat junk...
(Pedro, 38 years old, director of a branch of a bank)
«Eating well» is, for Pedro, ingesting a series of substances impossible to detect
with our senses, while the products that he identifies concretely are curiously
«junk.» Pedro now eats ideas («carbohydrates, vitamins, fibre…all that»), not
food («chorizo, bacon»). Nutritional ideas permit him to calculate proportions
(«balanced eating») and exercise control («control the calories»), while the
habitual food – escaping from all measure of this type –(5) is associated with
excess («fill up on chorizo»). In him the self control that Mennel (1996) refers
to manifests itself under the form of this Cartesian rationality, also typical of
modernity, which demands analyzing the object (food), breaking it down into
its elementary components (proteins, vitamins, carbohydrates…), abstracting
them from all context and situation, so that after, through synthesis, they are
recomposed to their initial being, the food, but now as a mere aggregate of
those essential components.
Under this new rational dependency, the diner can no longer turn to traditional
dietary guidelines. Although these guidelines have surely been internalized
since childhood and, in any case, they are at the diner’s free disposition as he
or she only has to consult the surrounding environment, they have been by and
large systematically discredited by the authority (experts) as mere superstitions
and beliefs without scientific basis. With traditional culinary knowledge
discredited, and bodily sensations also discredited as a source of information,
(5) Traditional measures in the kitchen are effectively difficult to quantify: «a pinch,» «a fistful,» «to taste»… not
to mention the criteria of Carmen: «Salt, throw it in like crazy!.»

the diner feels incapable of acquiring all the knowledge (physiological,
botanical, medical, chemical…) now necessary to know how to eat. Trapped
between one form of ignorance and another, the demand to eat using rational
criteria brings him or her toward absolute confusion, a new form of ignorance
that could be called «rational ignorance.» The following dialogue maintained
in a group discussion gives us some clues about the reasons for this typically
modern ignorance:
(Group 2 young persons)
M.: –Okay, it’s that now, to begin, it’s that I don’t know what they these things
have.
G.: –Man! But you more or less know.
P.: –But she knows that vegetables and legumes have those things, that fruit
and fish… but listen…
G.: –This is interesting to me because I have my bad eaters, in particular the
older one, so I have to substitute a lot of foods, and I’ve had to learn, , I have
the older one who has never tried a pineapple in his life, never in his life tried
many fruits, or onions, the older one only wants apples and bananas, and
when they’re in season, peaches. So then I try to substitute another type o
vitamins, that’s why I’m interested…
Y.: –Of course, that’s why my sister has dried fruits and nuts, that’s what she
uses.
G.: –Look, the dried fruits and nuts, I don’t know any mother at the time for a
morning snack who gives her kid a fistful of peanuts.
P.: –Every afternoon, after lunch…
M.: –Listen, it’s that to me, if you bring peanuts to go to school and your
schoolmates will laugh in your face, come on, it looks bad to go to school with
peanuts, so you bring a donut.
Interwoven with the initial discussion about whether the lack of knowledge
confessed to by M. is «more or less» a form of knowledge, as G. qualifies, or
a diffuse knowledge about certain blurry objects («those things»), as P. says,
is this reiterated recourse to the term «things» to allude to food. For M. «these
things» is the abstract name under which are grouped, indistinctly, the concrete
dishes that she can prepare (a salad, a stew…), the generic categories used by
nutritionists that P. mentions («vegetables and legumes,» «fruit and fish»…),
concrete and singular edible objects (like the «peanuts»), the packages that you
can buy, and even the food brands (like that «donut» that the child has). This
heterogeneous multitude of «things» are characterized not by their smell or
function, but rather by their chemical composition: «what these things have.»
But there is something more, which G. expresses literally: «I have to substitute
a lot of foods» for…«another type of vitamins» (with which the word food is
identified with a different type of vitamin). In this substitution a complete
manner of thought is condensed: substitution of the concrete for the abstract,
of the totality (the stew, the dish) for its elementary components. It is in this
transition where the «rational ignorance» of the ordinary diner is generated,
who is usually not in condition to accede – or has no interest in acceding – to
this type of knowledge, which is in permanent review. «The attitudes toward
food that emerged in the beginning of the 60s – concluded Tannahill (1989:
347) – introduced confusion not only in the logic of the table, but also in the
minds of the people that sat at it.» This author pins this «rational confusion»
on the permanent obsolescence and reformulation of scientific conclusions
about the healthiness of foods.
Eating seems to have converted into an authentic discipline, not only in the
punitive sense that converts it into a source of suffering (diets, anorexia,
obesity…), but also in the academic sense. Eating is now something that you
have to study; as G. says, «I’ve had to learn.» If we add to this continued
obsolescence of the «necessary» technical knowledge for «eating well» the no
less systematic obsolescence of the criteria and products promoted by the food
industry for introducing nonstop innovations, it would not be an exaggeration
to say the diner is subject to double work (scientific and industrial) to maintain
a constantly «eroding» dietary competency. Eating becomes a discipline you
have to study during your whole life:
(Group 1 Senior citizens)
–Soon buying a yogurt will be like doing a masters, that is to say…
–Low-fat yogurt, creamy, Greek,… twenty things, and you say, okay, My God!
What do I choose?!
–You get to where the yogurts are and you say, which do I want!
–The yogurt I’ve always eaten.
–And the milk? Low-fat, goats milk,…
–The bifidus and those things...
–Before they put it in the yogurt you always eat.

–But the milk...
–There are too many things, with fluoride, for cakes, for cheese…
The whole conversation of this group is marked by a complete sensation
of incompetence and uncertainty, both in respect to the expert knowledge
required («like doing a masters,» «the bifidus and those things») and with
respect to the elementary criteria for consumption («there are too many
things,» «My God! What do I choose?!»). Before choosing, there only two
possibilities seem to fit. One, to regain the lost autonomy: «The yogurt I’ve
always eaten.» The other, «do a masters.» But now there is no way to find the
yogurt you’ve always eaten anywhere, nor will the masters – which apart from
it being difficult – guarantee that at the end of studying for it, you won’t have
to begin again to update what has been learned. In either case, eating well has
become an unreachable goal:
A.: –Hmmm… a utopia.
(Virginia, 34 years old, university professor)

A.: –Eating well? Something very difficult. I don’t know what eating well is,
and if it’s what the doctors say, something impossible.
(Mila, 41 years old, homemaker)
To eat well, following all the expert prescriptions is seen as «something

impossible,» «a utopia,» and as a consequence, as a perpetual effort to
adapt or incorporate a multitude of knowledge and criteria which are often
changing and contradictory. From doing the shopping to managing the
leftovers, everything converts to work requiring qualifications and previous
schooling: to be good with numbers, to decipher and compare miniscule
inscriptions, to possess a certain aptitude for the hermeneutical and linguistic,
for biology and chemistry…all is knowledge that is increasingly inscribed in
the dietary process. But nevertheless, the Spanish continue eating every day.
What’s more, they do so – as repeatedly appear in our interviews – with the
sensation of knowing how to eat, with the impression even, that «they don’t
eat like in Spain anywhere.» Not only do they eat but they continue cooking,
learning how to cook, innovating and even trying to harmonize the rational
and universal dietetic ideal with their different concrete situations: money, at
work, likes, time… Because, as in any aspect of our lives, our actions are not
simply the result of putting into practice information or knowledge, rather, this
information or knowledge is incorporated through other inherited knowledge
and previous actions – of all types and from different areas – which interact
and acquire sense through this process. The precepts of nutritional discourse
are not simply learned, but are integrated within a totality of knowledges or
previous practices which are inscribed in ordinary situations and which give
them sense.
7.4. Secondary orality or the electronic recuperation of talking
Certainly the culinary culture has not formed a part of what has been
considered «learned» and respectable knowledge and, therefore, has not
merited its inclusion into the school curriculum. Before the dilemma of,
on the one hand, the weakening of its informal transmission by maternal
channels and, on the other, the difficulty of transferring culinary knowledge
by rational and abstract channels, this knowledge has found other channels,
also informal, through which it continues its transmission, but now not only to
new generations but to the social whole. Other means for learning enter into
play: friends, books, the media, the fish shop or the butcher. In a study by the
Institute of European Food Studies about sources of information used by the
population to achieve a healthy diet, it seems that Europeans, independent of
their country of origin, use the same sources: television, radio, magazines and
health professionals. The principal source varies however according to the
country. In Belgium, France, Greece and Portugal, for example, they more
often cite health professionals.(6) This is not the case in the rest of the countries,
particularly Spain, where television plays a principal role and is revealed as the
fundamental means of oral transmission of culinary knowledge today.(7) But
it is no longer that primary orality, that orality where books don’t fit, where
the contacts are face to face, where both the broadcaster as well as the means
become one – the mother, the fruit seller, the neighbour –, where the message
(6) Institute of European Food Studies, Report No. 2. Influences on food choice and sources of information on
healthy eating at http://www.eufic.org/article/es/show/consumer-insights [in Spanish].
(7) As was confirmed in the General Study of the Media, in 2006 television overwhelmingly occupied first place
in audience ranking (88.6%), distantly followed by radio (56.1 percent) and magazines (47.7 percent). An excellent
analysis about the different information channels and their repercussion on culinary learning can be found in M.
Gracia, 1996.

tries to touch feeling more than reason and diligently attaches to the concrete
reality of the moment. In this modern electronic culture, orality and writing
are reunited(8) – if they have ever been separated – leading to new forms of
transmission of culinary knowledge, which in a certain sense maintain the
fundamental aspects of its traditional characteristics. Perhaps it is here where
the success of these television programmes dedicated to cooking comes from,
if we judge them by their expansion and audience level.(9)
If in other areas, the passage from orality to writing and from this to
audiovisual media has followed a slow and explicit sequence, in the area
of the communication of culinary knowledge the passage has almost been
from the first to the last, with barely an impact from written transmission.(10)
The audiovisual media, and especially radio and television, recreate in
good measure many of the typical characteristics of this first orality which
culinary practices have always possessed. On cooking shows on television,
effectively words are presented indissolubly from the images broadcast and
the manipulations of the different materials and utensils. Televised culinary
communication is also communal, as although it is directed at an anonymous
and diverse public, it is received in the privacy of the home and afterwards
commented on in small circles of family, work or neighbours. It is also a
communication that invites participation, as it combines a certain sensation
of naturalness, spontaneity and closeness with conspirational signals to the
audience and simulated dialogues.
Nevertheless, the secondary orality that is common to the transmission
of culinary knowledge through audiovisual media offers some important
differences with respect to that orality through which daughters learned from
their mothers and grandmothers. These differences suggest, in general, a
renewed association of «maternal cooking» with the figure of the bricoleur,
(8) A meeting that often follows an inverse direction. If in the past things were passed from the oral to the written,
now we are passing from the written to the oral (as can be verified with some of the programmes on food that we
analyze next).
(9) In the second week of December, 2006, for example, we counted 102 cooking progammes broadcast on 23
different channels. Of these, 10 programmes were broadcast on the five national channels with open broadcasting,
16 on autonomous or local channels and the rest on private channels, among which stand out the Canal Cocina
[Cooking Channel], completely dedicated to cooking and whose audience is situated in a middle position in the
ranking, above thematic channels dedicated to film, documentaries or sports. (Directory of Cooking Programmes
on TV http:// chefuri.net/chefuri_tv/, y Estudio General de Medios).
(10) Despite the boom in sales of cookbooks and books about cooking/cuisines in the general and specialized press
(between the years 2000 and 2005 these types of publications grew nearly 38% according to data from the INE).
in comparison with an «audiovisual cooking» that shares many of the typical
features that come from the «engineer,» according to the opposition that Lévi-
Strauss formulated. Thus, for example, where the first imaginatively combines
ingredients previously available and often already prepared (those carrots that
are going to go bad, that stock left over from yesterday), the second presents
before the camera a selection of materials acquired and prepared expressly
for the occasion, already weighed and counted to their exact measure for the
previously formulated purpose («chick peas with octopus in a Jerez sauce»),
which will be methodically manipulated in a pre-established order (according
to the show’s script) and of which nothing will be missing or unused. This
asepsis in the provision of ingredients; the learning of bi-dimensional
cooking that they show on the screen excludes the whole range of dimensions
that primary orality incorporates: the tactile sensations of the textures and
temperatures of the ingredients, the tastes, the smells, the interruptions and the
unexpected… The audiovisual secondary orality recovers the spoken word,
through which cooking has always been taught, but at the price of sacrificing
the remaining secondary qualities (smell, touch, taste…) in the interests of a
sense of vision whose primacy over the other senses is a characteristic feature
of modern society.(11) «Maternal cooking» is indissoluble from its circumstance
– time, place, end – which gives it sense: the meal is prepared just before
eating, next to the place where it will be eaten and for those who will come to
eat it. «Audiovisual cooking» is, on the contrary, completely abstracted from
any pragmatic context that isn’t related to the exhibition of the activity itself:
the meal is prepared – and broadcast on the programme – in a time and a
space without any relationship to its use. Nor is the meal prepared – or taught
how to be prepared – before eating, nor is the kitchen a kitchen in a house,
nor, of course, is the meal prepared so that someone can eat it. Rather, it is a
merely self referential activity: cooking to be seen cooking. The same as in the
transmission of knowledge in schools, it is not a response to some previously
experienced needs and appropriated for the occasion, but instead a programme
created in a generic form in an office; the spectator, like the student, doesn’t
«learn doing» but rather trusts that one day he/she will have the opportunity to
put into practice the abstract knowledge learned.
(11) For Simmel (1977) the passage to modernity can be seen in the growing prominence of the eye over the ear, of
the gaze of the urban spectator over the sound of conversations and greetings in traditional societies.

Eating, and of course all the activities connected with it (thinking of food,
shopping, cooking, conserving what is cooked), is increasingly less a question
of learning and more a question of teaching, less a knowing-doing and more
a type of engineering knowledge. Two examples should make this clear. One,
condensed in the headline of a national newspaper: «Wanted, an Arguiñano
of the diet to teach how to eat.»(12) The second, the following conversation that
took place in one of our discussion groups:
C.: –Me, since I watch television in the morning on channel one, what do
you call that show, that one... twith all the doctors to know how to eat, the
vitamins? The fibre, The, that’s very important…
B.: –And you learn a lot, yeah.
C.: –I was watching it a lot, but in the end, I was all morning at home watching
the TV and that can’t be.
D.: –And you don’t do anything else.
C.: –How do you do your work, But it’s very important, there are things that
you don’t know, and the doctor explains them, how to eat, what has more
fibre, what you have to eat or shouldn’t eat, what balances. It tells you what
you have so that you know what you have to eat or not.
Various: –It’s very good.
In food converted into a matter of teaching, and audiovisual teaching, the
presence of the mother, and even the TV chef, can be perfectly substituted
by «all the doctors to know how to eat,» at the same time that those invisible
entities, the vitamins and fibres, can occupy the place – paradoxically, in a
media dominated by the image – of the cabbage and the lentils. Similarly, it is
obvious that the distancing between knowing and doing, a distancing to which
María opposes that «learning to do, doing» and which could even turn into an
incompatibility between both practices, between learning and doing: if you are
«all morning…watching the TV» to learn how to cook «you don’t do anything
else,» then «how do you do your work?», in particular, how do you do that
work of preparing the meal?
It is worth pointing out a final difference between both types of orality, primary
and secondary, in the transmission of culinary knowledge: the role of the sex
(12) Newspaper Expansión, 07-06-2004.
of the agents in different cases.(13) The feminine figure of the mother has been
replaced – except in unusual and significant exceptions – by the masculine
chef, (14) and in the same movement the physical presence of the daughter,
standing together with the mother in the kitchen has been substituted for that
of the anonymous spectator seated in the living room. The masculine authority
displaces the feminine at the same time as the living room prevails over the
kitchen and passive and decontextualized reception occupies the place of
upright and active learning and situated in its time and place. In a cooking
programme chosen at random,(15) a good part of the specificities of secondary
orality considered up to now are synthesized. On the one hand, it simulates
characteristic aspects of primary orality, like naturalness, closeness or direct
questioning or discussion: «A lot of you will comment now, of course, the
beans…!» «Kids, you have to eat some of everything!,» etc. On the other
hand, it obeys a strict script and production process previously written and
elaborated that remains hidden which doesn’t stop the show from ending with
a totally natural; «Thanks to the scriptwriters and producers!»(16) On the one
hand, continual references to the oral and feminine origins of the culinary art
are made («as the mothers and grandmothers said»), to the origin, seasonal
nature and singularity of the ingredients («beans from Tolosa, harvested in
October,» «berries from Beasaín or one of the towns nearby») and to other
traditional values that are legitimized when the authority of the television
declares them a source of authority. On the other hand, these values are
continually in contradiction with modern values that define an abstract diet,
a decontextualized nutrition, an ideal diner and politically correct dietary
behaviour: «the proteins from the beans,» «once a week, legumes,» «take care
of your health!», «Thanks to all those who are fighting against obesity!» In
audiovisual culinary education the chef and the doctor play similar and often
interchangeable roles. The convergence of both figure can be appreciated in
their common pedagogical tone and in the symbolic elements such as the
(13) In the last congress of Madrid Fusión, «an important international gastronomic Summit» (El País, 14-1-2007),
of the 37 chefs invited, only three were women.
(14) This is how the famous chef Santi Santamaría put it: «The references from the home have disappeared, the
oral, the matriarchal. They cook less at home. We [the professional cooks] are the representatives of a lost world,
that we have to find again» (El País, 18-12-2005).
(15) Arguiñano en tu cocina, Tele 5, 4-1-2007.
(16) Writing is also present, although in a secondary form, in the tables that summarize the relationship between
the ingredients and their quantities, or in the promotion of the chef/host of his own written work: «Buy my latest
book!.»

white coat through which both dress their authority or the shared practice
of the broadcasting of recipes, recipes in which they often interchange their
respective roles: if the recipe of the doctor teaches how to eat, the recipe of the
chef teaches about healthy nutritional habits.
7.5. Moral cooking
Up to now we have seen some of the contrasts that the passage from «oral
cooking» to «letter soup» and, from this to the «audiovisual stew» implies,
but despite all this, this traditional orality that we have been alluding to
seems to be quite strong. Its strength can be clearly observed in the situations
of face to face interaction that are established when shopping for certain
products like meat, fish or fruit. The habitual interaction between buyer and
seller generates a relationship of trust that often moves the buyer to solicit
information and knowledge from the seller, about both the state of the food
as well as advice for its preparation, preservation, etc. In a context of food
abundance, where choice forms part of our daily life, and in a context of
ignorance and marked risk as much for the real distance that separates us
from all the processes which go with the products we consume as for the
periodic development of the so-called «food crises,» the need to trust forms
part of the act of eating itself. We need to eat and, therefore, we need to trust.
The maintenance of habits and routines as well as the knowledge acquired
by our own experience helps us to consolidate a certain sense of security
and confidence, but in a culture such as ours, in great measure governed by
permanent innovation, these mechanisms fail and there is no time or criteria
to create others. Giddens (1999) analyzes how the forms of life introduced
by modernity have swept away all the traditional forms of social order
provoking a «lifting off» (an «un-anchoring») of social relations from their
local contexts and restructuring them after in undefined space-time intervals,
something possible thanks to the «reliability» of the information contributed
by expert systems. Reliability is not conferred so much on individuals as
on abstract capacities and supposes, to a great extent, an act of faith as it is
impossible to have access to and/or comprehension of all those knowledges
that emerge from abstract rationality, even though we often dominate the
rudiments of the principles upon which it is based (ibíd.: 136):
Q.: –Do you read the labels?
A.: –Not usually, not being things that have preservatives.
Q.: –And you trust the information on the labels?
A.: –Yes, well I don’t have much choice; I don’t have any other way of
analyzing if what’s there is good or not.
(Amelia, 55 years old, retired early from a bank)
Amelia trusts, «I don’t have much choice.» As she can’t talk about the
foods she buys with the producer or with the distributor, she has to rely(17)
on the written information on the labels or packaging. Impossible to know
everything some foods contains, she relies on expert systems, a reliability
that is based on the proven experience that such systems generally work as
they should work (ibíd.: 38). But these systems too often fail (food crises), are
in contradiction (scientific debates) or even deceive (commercial interests). In
these circumstances the reliability of abstract systems cracks and we find refuge
in persons, in face to face relations, as we look for advice but also, someone to
take on responsibility:
Q.: –For example, when buying meat, what do you base it on? One type or
another or one piece or another.
A.: –Hmm… As I don’t have much control,… and I don’t know…now little
by little I’m getting to know my butcher, no?; before you knew your butcher
and he knew you. But what I do, apart from having looked for a place that
everyone recommended to me and that seemed to give you good service, I
trust a lot in the butcher. I still don’t trust all of my skills [LAUGHS], my
qualities,…in other words, my…my visual skills, no?: to manage to identify
if the piece is fresh or not, anyway, I still don’t feel capable. So, I confide a
lot on the sense of the butcher. The regular butcher, the one you always go
to. I think he has no reason to cheat me; and then I tell him, «Give me a filet
for breading,» and he gives me one, and if I don’t like it, than later I’ll say to
him; «hey, not much of a filet you gave me!,» no? But I end up taking what the
butcher tells me.
(Rosana, 37 years old, social worker)
(17) We reserve the terms «trust» and «confidence» for those situations in which faith has a collective dimension
(confidence), as much for being shared «with» others as for being deposited «in» others. «Rely» and «reliability»
refer more to the security that individual and rational scrutiny provides of the characteristics of that which we
decide – or not – to consider reliable. Thus, we «trust» in the butcher, while we «rely» on the labels. An analysis of
the distinction between both concepts can be seen in Gidden, 1999.

Rosana trusts in concrete persons in concrete situations: the butcher, «the one
you always go to.» From the first she didn’t expect to only obtain information
and advice; she also expected the concrete responsibility («Hey, not much of
a filet you gave me!») that only face to face contact guarantees.(18)
We don’t want to end without first making a small reflection. Although the
family seems to no longer be the privileged place for the transmission of
culinary techniques and knowledge – it is no longer where «how to make» the
food is taught – it continues to have a very important role in moral teaching,
in the what and how we «should» eat:
R.: –(…) I’ve never tried lentils. However, I, I do think they are important
in the diet of children, they always eat them in school, and now I still make
lentils, but I don’t try them, I don’t try them, it’s something I know how to do,
because I’ve seen the recipe and I cook them, but they try them, more salt, less
salt, but I’m incapable of putting a spoon of them in my mouth. That’s the way
it is… and it’s an obsession that, that my mother gave to me, then I managed to
not transmit any obsession I have about food, they eat everything, everything
is good.
Various: –Of course, of course.
N.: –That is good, that they eat everything.
A.: –That happens to me with sardines, the smell now,… and I buy them,
yesterday for example I bought sardines, and I wash them, and…and I have
that smell, and I start to get dizzy and it makes me nauseous, and I put them
on the table, and there, and I have to eat them, It’s like I’m on a roller coaster,
I can’t take it.
In R. the traditional chain of transference of culinary practices – from the
mother – has been broken, and she doesn’t remember how to make lentils
(«I’ve seen the recipe and I cook them»), only the aversion to them. Nor
does she teach her children how to prepare them, but the lentils continue
(18) Callejo (2005) asks how consumers can reconcile what he calls, copying Fischler, the «paradox of trust,» in
other words, the «necessity for trust in a field [that of food] in which you have to distrust» (2005: 185). Beginning
from a qualitative analysis, the persons interviewed, before the awareness of their ignorance, of their «not knowing,»
demonstrate a need for trust that they find in personal mediators that they consider experts but, above all, who
they consider «trustworthy» persons (ibíd: 186). The same author notices three spaces of trust connected to the
form of control over food processes and it is in these spaces where abstract trust and an emotional and strongly
personalized trust are reconciled (ibíd.: 194 and ss.).
being a vehicle for the transmission of moral values. If her mother’s lentils
transmitted to R. an aversion and rejection, those that she prepares for her
children have to transmit the opposite: «they eat everything, everything is
good,» says R. and N. agrees. As are the lentils for R., so are the sardines for
A., nothing but a moralizing pretext. Neither of them strictly cooks a meal,
but rather a moral stew. This is how another group reiterates it:
–And you eat in front of them, even though you don’t like it, so that they say:
look, mama eats it, I also eat it.
–You can’t condition yourself, I think that, anyway, the Spanish, we are also
animals of habit, if we are used to certain things from when we are small,
others can change it, but there are certain ideas that you have very clearly.
–Of course, because you saw it in your family, they educated you…
–«I don’t like it,» well okay, but why don’t you like it? Well, because in my
house we didn’t use that type of oil, or eat lentils, or how the meat is cooked
and with all those things…it’s difficult for me, because you think that what you
did during your whole life is what is done well.
«We are animals of habit,» «you saw it in your family,» «what you did
during your whole life is what is done well»… these are expressions that are
intimately tied to emotional needs. Not only is the decisive importance of
food socialization in the behaviours themselves assumed («look, mama eats
it»), but it is also expressed in the decided will to continue this socializing
function, «even though you don’t like it,» through a process of education
and learning. Contrary to an «eating ethic,» for which the good and bad to
eat comes from rational criteria and decisions, this gives precedence to an
«eating morality» (from mos, moris: «custom») where «what is done well» is
dictated by what you have done «during your whole life,» for what you used
or «didn’t use,» for the habits and customs. The family and tradition continue
to be the key institutions in the process of dietary socialization, up to the point
that anomic tendencies that are probable in the absence of family bring about
rigorous regulated constraints when who experiences them is someone who
has responsibility for a family:

(Group 3 young people)
–And I can allow myself to not prepare a meal, a dinner, because the only one
that’s going to complain is me, but you [those of you that have family] you
can’t change it.
–I think that the children are a priority, and they can determine a lot; although
you don’t like to cook you end up cooking, although you don’t like something,
it determines a lot having a family, because you see yourself as much more
responsible, and you try to have a much more Mediterranean diet.
–Balanced.
–A menu less precooked, and that’s everything, everything…
Studies such as Bourcier E. Bourcier et al. (2003) have shown how the family,
and more concretely the mother, continues being today the principal influence
that shapes and defines the likes and culinary habits of the persons under her
care.(19) They are her guidelines which have a normative function, as it is from
them that other dietary practices are judged, such as those that originate from
doctors or dieticians, in terms of knowing or not knowing how to eat. And it is
through them that her own practices are governed, as much the directly culinary
as those directed to educate who she has under her care.(20) They are norms
that, as these authors show – and as our interviews also reveal –, the persons
responsible for diet in the home impose through very intuitive strategies,
based on their own previous family experience and not always in accordance
with the nutritional canons established by external agents/experts.
7.6. Conclusions
In only a couple of generations «modern life» has eroded the ancestral

forms and criteria through which culinary knowledge has been transmitted
(19) Gracia (1996) also makes, for the Catalan case, this assessment: the mother continues being the principal
channel for the diffusion of dietary knowledge and, for this, the author prefers to speak of a generalized disinterest
for learning a task that is not socially valued (like all the other domestic tasks) rather than an explicit rupture
(ibíd: 138).
(20) Díaz Méndez (2005: 88 and ss.) analyzes, beginning from an empirical study within Spain, how the normative
substrate which underlies the forms of eating and preparing foods has been profoundly altered as a consequence of
diverse factors (work, systems of production, new family situations…). This doesn’t mean that the new food world
finds itself before an absence of norms, more likely it is the opposite, there appears a heterogeneous mix of norms,
fairly stable and recognizable, but that don’t function as a shield but rather as a support for action, that is actively and
reflexively revised by the diner, as much for feeding him/herself as others.
and reproduced. These forms and criteria were basically oral and informal
and were in the hands of women. Nevertheless, while this process has led
to other areas of knowledge formulated in terms of an abstract rationality,
held by experts and transmitted through formal teaching based on writing,
the learning of cooking seems to resist taking this step. Trapped between
habits now delegitimized (and often impossible to put into practice) and
rational dietary criteria difficult to understand and frequently contradictory
(no less impossible to carry out), the modern diner is submerged in a sort of
«educated ignorance» that leads to uncertainty and anxiety. The current media
contributes a heterogeneous synthesis of both forms of culinary teaching,
incorporating certain features of oral transmission in the «secondary orality»
that characterizes them while adding others that are common to modern and
rational nutrition. Perhaps the proliferation of magazines, books and television
programmes about gastronomy owe their success to this. But, perhaps also
for this, the cacophony of information that they broadcast only contributes to
increasing even more the uncertainty and unease on matters related to food.
Despite the desire of experts (dieticians, public health administration, doctors,
scientists) to make culinary knowledge a deductive knowledge that applies
general and abstract principles to concrete cases, culinary knowledge re-
forms, now under new forms, with a «knowing-doing» in which conversations
and observation, recipes and essays, chemistry and flavours, imitation and
improvisation and reason and emotion converge.

VIII. Childhood obesity: new eating habits
and new health risks
Javier Aranceta Bartrina (Spanish Society of Community Nutrition)
8.1. Introduction
Obesity can be defined as the accumulation of excess adipose tissue. In

children fat deposits are found primarily at the subcutaneous level, while in
young people and adolescents, as in adults, there are also intra-abdominal fat
deposits, a pattern associated with a greater risk of metabolic disorders.
The phenomenon manifests in an alteration in body composition with an
increase in body fat. This increase in the deposits of adipose tissue in the
majority of cases is accompanied by an increase in body weight and supposes
a considerable increase in risk for secondary health problems that affect the
quality of life and life expectancy.
Obesity is a chronic disease of multifactorial origin in the development of
which genetic as well as environmental factors are implicated. The available
scientific evidence reflects that in 95% of the cases of obesity there is a clear
environmental component related to a sedentary lifestyle and eating habits
that favour a positive energy balance and, as a consequence the gradual
deposit of fat.(1)
The International Obesity Taskforce (IOTF) and the World Health Organization
(WHO) have described obesity as the epidemic of the 21st century because
of the dimensions it has acquired, its impact on morbidity and mortality
and quality of life and on added health costs.(2) The problem is not limited
to developed countries. Also in countries in economic transition and even in
specific urban areas of countries in development the progressive increase in
(1) Salas Salvadó et al., 2007.

(2) OMS, 2000.
CHILDHOOD OBESITY: NEW EATING HABITS AND NEW HEALTH RISKS 201
obesity has been described as an emerging problem in recent years; one which
coexists with malnutrition in many cases.(3) The growing number of overweight
and obese children is particularly worrying.(4)
A genetic susceptibility toward the accumulation of fat in the adipose tissue
was perhaps an element tied to survival in times of scarcity in the past, but
currently its biological expression favours the establishment of excess body
weight in an increasing number of individuals.
Food transit and the decrease in energy expended through physical activity
seem to be the causal factors most implicated. The decrease in vital caloric
expenditure is due in good measure to advances in modern society; less effort
in the productive process, mechanization of domestic chores and mobility;
less expenditure for thermoregulation and perhaps also, less effect from the
mechanisms of specific dynamic action from prepared foods. Demographic
and cultural changes have affected the habits and lifestyles of children and
their families. «Overeating is not a personality defect, It more likely constitutes
a hereditary defect in the design of the organism, a weakness that natural
selection could not avoid,»(5) says Harris.
The WHO has announced that if this tendency continues, excess bodyweight
will affect the whole European population by the year 2040, which will without
a doubt have grave consequences on all health indicators and the social fabric
of the developed world.(6)
8.2. Criteria for the categorization of weight of the child population
With the aim of estimating the proportion of body fat different indexes have
been employed that relate weight and height. The most used is the Body Mass
Index (BMI) or Quetelet Index, calculated as the relationship of a person’s
weight expressed in kilograms divided by the square of their height (kg/m2).
In the adult population, the WHO has accepted this criteria and the
IOTF recommend that the value of the BMI be used to define obesity in
epidemiological studies that estimate its prevalence, with the aim that results
(3) Martorell, 2002.
(4) IOTF, 2007.
(5) Harris, 1991.
(6) WHO, 2003.

obtained from different studies and countries be comparable.(7) Some how an
international consensus has been reached, of which scientific societies whose
principal interest is centred on this theme also form a part, such as the Spanish
Society for the Study of Obesity (SEEDO) and its European (EASO) and
International federations (IASO).
The WHO and also the SEEDO, consider normal values for the BMI in adults to
be between 18.5 and 24.9 kg/m2. They categorize as obese persons with a BMI
greater or equal to 30. The SEEDO(8) considers as overweight values of BMI
superior to 25 and also contemplates a risk interval for values between 27 and
29.9 kg/m2 when accompanied by other risk factors (consumption of tobacco,
hypertension, diabetes).
However, it is more complicated to evaluate the BMI or the relative weight
in children and adolescents because they are in a process of growth and
development and both their weight and their height is increasing, which makes
it necessary to also take into account age when interpreting the BMI. What’s
more, due to variations in body adiposity in function of sex, puberty, changes
in size and speed of growth, the BMI must be interpreted in the context of
specific age and sex.(9)
Although diverse methods have been proposed to assess obesity in childhood
and adolescence, the estimation of obesity in these age groups from the BMI
is accepted both in clinical practice and in epidemiology. The value of the
BMI obtained in the child must be compared with a reference distribution,
taking into account exact age and sex.(10) There does exist, nevertheless, certain
controversy about what should be the cutting off points to employ in defining
overweight and obesity in childhood and adolescence and what reference
distribution is most adequate in each case.
Currently there exists a reasonable consensus, above all in the United States, to
define obesity beginning from BMI values superior to the value specific for the
age and sex of the 95th percentile in the reference tables, and overweight from
(7) IOTF, 2000.

(8) SEEDO, 2007.
(9) Freedman et al., 2005.
(10) Also very useful are skinfolds, especially the tríceps skinfold, and other methods can be useful in specific
circumstances, such as electrical bioimpedance, dual x-ray absorptiometry and nuclear magnetic resonance
(Rolland-Cachera, 2001).
the 85th percentile. In Europe and Asia they continue using the 97th percentile
to define obesity and the 90th percentile for overweight. However, it is obvious
that within the same population a percentile X always defines a percentage of
population (1-X) in itself. Thus the 95th percentile defines a 5 percent, and the
85th percentile a 15 percent. For this reason, this definition of obesity is very
useful in comparing distinct population subgroups in relation to the average
(for example, the percentage of relative obesity in distinct regions of Spain
around the average) but doesn’t serve to quantify the magnitude of obesity in
a country or to compare the prevalence of obesity between countries,(11) unless
they use BMI tables that serve as a reference.(12)
In 1997 the WHO defined obesity starting at 18 years of age with a BMI
³ 30kg/m2 and overweight for values of BMI starting from 25. Cole et al.
(2000) starting from this consensus, proposed redefining the cutoff point that
allows an estimate of the rate of overweight and obesity. This work group
used as a reference the values of weight and height obtained in a wide sample
of boys and girls from countries from six continents. They have developed
reference tables from the BMI for international comparisons and they propose
defining obesity not from a determined percentile, but rather from the value of
the percentile that corresponds to the BMI ³ 30 kg/m2 at 18 years old (obesity)
or the BMI ³ 25 kg/m2 (overweight) at the same age.
In any case, to define obesity in children is not a simple question and the
debate continues. Probably what would be most adequate for defining
childhood obesity would be combining a BMI value above the 95th percentile
in reference tables suitable to the context in which they are used together with
another parameter that indicates an increase in the amount of fat accumulated,
such as, for example, the thickness of a skinfold.(13)
The evaluation of childhood obesity is important because this is the best
moment to try to avoid the progression of the illness and the morbidity
associated with it.
(11) Serra-Majem et al., 2007.

(12) The problem is raised of what reference tables to choose, as on an international level there are at least four
reference tables that can be used for this purpose. The most accepted and recommended tables by the WHO up to
now, are those elaborated by Must et al, from the study NHANES I. The tables from the Center for Disease Control
of the United States (CDC) have also been used frequently. In their last version, the CDC proposed using z-scores
in relation to the reference distribution.
(13) The tríceps skinfold is the skinfold used with most frequency for this end.

8.3. Impact of childhood obesity on child and adult health
In childhood overweight and obesity are not associated with elevated rates
of mortality in the short term, but they are with greater risk in adulthood.
Nevertheless, childhood obesity has repercussions for the quality of life of the
child, favours low self-esteem and supposes a greater risk of discrimination
and stigmatization.(14) Longitudinal studies where children and adolescents
have been followed long term show that the probability that obese children
will be obese adults is double that of non-obese children, especially in those
that have an important excess of weight and in those that continue being obese
during their adolescence.(15)
Obesity in childhood, particularly in the second decade of life, constitutes
a potent predictor of obesity in adulthood. Obesity has important social,
economic and health consequences, and for this, childhood obesity is today
thought of as an important health problem both in developed countries and
developing countries. In general, childhood obesity in developed countries
tends to be more frequent among families at the lowest socioeconomic levels,
with worse nutritional and educational level, and that still consider childhood
obesity to be an indicator of health and social position. In developing countries,
it is persons in the more comfortable socioeconomic levels that tend to have
this erroneous conception of childhood obesity.(16)
The adverse effects and the risks from obesity on health in the early stages
of life include in the short term both physical problems (table 8.1) as well as
psychosocial problems (table 8.2). Longitudinal studies suggest that childhood
obesity after 3 years of age is associated in the long term with a greater risk
of obesity in adulthood and with an increase in morbidity and mortality; the
persistence of associated metabolic disorders, an increase in cardiovascular
risk and of some types of cancer.(17)
Childhood obesity is associated with an increase in cardiovascular risk; high
level of insulin (hyperinsulinemia)(18) and glucose intolerance; alterations in
the lipid profile of the blood and even arterial hypertension. The observed
(14) Dietz, 1998.

(16) WHO, 2000.
(17) Reilly et al., 2003.
TABLE 8.1
Impact of childhood obesity on physical health
PATHOLOGY IMPACT OF OBESITY: CURRENT SITUATION
Glucose intolerance Hyperinsulinemia: OR: 12.1
Õ
In US, 10 times the prevalence of diabetes in children
Type 2 diabetes
(1982-1994)
Metabolic syndrome Present in 30% of obese children (US)
Almost 60% of AHT children are obese
Arterial hypertension
SAT: OR 4.5; DAT: OR 2.4
Õ
Õ
LDL: OR 3.0; HDL: OR 3.4; TAG: OR 7.1
Dyslipemia 58% of obese children have 1 cardiovascular risk factor;
25% ≥2 RF
Steatosis hepatitis In >10% of obese children
Approx. 50% of the cases in adolescents are associated with
Cholelithiasis
Õ
obesity. 75% (1979-1999)

Õ
Sleep apnea 175% (1979-1999)

Asthma 40% of those admitted to hospital are associated with obesity
Menstrual alterations 30% of the women with polycystic ovary syndrome are obese
Flat feet, valgus deformity, Blount’s disease, (2/3 of the cases are
Orthopedic disorders
obese)…
Notes: OR: Odds Ratio; AHT: Arterial hypertension; SAT: systolic arterial tension; DAT: Diastolic arterial tension;
LDL: LDL cholesterol; HDL: HDL cholesterol; TAG: triglycerides; RF: risk factors.
Sources: Dietz W. H. Pediatrics, 1998; Reilly J. J. et al., Arch Dis Child, 2003; NAS, Preventing childhood obesity,
2005; Wang G. and Dietz W. H. Pediatrics, 2002.
TABLE 8.2
Impact of childhood obesity on emotional and social health
Emotional Health
Low self-esteem
Negative body image
Depression
Social health
Stigmatization
Negative stereotypes
Jokes and bullying
Marginalization and isolation
Sources: Dietz W. H. Pediatrics, 1998; Reilly J. J. et al. Arch Dis Child, 2003; NAS, Preventing childhood obesity,
2005.

metabolic changes in obese children and adolescents is also known as
metabolic syndrome and can be related to endocrine disorders that are
observed in obesity, such as growth hormone deficiency or increase in the
levels of leptin circulating in the blood.(19)
The term «metabolic syndrome» refers to a conglomeration of alterations that
include elevated levels of arterial pressure, glycemia and cholesterolemia
and in addition, the accumulation of fat in abdominal adipose tissue, which
all together means a very important increase in cardiovascular risk and
risk of type 2 diabetes. A study done in the United States estimated that
approximately one of every 8 schoolchildren has three or more of the risk
factors of those that make up metabolic syndrome. A similar situation has
also been observed in the United Kingdom. Obesity not only increases the
probability of the appearance of metabolic syndrome in adults, but also is
associated with the early development of the syndrome in children.
Type 2 diabetes is a very common illness in adults which currently is being
detected with more and more frequency in children and is an especially
alarming consequence of the obesity epidemic. The beginning of diabetes
in young patients increases their risk of developing complications from
the advanced illness at an earlier adult age, such as cardiovascular illness,
kidney failure, visual alterations or even amputation of extremities as a
consequence of circulatory complications. A review of the American
Diabetes Association suggests that in the United States up to 45 percent
of the cases of diabetes at pediatric age correspond to type 2 diabetes
not insulin dependent diabetes. Obesity is the most important risk factor
associated with type 2 diabetes in children. In another study an excess of
body weight was found in 90 percent of adolescents with type 2 diabetes
and in nearly 25 percent of children with type 1 diabetes. In fact, the term
«diabesity» has been coined to reflect the fact that so many patients with
diabetes are also obese.(20)
Overweight and obesity are associated with great frequency with the
appearance of cardiovascular risk factors. Several studies have demonstrated
(19) Wang and Dietz, 2002.

(20) Cited by BMA, 2005.
the relationship between excess body weight in childhood and the consequent
increase in cardiovascular risk.(21)
Orthopedic problems have also been described that are accompanied by
alterations in physical mobility and inactivity; as have disorders in immune
response with increases in the susceptibility to infections, skin alterations
that reduce the scarring capacity from injuries and infections and nocturnal
respiratory problems and even sleep apnea.(22)
The psychosocial consequences from the distorsion of the physical image
for the obese child can be very important and even greater than the physical
consequences. Low self-esteem, social isolation, discrimination and abnormal
patterns of behaviour are some of the frequent consequences.(23)
There still doesn’t exist definitive and conclusive epidemiological evidence
regarding the long term effects and persistency of childhood obesity in adult
life. Taking into account the possible limitations in existing data, the evidence
does suggest that it is more probable that obese children will be obese adults in
comparison with children that are of a normal weight, although paradoxically,
currently the majority of obese adults were not obese children. Childhood
obesity in the second decade of life is an increasingly potent predictive factor
for adult obesity.(24) If one or both of the parents are obese the probability that
childhood obesity will persist in adulthood is even greater.
8.4. Obesity in children, adolescents and young adults

in the Spanish population
The enKid Study is a transversal study based on a random sample of the

Spanish population with ages between 2 and 24, selected on the basis of
(21) In the study by Bogalusa, in the United States, overweight in adolescence is associated with an 8.5 times
greater risk for hypertension, 2.4 times greater for the prevalence of elevated values for serum cholesterol;
3 times greater risk of elevated levels of LDL cholesterol (popularly known as «bad cholesterol») and 8 times
greater risk of lower levels of HDL cholesterol (popularly known as «good cholesterol») in young adults between the
ages of 27 and 31. In addition, a longitudinal study of young people in Finland suggests that cardiovascular risks are
frequent in young obese adults that were obese when they were children (hypertension, hypertriglyceridemia, low
levels of HDL cholesterol and hyperinsulinemia).
(22) Wang and Dietz, 2002.
(23) Reilly et al., 2003.
(24) Dietz, 1998.

the official population census.(25) It is the widest study done in Spain up to
now with measurements of individual weight and height of a random sample
representative of the Spanish population.
The protocol of the study examined personal data, analysis of ingestion by
means of a 24 hour food log supplemented with a quantitative food frequency
questionnaire. In 25 percent of the sample they also collected a second similar
log. After, they were homogeneously distributed throughout the year and also
during all the days of the week, with the aim of avoiding the influence of
seasonal and weekly variations. Information was collected through personal
interviews in the home of the surveyed in the presence of the mother or
person responsible for feeding the family in the case of children less than 13
years of age. Information was also collected about knowledge and opinions
on themes related to diet and nutrition. They used specific questionnaires to
gather information about smoking habits, alcohol consumption and physical
activity.
Based on this data, the rate of obesity for this age group in Spain is estimated
to be 13.9 percent and for overweight, 12.4 percent. The total of overweight
and obesity is 26.3 percent. Obesity is higher among males (15.6 percent) than
in females (12.0 percent), a statistically significant difference. In the male
subgroup, the highest proportions are seen between the ages of 6 to 13 and
among females between the ages of 6 and 9 (table 8.3).
The rate of obesity is higher among boys whose parents have a low level of
education, especially if the mother has a low educational level. The level of
education of the mother only seems to have influence in the youngest children,
up to 10 years of age. No statistically significant differences were observed
in the figures for obesity based on the occupation of the mother outside of
the home. The proportion of obesity is higher in girls and boys of lower
socioeconomic levels.
The rates of obesity and overweight are higher in the Autonomous community
of the Canary Islands and in the South, among both girls and boys and in all
the age groups. The lowest figures are observed in the Northeast and North.
The size of the population of residence doesn’t seem to reveal a distribution
pattern defined by excess weight.
TABLE 8.3
Prevalence of obesity in the child, adolescent and young adult
population in Spain by age and sex
Estimates from the enKid Study, 1998-2000
OBESITY (*)
AGE GROUP SEX n (BMI≥ 97th PERCENTILE)
% (CI 95%)
Total 385 11.1 (7.9-14.3)

2-5 years of age Males 195 10.8 (6.4-15.2)
Females 190 11.5 (6.8-16.2)
Total 423 15.9 (12.4-19.4)
Females 212 9.8 (5.8-13.8)
Total 567 16.6 (13.5-19.7)
Females 286 10.9 (7.2-14.6)
Total 682 12.5 (10.0-15.0)
Females 345 9.1 (6.0-12.2)
Total 1,477 13.7 (11.9-15.5)
Females 872 14.9 (12.5-17.3)
Total 3,534 13.9 (12.7-15.1)

Total Males 1,629 15.6 (13.8-17.4)
Females 1,905 12.0 (10.5-13.5)
Note: (*) The 97th percentile of BMI has been used as the cutoff point in the tables of Orbogozo (Hernández et al.,
1988) specifically for age and sex.
Source: enKid Study (Serra-Majem et al., 2006).
Some antecedents from early childhood also show some significant association
with the distribution of overweight and obesity in the child and young adult
population in Spain.
The rates of obesity were significantly higher in the collective that was born
with a weight above 3,500 grams in comparison to those born with a weight

below 2,500 grams, adjusted for age and sex. Males between 2 and 5 years
of age that were breast fed for more than 3 months showed rates of obesity
below that of children of the same age groups that had not been breast fed or
had been but for a shorter period of time.
Regarding lifestyles analyzed, it was observed that, beginning at 6 years of
age, the percentage of obese children was higher among children and young
people that got a greater proportion of their energy from the ingestion of fat
(> 40 percent kcal) in relation to those that ingested lower percentages of fat. This
fact is also observed in the female subgroup between 14 and 17 years of age.
In males starting at 14 years of age a significant statistical difference could be
seen in the consumption of sugary products, pastries, cold meats and sugary
sodas between the obese and the not obese. The rate of obesity is higher in
boys between 6 and 14 years old that consume cold meats more frequently.
The rate of obesity was lower in boys and young people that consume more
fruits and vegetables (4 or more servings a day). The boys and girls that have
a complete breakfast have lower rates of obesity than those that don’t have
breakfast or have an incomplete breakfast.
Considering as a whole the daily average time spent on sedentary activities
(study, TV, computer, videogames), the rate of obesity was higher among boys
and girls that spent more time on these types of activities in comparison with
those that spent less time. The proportion who were obese was higher in girls
that spent more than two hours to watching television than in those that spent
less than an hour on this activity.
The rate of obesity between boys and girls that usually don’t do any sports was
higher in comparison with those that usually do sports, especially among boys
that do some sport activity three times a week.
Analysis of the data suggests that the rate of obesity is currently greater in the
school-age population, especially in the years proceeding puberty.
8.5. Evolution of obesity in children, adolescents and young adults
Analysis of the tendency of the prevalence of overweight and obesity in

Spain can only be done after accepting the methodological limitations
inherent to comparisons made across distinct periods. According to the three
latest epidemiological studies on obesity done in Spain: PAIDOS’84 (1985),
Ricardin 1992 (1995) and enKid (1998-2000), the BMI of a child of 10 years
of age has gone from 18.1 in 1984 to 18.5 in 1992 and 19.8 in 1989-2000, and
at the age of 13 from 18.4 (1984) to 20.4 (1992) to 21.1 (1998-2000).
Comparing the evolution of the 95th percentile by age with the data contributed
by Hernández et al. and the enKid Study an increase is observed even from the
14.6 percent in function of age group, being higher in boys of 6 to 10 years of
age, and in girls of 18 years of age and less to those of 2 to 14 years of age,
where it actually decreased.
In table 8.4 the rate or prevalence of obesity in the child and adolescent
population in different countries is gathered. Studies carried out in the
United States estimate that the prevalence of obesity in some age groups of
this collective have doubled since the 1970s. It is estimated that the rate of
obesity has increased by 5 percent in the American adolescent population. In
a study done in France, Rolland-Cachera (2001) estimated that the proportion
of obese French children has increased 149 percent between 1980 and 1996.
TABLE 8.4
Comparison of the prevalence of obesity among different
developed countries
COUNTRIES (%)
United States 22.5

United Kingdom 17.0
Spain 13.9
France 12.7
Portugal 12.0
Italy 12.0
Hungary 11.0
Germany 9.0
Switzerland 8.7
Holland 8.0
Sweden 5.0
Finland 5.0
Source: The International Association for the Study of Obesity (2004). Obesity Reviews; 5 (suppl. 1), 86-97.

Passing from 5.1 percent to 12.7 percent using as criteria the reference value
for the BMI specific for each age group and sex.
The PAIDOS’84 Study,(26) carried out by Spanish pediatricians in the middle
of the 1980s based on a random sample between the ages of 6 and 13, estimated
a rate of obesity of 6.4 percent. In this study obesity was defined as a value
of the triceps skinfold above the average plus two standard deviations. In
the enKid Study in the year 2000, the prevalence of obesity in the same age
group was estimated to be 15.6 percent. This dramatic tendency is similar to
that described in France, Switzerland and other countries(27) (graphic 8.1).
In the Cuenca Study, Martínez Vizcaíno et al., estimated a relative risk of
2.9 (95 percent CI: 2,21-4,04) that children with overweight at the beginning
of the study would also be so six years later. Moreno et al. also analyzed
the prevalent tendencies of obesity and overweight in Aragon in schools
between 1985 and 1995 and found significant increases, in particular among
boys.
A report prepared in May of 2004 by the IOTF referred to one in every ten
children in the world being overweight; in total they calculated that around
155 million persons between the ages of 30 and 45 are obese. In Europe the
rate of obesity in children and young people has increased considerably in
the last two decades and currently it is the countries of southern Europe that
have the highest figures, with rates for overweight between 20 percent and
35 percent versus 10 percent to 20 percent in Northern European countries.
The estimated prevalence in Spain in the enKid Study is among one of the
highest in Europe, although still lower than the figures estimated for the
United Kingdom or the United States.(28)
A compilation made by the IOTF in 2007 of the countries of the European
Union shows the highest rates in preadolescent boys between the ages of 7 to
11 to be in Malta, Portugal and Spain. The highest rates among 14 to 17 year
old boys are in Cyprus, Great Britain and Spain. Among girls, the highest
rates correspond to Portugal, Greece and Italy among 7 to 11 year olds and to
England, Ireland, Hungary and Italy among 14 to 17 year olds.
(26) Bueno et al., 1985.

(27) IOTF, 2007.
(28) Lobstein et al., 2004.
GRAPH 8.1
Evolution of the prevalence of obesity in the population between
6 and 13 years of age in Spain
By percentage
16
14
enKid
12
10
8
PAIDOS
6
0
1984 2001
Source: Data from the PAIDOS Study in 1984-1985 of this age group and the estimates corresponding to this age
interval in the enKid Study in 1998-2000.
8.6. Analysis of the causes
The analysis of the causes of obesity is essential for designing effective plans
for its prevention. It is important to consider the factors implicated at distinct
levels, given that the origin of obesity transcends individual responsibility.
Therefore, in addition to individual factors it is important to take into account
the family and school environment and socioeconomic level.
The results of the enKid Study have demonstrated that obesity in the child,
adolescent and young adult Spanish population is acquiring dimensions that
merit special attention, especially those factors that can be contributing to the
growth of the problem and those elements that could aid in its prevention.
a) Genetic factors
A question that has raised a lot of interest is the extent to which genetic and
environmental factors are determinants of obesity in children, adolescents
and young adults. Studies on twins and adopted children show that genetic
factors play a role that has been estimated in different studies to be between

5 and 50 percent, although the genes implicated have still not been identified
with exactitude.(29)
The genes must act by modulating ingestion or energy expended and therefore
increase the probability of being obese or being thin. Cases of genetic origin are
rare and the majority of childhood obesity is due to factors related to lifestyles
that reflect the combined effects of genetic factors, habits learned in the family
and environmental influences from school and the social environment.
Without a doubt a relationship exists between dietary habits and physical
activities and both are influenced by aspects that transcend the individual.(30)
There does exist an association between childhood obesity and the obesity
of the parents, although it is not clear that it is an epigenetic phenomenon or
simply an indicator of a family environment or lifestyle that favours a positive
energy balance. Probably multiple genetic factors explain the variation in
phenotype of the adiposity of populations.(31)
b) Environmental factor
Environmental changes along with changes in diet, physical activity and

tendencies toward a more sedentary lifestyle, together with factors in the first
stages of life, have all been related to the increased rhythm of the rates of
obesity and overweight. An obesogenic environment is probably the primary
cause of recent tendencies toward obesity and overweight and their unequal
distribution and impact.(32) In what follows we will comment on some of these
aspects.
Nutritional factors in the first stages of life
It is postulated that some periods of development are critical for the appearance
of obesity.(33) Since the end of the 1990s research is being done on the possible
impact of exposure to certain dietary factors at early stages of life and its
repercussion on adulthood. The development of new models of epidemiological
(29) Speakman, 2004.

(30) BMA, 2005.
(31) Speakman, 2004.
(32) Swinburn and Egger, 2004.
(33) «... the first critical period for the development of obesity is the prenatal; however it is not clear what is the
relationship of disorders to birthweight and subsequent habits, if they are of genetic origin or of they result from
intrauterine programming», states Dr. Angelo Piertrobelli.
research, principally in Great Britain, on the risk of chronic illnesses in the life
cycle that take into account the hierarchy and chronology of exposures during
life(34) has led to hypotheses like metabolic programming that postulates that
situations of nutritional stress in intrauterine life and low birthweight have
bearing on the development of fetal tissues and organs and provoke metabolic
alterations that last all during life. In concrete, in some studies an association
has been seen between these types of situations and arterial hypertension, type
2 diabetes and other factors of cardiovascular risk.(35)
Sociodemographic aspects
In the enKid Study differences in the rate of obesity in function of family

socioeconomic level have been detected. The prevalence of obesity is higher
in children from lower socioeconomic levels. Geographic differences have
also been observed, with a tendency toward higher rates of obesity toward the
south. Clearly, it is the factors related to lifestyle, especially dietary habits and
physical activity that determine the principal differences in the prevalence of
obesity.
The family environment: family habits and customs
Studies that have researched the link between the dietary and exercise habits
of the parents and the risk of obesity in children (the majority of such studies
carried out in the United States) have confirmed the existence of similar
lifestyles between parents and children, especially in young children, the
relationship weakening toward adolescence. Food preferences in children are
to a great extent acquired and learned.(36) Both the preferences as well as eating
habits of children are influenced to a great degree by those of the parents
and domestic and family customs. Children become accustomed to flavours
and the cooking that they consume habitually at home and that they see their
parents and siblings eating. In fact, there exists a close relationship over the
concern for one’s image and following weight-loss diets between girls and
(34) Darnton Hill et al., 2004.

(35) Hardy et al., 2004.
(36) Wardle et al., 2001.

their mothers. Regarding physical exercise, studies show that in children from
4 to 7 years old the probability that they will be active is double if they are
children of active mothers; when the father is active the probability that the
children will be active increases 3.5 times and if both parent are active the
probability that the child will be active is multiplied by seven.(37) It is important
to consider the role of the parents as models that the children imitate, and at
the same time, how active parents facilitate, stimulate and support physical
activity in their children.
Other aspects to highlight in the family environment are the norms that are
established in the family in regards to food, the way of educating the children,
and type and variety of foods that are at their reach or that are offered at meals
or between meals.(38, 39)(38), (39)
Some authors have suggested that the incorporation of the mother into the
labour market could have some influence on the rate of obesity in the child
population,(40) perhaps through changes in family eating habits. In the enKid
Study no significant differences in the prevalence of obesity in function of the
mother’s participation in the labour market has been observed. In a complex
society such as ours, in which publicity and the media have a great deal of
influence in shaping eating habits, possibly changes in family eating habits
and in patterns of consumption in schoolchildren also extends to those families
which have a mother that stays home.
Eating habits
Distribution of ingestion during the day
The division of the daily ingestion of food in various servings during the day
is currently a controversial theme for how often and what people are eating
between the principal meals. In developed societies there seems to be a
tendency to consume smaller servings of high density energy between meals,
especially among young adults and adolescents. Several authors have also
referred to a lower body weight in subjects that eat breakfast in comparison
(37) Burke et al., 2001.

(38) Birch, L. and Fisher, J., 1998.
(39) Van der Horst, K., 2006.
(40) Takahashi et al., 1999.
with those that don’t.(41) The results of the enKid study have demonstrated a
minor prevalence of obesity in children and young people that regularly have
a greater number of intakes during the day in comparison with those that only
eat one or two principal meals, that is, those that eat breakfast, lunch, merienda
(late afternoon snake), dinner and even a small mid-morning snack have lower
rates of obesity. Even more, the rate of overweight is less when the breakfast
consumed is a complete breakfast, that is, one which includes a serving of
fruit, dairy and a food from the cereal group. The enKid study demonstrated
that 8.2 percent of the child, adolescent and young adult population habitually
goes to school or work without having had breakfast.(42) In fact, 4.1 percent
don’t eat anything all morning, that is, they maintain the fast from the previous
night, a more frequent habit in lower socioeconomic classes and among young
adults.(43)
Characteristics of the diet
Rolland-Cachera (2001) referred to percentages of protein ingestion higher in

children that had an early adiposity rebound. However, this discovery has not
been confirmed by other authors. There seems to be more agreement regarding
the relationship between higher contributions of fat in the diet and a higher
prevalence of obesity, a fact that was also confirmed in the enKid study and
which also emerges from a recent systematic review of the literature.(44)
Regarding dietary profile, it seems that obese children and young people
more frequently consume bakery items, industrial pastries and sugary sodas;
on the other hand, they also consume less fruit and vegetables. This profile
of consumption observed in the enKid study is in agreement with findings
referred to by other authors. The Chilean company Tagle defines «fast food»
as what «you receive within three minutes of requesting it and you consume in
20 minutes or less.» Table 8.5 summarizes some of the dietary habits that have
been associated with a higher risk of childhood obesity in some solid studies
and over which sufficient evidence exists.

(43) Aranceta et al., 2004.
(44) Van der Horst et al., 2006.

TABLE 8.5
Environmental risk factors: other evidence
Energetic density
FACTOR SOURCE
Fast food consumption in recent

St-Onge et al., Am J Clin Nutr, 2003
Õ
years: 300%
Maffeis et al., Int J. Obes, 1996; McGloin et al., Int J
Association % fat - BMI:Õ Obes, 2002; Guillaume et al., Eur J Clin Nutr, 1998;
Tucker et al., J Am Diet Assoc, 1997
Õ
Association ingestion proteins –

Rolland-Cachera et al., Int J Obes, 1995
early adiposity rebound
Fruits and vegetables Field et al., Int J Obes, 2003; Lin et al., Food Rev,
Õ
( protective effect) 2002

Soft drinks: 11-12 12 years of
Ludwig et al., Lancet, 2001
Õ
age-Obesity + other dietary elements

Consumption patterns: eating
Jahns et al., J Pediatr, 2001
Õ
between meals no breakfast

Õ
Size of portions Young & Nestle, Am J Public Health, 2002

Source: Produced by author.
Elevated ingestion of fat
From the enKid study it has been estimated that the ingestion of fat in children
and young people in Spain represents on average 39.8 percent of daily energy
intake; 13.4 percent from the consumption of saturated fat.(45) More than 60
percent have contributions of fat above 35 percent of their energetic intake and
a very high percentage also have contributions of saturated fats that represent
more than 10 percent of daily energy intake. The principal sources of dietary
fat are added fats, meat, dairy, sweets and pastry products.
Low consmption of fruits and vegetables
96.7 percent of the group usually consumes foods from the vegetable and
produce group – excluding potatoes – either raw or cooked, with an overall
consumption for this group of 1,4 servings/day, a figure inferior to the 2 servings
recommended daily. 98.4 percent of this collective regularly consume foods
from the fruit group, principally apples, oranges and mandarins, bananas,
pears, fruit juices, melons and watermelons. On average it is estimated that
they consume 1.85 servings of fruit a day, a figure well below the 3 servings
recommended daily. Only 14 percent of the boys and 15.7 percent of the girls
consume 3 or more servings of fruit per day. The highest levels of consumption
of vegetables, both in cooked form or in salads are seen in families of higher
socioeconomic level.
Jorge Barguinski clearly sets out the factors which limit weight reduction,(46)
but also suggests which factors can be protective elements in facing weight
gain: «A food profile based on the consumption of fruits, vegetables and
produce, a second level formed by whole grain cereals, legumes and dried
fruits and nuts in an overall diet with low amounts of fat (27 percent).»
In recent decades a decline in the ingestion of fat in some countries has been
described, but at the same time an increase has also been produced in caloric
density in the food model because of a lower consumption of fruit, vegetables
and legumes.(47)
High consumption of pastries, sweets and snacks
Boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 17 years of age have the highest level
of consumption of pastries and biscuits; between the ages of 10 and 17 we
see the highest consumption of candies and salty snacks.(48) The enKid study
shows that the consumption of sodas increases significantly beginning at 10
years of age and reaches its highest levels beginning at 18 years of age. Table
8.6 summarizes the prevalence of eating habits of risk estimated in the enKid
study for the child, adolescent and young adult population.
Overall, the low consumption of fruit and vegetables is the aspect that has the
greatest negative impact in calculating the diet quality index, along with the
regular consumption of industrial baked goods, sweets and candy.
In the 1980s the PAIDOS’84 study was carried out on the initiative of Spanish
pediatricians which obtained important anthropometric data and nutritional
(46) Braguinski comments on the factors that limit weight loss: «Weight level biologically programmed or “set
point” (set point theory); decline in energy expended at rest and within 24 hours of initiating a weight-loss diet;
hyperplasia typical of childhood and adolescent obesity; learned behaviour, harmful but persistent with secondary
benefits and life in an obesogenic environment.»

TABLE 8.6
Estimation of the prevalence of unhealthy eating habits that place the
child, adolescent and young adult population at risk in Spain
RISK PRACTICE ESTIMATION OF PREVALENCE
Omission of breakfast 8.2%

a
Insufficient breakfast 32.0%
Ingestion of fats > 35% energy 61.0%
Ingestion of SF > 10% energy 72.0%
Inadequate contribution of folatesb 59.0%
Insufficient consumption of vegetablesc 54.0%
d
Insufficient consumption of fruit 66.0%
Insufficient consumption of dairye 33.0%
f
Prevalence of obesity 13.7%
Notes: SF: saturated fats; a Ingestion at breakfast < 200 kcal; b In the group of girls from 12-24 years of age;
c < 2 servings/day of vegetables; d <3 servings/day of fruit; e <3 servings/day of dairy; f BMI > 97th percentile of
reference.
Source: enKid Study, (Aranceta et al., 2003).
information on the child population.(49) The comparison of the dietary habits

observed in PAIDOS’84 and in the enKid study done 15 years later allows
us to appreciate a notable increase in the consumption of sweets and sodas in
this population group. The consumption of meat and dairy has also increased.
While on the contrary, the child, adolescent and young adult population
consumes eggs and fruit less frequently.(50)
Diverse studies done on collectives of children and adolescents such as the
Cardiac study have demonstrated that the frequent consumption of snacks and
other foods between meals or eating outside of the home contribute to shaping
diets with a greater contribution of total fat and saturated fats, and therefore a
profile of greater risk.
Consumption habits of risk in families of lower socioeconomic levels have
been identified with greater frequency. The household environment and family
(49) Bueno et al., 1985.

(50) «The variety of foods provokes excitement which for each one of them awakens a specific appetite (…) and
specific degrees of satiation» says Jesús Contreras. «…The changes experienced in food consumption does not
necessarily indicate dietary progress. Menus are not so much the result of medical recommendations as they are of
fashion, customs and ease. An example, legumes are eaten less and less often despite positive recommendations…
But they have to be soaked and cooked and this takes time» (J. Contreras, 2005).
GRAPH 8.2
Comparison of the profile of frequency of consumption of the Spanish
school age population (6-13 years of age) in the middle of the 1980s
with the years 1998-2000
By percentage
0
MEAT FISH EGGS DAIRY CEREALS LEGUMES VEGETABLES FRUIT DRIED FRUITS SWEETS SOFT
AND NUTS DRINK
PAIDOS ’84 enKID
Source: Data from the PAIDOS Study from 1984-1985 with this collective and the estimations corresponding
to this age interval in the enKid Study from 1998-2000.
consumption habits have influence on the shape of the child’s consumption

pattern.(51) The risk profile describe in the enKid study also identifies this
population group as the collective with the greatest risk for inadequate
ingestion.
Physical activity and sendentary lifestyle
The data from the enKid study reflects that the proportion of obese is higher
among boys and girls that spend more time at sedentary activities. On the
contrary, the percentage of obese is lower among boys and girls that do some
sporting activity 2 or 3 time a week. In addition, children, adolescents and
young adults that regularly do sports 2 or 3 times a week eat significantly more
fish, eggs, legumes, cereals and dried fruits and nuts, in comparison with those
that don’t do any sport or do so sporadically.
(51) Birch and Fisher, 1998.

Diverse prospective cohort studies have demonstrated that many factors
which cause confusion exist which act as artifacts so that the role of diet
and exercise in the genesis of childhood obesity can be determined, for
example, the obesity of the parents.(52) Although up to now more emphasis
has been placed on total intake of energy in the diet, today voices have
emerged that point toward the importance of energetic density and the
frequency of consumption. Regarding the role of physical activity, up to
know it has been analysed with more focus on the importance of vigorous
physical exercise; however, today it is accepted that the fact of spending so
many hours watching television forms a lifestyle itself that goes beyond a
lack of physical activity.
Some authors have estimated that in the past 50 years a decrease of between
300-600 kcal/day in energy expenditure from physical activity has been
produced. Between 1975 and 1999 walking (time and distance covered) has
declined by 1 percent. While time dedicated to sedentary activities such as
watching TV, videogames, computer use, etc., has increased significantly.(53)
According to data from the 2001 National Health Survey, 71.7 percent of
Spanish children between the ages of 6 and 15 get practically no physical
exercise in their free time. The findings of the enKid study were similar: 60
percent of boys and 80 percent of girls do no regular sporting activity.(54) More
than 50 percent of Spanish boys obtain low marks in regards to their level of
regular physical activity.(55)
In comparison with the situation a few decades ago, children play in the street
less often and this limits the likelihood that their games imply physical activity.
The time dedicated to physical education in the schools has also decreased.
In recent years numerous studies have demonstrated an association between
time spent watching television and the prevalence of overweight and obesity
in children.(56)
(52) Canoy and Buchan, 2007.

(53) BMA, 2005.
(54) Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs, 2003.
(55) Román Viñas et al., 2004.
Marketing and advertising of food and drinks
The more time spent in sedentary activities such as watching TV or videogames,

the less time spent doing physical activities. Several studies have found an
association between the time spent watching TV and a higher consumption
of foods and drinks rich in fats, salt and sugars, in other words a less healthy
diet.(57) In addition, more time spent watching TV means a greater exposure
to the advertising of foods and drinks broadcast by this medium.(58) Diverse
authors have researched the influence of advertising broadcast on television
during children’s programming on eating habits and have observed a negative
effect on diet.(59, 60)(59), (60)
Marketing techniques and advertising are very effective in influencing the
choices that both children and their parents make, but unfortunately the foods
and drinks that are the principal objects of these campaigns and marketing
strategies are not the most acceptable from the nutritional perspective for a
healthy diet.(61, 62) The majority of children are not capable of critical judgement
of the commercials they see. The media play a very important role in shaping
attitudes regarding food and nutrition and tools exist so that they can play this
role in a healthy sense.(61), (62)
A widespread habit is to have the television on during family meals. «When
you shop in the supermarket you don’t have to talk, and when you eat in a
self-service restaurant you get your food in silence, and with the TV on you eat
gazing at the picture. We are talking about a silent nutrition,» says José María
Bengoa.
All the member states of the European Union are subject to the Directive on
Television without borders that restricts publicity.(63) Some countries have
even gone beyond this directive and have prohibited advertising directed at
children. For example, since 1991 Sweden does not permit the broadcasting of
(57) Coon and Tucker, 2002.

(58) Consumer Eroski. October 2007.
(59) Boynton-Jarrett et al., 2003.
(60) Vereecken et al., 2006.
(61) Story and French, 2004.
(62) Byrd-Bredbenner and Grasso, 2000.
(63) This European Directive dates from 1989, although it was later updated. The Directive states that advertising
can’t take advantage of the lack of experience and critical judgement of children and, therefore, cannot directly
encourage children to persuade their parents or caretakers to buy the advertised products. All member states of the
European Union are subject to this regulation.

ads during children’s programming hours and those that are broadcast in other
scheduled times cannot be directed toward children under the age of 12.(64)
Other forms of promotion and marketing, in addition to advertising on TV
and in other media, also influence preferences, choices and eating habits; for
example, promotional campaigns using stickers or collectables, the participation
of popular figures from the world of sports, music, cinema or television, the
sponsoring of educational materials, special promotions at points of sale,
vending machines, etc. The WHO has implicated the aggressive marketing
and advertising strategies of foods and drinks as a probable causal factor in
childhood obesity.(65) Marketing and advertising can also potentially favour a
healthy diet. For example, in New Zealand they have initiated a campaign that
promotes eating yummy apples. The campaign includes collectable stickers that
can be exchanged for sports equipment for schools. Today yummy apples is the
biggest selling brand of apples in New Zealand.
On the other hand the food industry has reacted to the growing demand of
consumers for healthier products with less energetic density, low in fat,
sugars and salt. Related to this, the regulation of the content and form of
labels is very important in providing clear, useful and relevant information
to consumers.
8.7. Actions to prevent obesity in Spain
Those in charge of public health, academics and politicians, are in agreement

on the need to take action to reverse the growing tendency toward obesity.
Evidence reveals that prevention is potentially more effective than just
treatment to keep the problem of obesity in check.(66)
The epidemic of obesity has developed during the last two decades and it
will take a decade to reverse this tendency. This cannot be achieved only
through actions based on individual responsibility. Actions focused on the
social, economic and cultural environment are indispensable. The strategies
(64) In Canada, the Consumer Protection Act in Quebec, in effect since 1980, prohibits all types of advertising and
marketing in any type of media directed at children under 13 years of age. However, the law is not applicable to
satellite TV. A study on the effects of publicity in Canada demonstrated that families in which the children watched
more satellite TV bought more breakfast cereals advertised on those channels.
(65) Hawkes, 2004.
(66) Swinburn et al., 2004; OMS, 2000.
to confront this problem must be directed to the adoption of healthy eating
habits and an active lifestyle through the nutritional education of the
population and political action that supports making the healthiest options
more accessible to all.(67)
The IOTF states that to stop the epidemic of obesity «interventions at the
family or school level will need to be matched by changes in the social and
cultural context so that the benefits can be sustained and enhanced. Such
prevention strategies will require a co-ordinated effort between the medical
community, health administrators, teachers, parents, food producers and
processors, retailers and caterers, advertisers and the media, recreation and
sport planners, urban architects, city planners, politicians and legislators...»(68)
These types of interventions must be directed at all age groups, but it is
necessary to place special emphasis on the youngest, children and adolescents.
Interventions should be integrated and combine actions in the school, family
and work environments and with local government. The choice of the most
adequate strategies should be based on the evidence available on their
effectiveness.(69) It is important to look for collaboration and participation of
both public and private initiatives.
Ethical aspects raise a challenge and are the focus of a debate on the prevention
of obesity, especially in regard to children. The approach to the problem with
a focus on high risk groups certainly is cost-effective, but there is a high risk
of stigmatizing individuals identified as at risk who are invited to participate in
the proposals for intervention. In addition, the focus on high risk populations
can fall into the trap of being excessively paternalistic and pointing out the
correct options, telling people what is okay and what isn’t, even restricting their
freedom of choice and individual decision-making power.(70) In contrast, the
interventions directed toward making healthier options more easily accessible
for everyone don’t interfere with individual freedom to choose and, at the
same time, especially protect those who need it. They contribute to building
bridges that reduce inequalities related to health. In interventions in school
populations there is also a need to be especially careful in not generating
(67) Doak et al., 2006.

(68) RCP, RCPCH and FPH (2004) Storing up Problems. The medical case for a slimmer nation. RCP, RCPCH,
FPH: London.
(69) Doak et al., 2006.
(70) Holm, 2007.

prejudices and undesired collateral effects with preventative interventions,
such as inducing weight loss in those who don’t need it.(71)
The World Health Organization adopted the Global Strategy on Diet, Physical
Activity and Health at the 57th World Health Assembly in May 2004 and invited
all member countries to encourage the development and putting into effect of
action plans aimed at promoting healthy eating habits and regular physical
activity.(72) In this context the Spanish Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs
launched the NAOS Strategy [Strategy for Nutrition, Physical Activity and
Prevention of Obesity] in January 2005, the result of the contribution of eight
working groups.
The NAOS Strategy(73) examines diverse areas of action involving the principal
actors responsible in different sectors. It also incorporates normative measures and
policies with the aim of achieving a favourable environment for the adoption of
healthy habits toward eating and physical activity. Within this strategy particular
attention has been paid to the child, adolescent and young adult population
and to interventions in schools through the PERSEO Project (Educational
Programme of Reference for Health, Physical Exercise and against Obesity) as
a primary element. This is a project of community intervention centred on the
school environment with the involvement of students, teachers, families and the
community.(74) This program is promoted by the Spanish Food Safety Agency
(AESAN) and the Centre for Innovation and Educational Development (CIDE)
of the Ministry of Education. The Spanish Society of Community Nutrition
(SENC) is responsible for the technical direction of the program and counts on
the participation and implication of those in charge of Health and Education of
the participating autonomous communities, the parent associations, the Spanish
Federation of Municipalities and scientific and professional societies related to
pediatrics, primary care and the nursing community.
The PERSEO Project hopes to achieve a school and family environment that
supports healthy eating habits and physical activity in children in primary school.
The project is centred on increasing the consumption of fruits and vegetables,
reducing the consumption of fat; increasing levels of physical activity and
(71) O’Dea, 2005.

(72) OMS, 2004.
(73) NAOS Strategy, Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs, 2005.
(74) Comité Expertos AESAN, 2007.
GRAPH 8.3
Areas of intervention and determinants of food behaviour that the
PERSEO Project intends to modify through intervention in the school
environment with the participation of families and community support
ADMINISTRATION
SCHOOL
Parents ENVIRONMENT Coordinators
Association Lunch room Vending Centres of support
Classroom Workshop
Rules of the centre
Awareness Knowledge Availability Awareness
Information Attitudes Accessibility Information
Reinforcement Preferences Rules Reinforcement
Rules Skills
FAMILY SCHOOL CHILDREN SCHOOLS

Mother/Father Eating habits Teachers
Brothers/Sisters Physical activity Classmates
Availability
Knowledge, habits
Accessibility Awareness Attitudes/Preferences
Rules, habits Information Models
Attitudes, Reinforcement
Preferences
Models to follow…
FRIENDS
HEALTH WORKERS
MEDIA
(AP, Pediatricians...)
Source: Aranceta et al., PERSEO Project, 2007.
reducing time spent in sedentary activities, both in school and out. The project
proposes working in the school using a series of didactic units which have a
practical and logical orientation familiar to all the children, based on the different
periods of the day in which they typically consume foods and drink and look for
opportunities to do some physical activity (graph 8.3).
Other measures adopted include a code for the self-regulation of advertising of
foods and drinks (PAOS) and changes in the labeling of foods and information
provided to consumers. The PAOS code is aimed at protecting children under
the age of 12 from the excessive pressure of advertising of foods and drinks.
The 35 most important companies in the sector have signed an agreement. They
represent more than 75 percent of the money spent on advertising.

Compliance with the agreement is overseen by an autonomous advertisers’
body for the self-regulation of advertising. A system of control prior to the
emission of TV ads and all ads in any medium directed at children has been
established, in particular for those that will be broadcast at the time set aside
for children’s programming. Sanctions and fines from 6,000 to 180,000 euros
are contemplated.(75)
In the first 15 months in force (from September 15 2006 to 31 December 2006),
a total of 582 previously reviewed ads were emitted, the majority for television.
73 percent of the ads received a positive report and were approved. In 118
cases changes were advised while 40 received negative reports for not meeting
the parameters of the PAOS agreement and therefore could not be broadcast.
Between February 2005 and February 2006 a decrease of 60 percent took place
in the number of ads for foods and drinks broadcast on television directed at
children and in which popular figures participated.
8.8. Conclusions
The proportion of persons with overweight and obesity is increasing significantly

in all developed countries. This growth is most striking among children and
adolescents.
Spain is situated in an intermediate position among European countries regarding
the prevalence of obesity in adults. However, it is one of the European countries,
along with the United Kingdom, Malta, Portugal, Italy and Greece, with the
highest proportion of children and adolescents with excess weight.
The rapid changes incorporated into our eating habits in the last two decades,
together with the increase in time spent in sedentary activities and decrease in
physical activity are postulated as the principal factors implicated in the dramatic
increase in excess weight in the population.
Evidence exists which associates a high energy density diet, rich in fats and
sugars with a greater frequency of obesity. Obesity is also associated with low
consumption of fruit and vegetables and the absence of breakfast.
(75) Código PAOS, 2005.
Different studies have documented the association between more time spent
in sedentary activities such as watching television, videogames, computers,
etc. with a higher frequency of obesity. Obesity is also related to insufficient
physical activity.
Obesity is more often a problem in groups of lower socioeconomic and
educational level in developed countries. It has serious consequences for health
in adulthood. There are also important negative repercussions on the emotional,
social and physical health of children and adolescents. Obese children are more
likely to be obese adults.
The NAOS Strategy reinforces actions taken in community nutrition in Spain.
Up to now, most of the initiatives have been developed at the autonomous or
local level. For the first time a plan of action centred on nutrition and physical
activity within the context of public health exists. Integrated strategies which
combine different actions with an important commitment and political support
for environmental changes are essential today. Ultimately, support of local
actions will be what achieves real change.

Conclusions: current problematics
related to food, consumption and
health
Food modernization
Food has taken on an unexpected significance in modern society. For this

reason, it is necessary to deal with food problems with the same rigor as with
other social problems and to follow the usual lines of scientific research with
which we analyze Spanish society and its changes. But in this case the object
is particularly complex as there are so many difficult problems to analyze in
relation to food that the approach to it requires knowledge from many fields and
perspectives. In addition, the importance of food in society is fundamentally a
result of its direct tie to health. Therefore, this has been the point from which
we have begun our analysis. In this book we have tried to show some of the
different approaches used, offering perspectives from both the health sciences
and the social sciences.
All the chapters, as well as the themes in this book have to do in some way
with what in sociology and social anthropology is called «food modernity,»
a concept which, since the beginning of this century, has been a recurring
reference in the social sciences to talk about food in societies with an
overabundance of food. This concept covers a series of characteristics that have
to do with modifications in eating in advanced societies and which describe
with more or less detail the problematics associated with food. It serves to
describe the changes (and the trends) in industrialized and post industrialized
societies related to food and the problems associated with such changes. This
book is then, in a certain manner, a product of this approach; in other words,
in it we have tried to analyze the most problematic aspects of the current
food situation, in particular those related to questions of health. The reading
of the chapters gathered here is an invitation to think about the conflictive
CONCLUSIONS: CURRENT PROBLEMATICS RELATED TO FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH 231

relationship between food and health in another way. At the same time the
analysis also considers if this relationship is being dealt with in a constructive
manner by the agents immersed in these controversies: consumers, business
and government.
We think that the controversies related to food today revolve around several
areas of conflict in which the public’s concerns related to food are expressed.
As food issues are a part of daily life everyone is affected by them and they
form as much a part of political agendas as they do newspaper headlines. In
light of the chapters which make up this study, and as its coordinators, we
would like to provide a framework to formulate some of the issues related to
the problems between food and health; this will allow us to put these problems
in a context based on a multi-disciplinary approach.
Problematics and food disagreements
Three principal agents are involved in the modern food system: consumers,
business (the agrifood industry and other businesses related to the distribution
and sale of foods) and the state (within Europe including «ministries»
or «departments» responsible for matters of food and food safety in the
European Union, but also its member governments as well as regional
and local governments and governing institutions). We can formulate the
problematic of food and health around the relationships among these three
agents, relationships which are often fraught with tension and disagreement,
sometimes even with outright conflict. These conflicts are close to the daily
lives of individuals and often appear in the media.
There is evidence of tension between consumers and the different government
institutions that has to do primarily with the mechanisms and the institutional
framework in charge of food safety. Problems also exist in the relationships
between the industrial sector and those same government institutions that
have to do with regulation and control of foods in all aspects (production,
processing, merchandising, etc.). These are problems that we often see in the
media. Finally, of equal importance are the issues that businesses are confronted
with in relation to consumers, although these problems are not as visible in the
media. The authors of this book have given different explanations and have

diverse orientations for understanding these three areas of conflict. With their
proposals and reflections they help to set out the future of food in Spain.
Conflicts between consumers and government
Few areas in which public powers intervene are as regulated as food is through
agricultural and food safety policies. Although food has historically always
been an object of certain regulation by public powers, it wasn’t until the
second half of the twentieth century that regulation developed and expanded
enormously. This development of the mechanisms of regulation and control
has taken place parallel to and as a consequence of the development of the
modern industrial food system. These developments reveal two things; on the
one hand, the complexity of the modern food system, especially in advanced
societies and, on the other hand, the problems of food safety associated with
this system. The profusion and complexity of regulations related to food safety
are a result of the importance of these problems. At the same time, institutional
capacity to improve the safety of food consumption means that food has never
been so controlled, which in turn demonstrates the objective risks associated
with the industrial production of foods.
In this sense, the chapter by Alicia de León, in addition to showing us the
evolution of food safety policy in all its complexity, also reveals how food
safety policy has been more a result of reaction (to food safety crises) than
of foresight. As she shows, food safety policy developed to protect the
consumer after problems had already become apparent. Therefore, its very
existence reveals the problems of the modern (industrial) food system. And
this existence is paradoxical: the resulting safety mechanisms are there to deal
with risks inherent in the new food system. Thus food crises, which have
generated consumer distrust, have been the trigger for European food policies
and have given rise to supranational legal protection from bodies such as the
WHO and the FAO. Within the European Union they have led to the creation
of the European Food Safety Agency and European wide regulations on food
safety, as well as their duplication on national levels. Her chapter shows us
how the concept of food safety has evolved and how it must be based on an
understanding that goes beyond the strictly techno-scientific. Concern about
food safety and the healthiness of foods must be placed within the context

of the overall protection of the consumer in an increasingly dynamic and
international market.
Despite all the effort to regulate and control food safety, there is no reason to
think that food crises similar to those of the 1980s (massive intoxication from
the consumption of adulterated cooking oil) and 1990s (mad cow disease)
have come to an end. But it is also true that states now have better resources
to confront food safety crises as they have reacted by creating crisis protocols
and bodies specifically designed to confront global food problems. Therefore,
although it is likely that the perception of risk associated with consumption will
increase, it is also likely that there will be greater state control especially around
the sale, distribution and production of foods. Consumers will be increasingly
more demanding in this sense. But for this same reason we will find a scenario
of future conflicts between those who support the regulation of the processes
that intervene in the agrifood chain (from primary production and processing
to sale and consumption), supported by a more critical and demanding public
opinion, and those who support less regulation, supported by the complex of
interests of the agrifood industry, especially the multinational corporations, as
is now happening in many countries such as the United States. Insofar as the
21st century will be the scene for the globalisation of the international food
trade, it will also be necessary to have a common regulatory framework for
the increasingly close connection between health and consumer confidence.
This is the only way to minimize the conflicts that exist among the different
trust referents, through a convergence between them and their interests. But
in any case, it seems necessary to direct collective efforts toward the benefit
of consumers.
As we have said, all the control and regulation by the state is an attempt
to guarantee the safety of foods and maintain and prolong the health of
citizens. Nevertheless, the consumer’s choice of diet is influenced by diverse
factors, among them the recommendations of experts and the public agencies
responsible for food and food safety. If these recommendations are examined
from a certain historical distance they are revealed to be very volatile and
changeable, to such an extent that they diminish consumer trust. In the chapter
by Cecilia Díaz Méndez and Cristóbal Gómez Benito we can see how dietary
recommendations and the concepts of a healthy diet have changed in Spain
since the 1960s (an evolution that is not exclusive to Spain), depending on

circumstances beyond the development of scientific knowledge on nutrition
and diet, and demonstrating a close connection to the rapidly changing
concepts of food modernity.
But scientific knowledge on these subjects is also constantly changing. Ángeles
Menéndez Patterson shows us that it is necessary to update ideas and concepts
about nutrition that have been with us since the beginning of the past century
and which sometimes limit and impede the development of this science. For
example, the criteria for the classification of certain nutrients has been based
on their solubility (in lipids or in water) and not based on their function, or the
need to redefine the term «nutrient» itself, in light of the new «nutrigenomics.»
At the same time, consumers must confront almost daily the variability and
diversity of often contradictory dietary recommendations coming from experts
and agencies (seen on countless television programmes or in magazines about
health), which does not exactly contribute to the generation or strengthening
of trust.
It also seems appropriate to consider consumers’ perceptions regarding
food risk, as we do not always see their caution corroborated by support
from government institutions, and conflict is evident when the pressure and
interests of other agents is revealed, as we will see further on. It is clear that
even today the interests of consumers are not being fully represented by the
so-called «consumer associations.» Although their presence in the media is
growing and institutional support for them has increased, such groups still
have little capacity for pressure and play a minimal role in the specific area of
food consumption. The conflicts and disagreements between consumers and
government do not seem very relevant, but this is possibly a consequence of
the lack of importance of consumer associations in Spanish society.
Disagreements between consumers and the agrifood business
The disagreements between consumers and businesses are manifested at another

level. It seems evident that the market by itself is not capable of adequately
integrating the interests of consumers and the agrifood industry. The existence
of public agents that act as arbitrators and regulators demonstrates well the
tension between them. There are several aspects to consider regarding this
area of potential or real conflicts between both groups of actors.

On the one hand, there is the question of whether the relationship between diet
and health is an individual issue. In other words, are individual dietary habits
based only on factors such as education, lifestyle, likes or food preferences, or
do they also have structural roots which affect individual decisions, making
it very difficult for individuals to change to healthier habits? The question is
important for an adequate diagnosis of the current problems between food and
health.
On the other hand, there is the economic issue of the relationship between
supply and demand. In the economic literature on food consumption, there is
no consensus on whether the current food system is based on the predominance
of demand (the preferences of the consumers condition the supply of the
productive sectors) or of supply (the agrifood industry conditions demand),
although opinion seems to tilt slightly toward the first model. But there is
no doubt that there are also structural factors that orient eating habits and
preferences. In this book there are two chapters that show us this.
The chapter by Emilio Luque, which begins with the distinction made by C.
Wright Mills between individual problems and public issues, warns us that
when an individual problem is broadly reproduced it also becomes a public
problem. This implies that both the correct description of the problem and
the range of possible solutions require considering the economic and political
institutions of society and not only the personal situation and character of a
collection of dispersed individuals. This is the case of the problem of obesity
for example. The author claims that the analysis of the problem of obesity is
inseparable from the context of agrifood policy and the economic and industrial
logic of the food system, and thus the assigning of personal responsibility and
consequent policies based on providing information and consciousness are
fundamentally incomplete. The position that privileges personal responsibility
for nutrition assumes that sources of information are, at minimum, available
without cost to the consumer, and that he/she has the capacity to process the
information, and that all information is reliable and not contradictory.
Following a line of critical reflection and analysis of the modern agrifood
system, the author emphasizes that we do not make decisions about food in
a vacuum. We choose our diet in a commercialized environment, in which
millions of euros are invested in providing nutritional advice which is often

confused and at times contradictory. In fact, this leads to the perception that
eating in a healthy manner is so difficult that it is not worth the bother to eat
more or less of some food or some category of foods. Thus we must confront
«obesogenic» environments with the democratic tools of open debate and the
subsequent formulation of public policies that go beyond the tactics of food
recommendations. Some experts in economics of health have thought about
a direction that we have not dealt with here but which is suggestive: it is
the question of whether the obese are ill, which opens a wide field of debate
regarding the role of national health systems in providing possible coverage
for obesity.
We have then, the decisions of the individual about his/her diet, which we
talked about at the beginning of this section. These decisions are not only
conditioned socially in the general sense (by the individuals’ social conditions
including type of work, structure of the home, education, etc.), but they are
also consciously and structurally shaped by an environment which pushes the
individual to consume foods of a certain type in a certain manner.
Because of this, it is important to look at food advertising. The chapter by Díaz
Méndez and María González about the history of recent food advertising shows
us that agrifood businesses offer their products with sales and distribution
strategies that hinder the consumer’s real freedom of choice. Supply does not
really meet the interests and desires of consumers. Food products too often
have nothing to do with necessity and are distant from the rationality that an
adequate diet has.
The chapter by Díaz Méndez and Gómez Benito takes this same line of
analysis as a starting point. They show the parallel evolution of dietary
recommendations and the evolution of agricultural policies and the agrifood
sector and how many of the recommendations have been clearly used to direct
the consumer toward the consumption of food products of national origin.
Finally it should be mentioned that food consumption habits are also very
much conditioned by (and not just associated with) shopping habits and places
to shop. There is a line of analysis on the role and responsibility of large
supermarkets in the food consumption model. Not only do consumers relate to
the agrifood industry in a problematic way, but also to the distribution sector,
particularly large distributors, as the modern system of distribution forms a

perfectly coordinated part of the industrial agrifood system. It is not by chance
that many of the social movements that propose new models of consumption
raise in equal measure new models of distribution.
Generally speaking, the guidelines of action that are adopted in relation to
the consumer, whether on the part of government institutions or businesses,
consider consumers as anonymous and passive (to protect them or to sell them
products); however, this anonymous person has at different moments given
signs of not being so.
The new profile of consumers which emerges in the chapter by Díaz Méndez
and González, as well as the eating habits and preferences explained by
Jesús Contreras and Mabel Gracia, indicate consumers’ growing interest in
the foods they buy and eat. New social values, in particular those related to
forms of production and the deterioration of the environment, and to the social
consequences and global injustice generated by consumption, emerge as areas
of conflict of interests between consumers and businesses.
It is not easy to visualize the role of the consumer; first of all, because as we
have pointed out, the consumer is not represented by any concrete social group
(but is a part of all of them equally). But also because the aggregate effects of
their purchases (rather than their rejections) are diffused in the dynamic of the
market and remain hidden, and only become present when some phenomenon
occurs with visible macroeconomic dimensions, such as the still incipient
trend of not buying genetically modified foods.
Jesús Contreras and Mabel Gracia have demonstrated that food choices are
increasingly more complicated for consumers. What consumers say and do
does not always coincide and it becomes difficult to establish a strong tie
between their interests and the choices they make from the existing products
on the market. It seems that consumers look to reconcile their conception of
a healthy diet with their consumption and eating habits, and according to the
data of the authors seem to achieve it if we accept the consonance between
their definition of health and their real consumption. However, the authors
also confirm that the so-called «pyramid of food likes,» which classifies foods
in function of the pleasure they provide to the palate, doesn’t coincide with
the nutritional pyramid proceeding from nutritional recommendations. We
could also say that having an adequate diet is increasingly complicated, given

the irregularities of every day life for the majority of the population, plagued
by «micro events» that hinder making eating part of a routine and, therefore
putting an adequate diet into practice.
Often the interests of consumers are not clear. Consumer associations act in
their name, but it remains to be seen how their interests are to be integrated into
traditional social movements (unions, political parties) in a society in which
everything seems to indicate that consumption is acquiring greater prominence.
Consumers have begun to reject matters associated with consumption that are
clearly and directly connected with citizens’ rights, and that are not solely
related to their traditional role as purchasers of products in the market. The
presence in this global market of fair trade products or organic products is an
example of new forms of consumption, but also an example of new forms of
self-perception of the consumer. The rejection of transgenics, along with the
consequent questioning of the form in which agriculture and livestock raising
work, as well as growing environmental concerns respond to this search for
a role beyond that of purchaser, which is usually denied to the consumer on
almost all levels of the agrifood chain.
Ángeles Menéndez Patterson points out that we are now witnessing the
appearance of «nutrigenomics,» a field that will soon bring us «made to
measure diets,» but which is still largely unknown to consumers. It is likely
that consumers will continue to be interested in improving their health through
diet, aided by public health agents and encouraged by industry through the
marketing of functional foods. But it is also likely that there will be an overload
of information about health and diet and that the attitude toward these new foods
will be more critical and purchasing behaviour more reflective. Businesses will
also see a necessity for greater oversight of their research; otherwise they will
be the target of criticisms from the scientific community, at least from those
researchers connected to public bodies such as universities and R&D centres.
Without a doubt, the issue of food advertising is another area of confrontation
between consumers and businesses, as has been shown here in several chapters.
We know that governments have supported greater control over advertising,
developing laws and regulations about their diffusion and content. This issue is
perhaps more related to the confrontation between business and government,
which we will comment on below.

We have seen how the agrifood industry through advertising incorporates the
cultural values associated with traditional foods into industrial food, and that
dishes that are not home-made are marketed as «home cooked.» In the future we
can imagine that as this trend grows, so will government control of the industry
grow, making food advertising subject to increasing government intervention.
At the same time, agri-industry will become more conscious of the risks from
the industrial production and processing of foods and will take measures in
favour of diets closer to the health standards established by professionals in the
field. Citizen concerns will also increase, and with this, institutional concern
for the problems associated with bad diet, in particular obesity, now defined
as the «epidemic of the new century.» This will make governments turn their
efforts towards more direct education about what is understood as a good diet
by incorporating guidelines about healthy and adequate diets into education
curriculums. Efforts will be especially directed toward the child population, a
group with growing importance in food consumption.
Disagreements between industry and government
As Cecilia Díaz Méndez and Cristóbal Gómez Benito set out, during
recent decades the agrifood industries have counted on the support of
diverse governments and government institutions during the development
of the modern agri-industry. It can also be said that the legal obstacles to
its development have also been limited; collaboration between business
and government stands out more than confrontation, at least in the 20th
century. There was strong institutional support for agricultural production
at the beginning of Spanish agricultural development (the so-called «green
revolution» and the programmes for agricultural and livestock development
of francoism), a support which continued with the entrance of Spain into the
European Community with the specific promotion of certain emblematic
national products (such as oil and bananas) in international and local markets.
Entering into the twenty-first century, the Strategy for Nutrition, Physical
Activity and Prevention of Obesity (NAOS), mentioned in several chapters, is
an example of the collaboration between business and government to prevent
childhood obesity, just as the advertising code of conduct PAOS (an industry
regulated code for food advertising) shows the growing interest of both
business and public institutions in support of a better diet and more adequate
advertising information.

But there have also been disagreements among these agents, which have been
visible in the media. The recent controversy about the proposed so-called «Ley
del botellón [Law against public drinking],» which was finally withdrawn, as
well as the reaction of alcoholic beverage producers to this law, are examples
of this. Another example was the Ministry of Health’s petition to withdraw an
advertisement for a fast-food chain because it was considered to be harmful to
health (November 2006). The company continued with the advertisement and
even fed the controversy with new ads along the same lines despite also being
warned to withdraw it by diverse consumer associations.
The recent study promoted by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs to reunify
the sizes of women’s clothing (October 2007) also shows the need for
collaboration between the state and business. In this case, the data is still not
available (it will be available in 2008), but if the final objective is to achieve
a standardization of sizes in women’s clothing based on a model of «healthy
beauty,» the debate is served. Some fashion shows like the Cibeles show have
rejected using models smaller than a size 34, in accordance with the Ministry
of Health proposal, but others have not followed this tendency, and some
designers have questioned the measure, considering it interference in their
business strategies.
We don’t think these are merely opportunistic controversies, but more likely
they are examples of the repeated conflict of interests between the business
world and government.
As we saw in the chapter by Ángeles Menéndez Patterson and in the already
mentioned chapter about food advertising by Cecilia Díaz Méndez y María
González, another area of confrontation is that related to functional foods. In
both of these chapters it is pointed out that the applicability of these foods in
the prevention and treatment of illnesses is not as evident as advertising seems
to indicate. The data on the health benefits of certain substances has been
corroborated by scientific research, but there is no certainty that the integration
of these substances into foods produces effects as evident as those mentioned in
the advertising of functional foods. It is surprising, particularly in the Spanish
case, that the pharmaceutical industry is doing more research on foods than
public research bodies themselves, and that there is no collaboration between
them to help clarify some of the questions which relate diet to the treatment
and prevention of illnesses.

Multilateral disagreements
Although we have portrayed a confrontation «with two sides,» what is typical

is that the controversies around food reveal the intersection among the three
agents involved: consumers, business and government. In view of this, we
must mention the recent controversial case here in Spain in which social
services in March 2007 assumed guardianship of a 10 year old obese boy
who weighed 100 kilos. A similar case in Britain led to similar actions by the
government there in February 2007. Without judging all the dimensions of the
controversial decision adopted by the local government in these two cases,
it is clear that the solutions offered to confront this type of problem were in
response to two issues: on the one hand, a biomedical conception of diet that
determines what is fat and what is thin; and on the other hand, the belief that
there is a food culture which tells us what is good and bad to eat.
As Javier Aranceta explains in chapter eight of this study, it is not easy to define
obesity, particularly in the case of the children. The standard dietetic norm of
fatness in those obese children as well as for thinness in that controversial
photo of a skeletal naked girl from an Italian clothing brand is evident. But
while it is obvious in these cases (it’s enough to see the photos to be shocked),
it is not so easy to establish what is considered normal or abnormal in cases
that do not make it into the newspapers.
However, it must be added that the rulings in the cases cited in which the
state assumed custody of the obese children show that maintaining an
appropriate diet that guarantees the health of the individual is a private issue,
but the responsibility passes to the public sphere (as in these cases) when the
individuals (the families in these cases) are incapable of guaranteeing their
health or the health of others in the family through adequate diet. Under this
supposition, the «not knowing how» is understood as a lack of basic education
(in this case, dietary education), and the response is to offer to the children
the guidelines for adequate dietary behaviour to maintain themselves within
the norm that permits them to be healthy. With these two decisions, the state
showed signs of understanding that there is a correct dietary culture, a norm
about what it means to «eat well,» but the question should still be asked: when
have families been offered education regarding what is understood to be a
good diet, one which demonstrates optimum dietary conduct, and by whom?

The chapter by Paloma Herrera shows the variations in the ways in which
homemakers have informed themselves and been informed so that they could
acquire what could be called «dietary education.» She confirms that this type
of education has always been on an informal level, and that although this
knowledge has varied over time, it has not been institutionalized but continues
to be part of the process of socialization, first within the family and later more
widely; what families understand as adequate diet now comes from diverse
agents and is not formalized. What we have today is a profusion of sometimes
contradictory messages surrounding families when they are choosing the food
products that are closest to their conception of an adequate diet.
In short, her reading leads us to question different aspects of the decision
adopted by the state to resolve the problem of the excess weight of those
children. It is not clear that there exists unanimity about when overweight and
obesity can be considered pathologies and what, therefore, public authorities
can or should do to avoid it. It is also not clear that families have the resources
to face the environmental pressures (in particular the advertising strategies
of the agrifood businesses). It is also questionable if this problem can be
managed by families, given that there is no education or clear information
(neither «officially» nor informally) offering irrefutable guidelines on the
most appropriate ways to eat. Being slightly mischievous, we could argue that
the state should also intervene if the family has children that are drug addicts,
or children that are delinquents or why not even if the children fail in school,
given that all of these would demonstrate the family’s incapacity to deal with
it own private affairs (following the argument questioned here).
To sum up, from the point of view of the government, it seems that «eating»
is individual, conscious, voluntary and self-modifiable behaviour. In light of
this study, we have to ask ourselves if this is in fact the case. Does our daily
eating behaviour only depend on the individual? Is the choosing of foods
for a correct diet always voluntary and conscious? Do we know today with
certainty what is good to eat? Is there a clear consensus on the part of public
health institutions on what is an adequate diet for maintaining health?

Other disagreements
Continuing to look at disagreements, we cannot ignore those which exist

among the sciences. The chapter by Ángeles Menéndez Patterson has made it
clear that there is no real intersection of analyses between the social sciences
and natural sciences, but rather a great number of questions that are referred
to mutually with the hope of a shared answer that seems to never arrive for the
lack of will of the questioners. This study is an attempt to create a common
space for reflection.
We have seen that the biomedical conception of food and dietary disorders
dominates in everything related to nutrition. At the same time the intention
throughout history to «civilize eating» and the social transformations that are
found within our conceptions of health and illness have been demonstrated;
this invites us to think about the social effects of leaving issues that connect
food and health in the hands of only one scientific field.
The chapter by Jesús Contreras y Mabel Gracia highlights the multiplicity of
social factors that are behind food choices, and the proposals of these experts
are clear; it is necessary to relate food problems to these background social
factors, but they are conscious that these are «well-intentioned» words without
the interdisciplinary research to back them. Ángeles Menéndez Patterson is
looking for a convergence in view of the changes that the food sciences have
introduced in the new food wheel. But the data shows that in the food choices
of diners there is an important gap between what is pleasurable and what is
healthy: we eat more of what we like and less of what is considered healthy – a
contradiction which reveals that nutrition experts are on one side and diners
on another. Will it be possible to bring about a convergence between the two?
Is it possible to eat healthy and with pleasure? In any case, it seems necessary
to not lose sight of this as an objective, as the trend toward a more hedonist
consumption is telling us that if we do not manage to combine the two, we
will be on the path toward a diet further and further removed from what is
considered to be healthy.

The social conditions of «healthy eating»
Governments’ fears about the effects of food changes are justified. Data show
an increase in health problems derived from poor eating, and obesity is motive
for great concern. There is also evidence of recurring food crises that affect
consumers, and it does not appear as if such crises are going to disappear;
rather it is likely they will periodically appear. The data also show important
changes in the ways food is chosen, the organization of the eating day and
the structure of the diet; all of which indicate that food behaviours are less
homogeneous than they were even just a few years ago and that we could be
before irreversible changes that are taking the population away from healthy
diets.
Before these new circumstances governments have not been passive, but have
acted with the objective of promoting healthy eating habits and guaranteeing
healthy and quality food to the population. The trade of foodstuffs has been
regulated and they have promoted scientifically backed recommendations
so that the population has information with guarantees on «healthy eating.»
Businesses, for their part, have promoted their products as if health is an
inherent value of industrial foods. Hooked into the desires and expectations
of consumers, food marketers have known how to unite health and foods.
The market today offers the consumer varied products that are easy to buy
and cook, at an accessible price and with symbolic elements in harmony with
rising social consciousness regarding such things as quality or solidarity.
Nevertheless, although both public and private institutions act to offer the
public a wide range of quality and healthy foods, consumer behaviour does
not always lead to eating habits concordant with what experts understand as
«healthy eating.» The fact is that governments are not completely satisfied
with the results of their policies to promote better eating; childhood obesity
is increasing, and recommendations to prevent food risks are not always
followed. Consumers, who are the focus of all the guidelines, do not always act
in a way which is understandable to those who have the objective of looking
after their health. Information does not seem to help; it is curious that today
there is more information than ever, more regulation than ever, but there is
also more fear, more concern about food and more confusion in deciding how
to eat healthily.

For their part businesses also find themselves with problems. Regulations place
demands on the whole agrifood chain which generate new costs. The global
food crises affect them systematically, inasmuch as the perception of risk on
the part of the consumer leads to a situation of generalized distrust that places
business at the centre of criticisms. But in addition, the consumer shows a
growing distrust toward advertising and toward the business environment that
produces, processes, distributes and sells food.
This context, plagued with paradoxes and conflicts, is what we have hoped
to unravel in this book. Food, consumption and health are three spheres in
which businesses, government and consumers interrelate, and this has given
us the opportunity to go in-depth into this complexity to contribute through
this multidisciplinary study some reflections and guidelines for action that
enable us to confront the food problems of modern societies.
For any analysis of food today, it is necessary to start from an obvious
consideration but one that is still necessary to clarify. Current food problems
have little to do with scarcity and much to do with abundance and globalisation.
Food safety, in the past centred on shortages, is today focused on guaranteeing
the quality and healthiness of the foods we eat.
Curiously, this objective is increasingly difficult to meet. New food problems
are associated with the growing complexity of the food system which makes
it more difficult to know and understand what happens with our foods as they
move from the place where they are cultivated to the plate on which they are
eaten. In this scenario, the consumer knows less and less about the foods he
or she eats. For this reason it is also more and more difficult to choose what
is good to eat.
The agrifood system has been growing in its complexity as the production
of foodstuffs has industrialized. More and more actors are intervening in
this system (producers, processors, large distributors and medium and small
retailers), which increases the risk inherent in the system because of the
added risks of each one of the phases and because of the lack of knowledge
(transparency) of what happens in each of them. This growing complexity of the
industrial food system has brought about a transformation in the development
of regulatory mechanisms and control. Food is one of the most regulated
sectors of society. But advances in food safety policies have almost always

been a response to food safety crises and not prior preventative responses in
favour of food safety. Food poisoning such as the «Colza Case» in 1981 led
to the General Law for the Defence of Consumers and Users in Spain and also
revealed the lack of food policies. Subsequently, food crises (such as mad cow
disease, salmonella, listeriosis, swine flu or foot and mouth disease) have been
the trigger for the development of food policies in both Spain and Europe.
But this regulation has not reduced the concern of consumers for what they
eat, perhaps because the loss of both individual and institutional control over
foods is obvious. The consumer does not know what he/she is eating (where it
comes from, how it is grown, what products are added to it for its preservation,
how it is handled for its presentation and sale…); nor does he or she know if
the government is capable of controlling everything and suspects not, hence
the growing concern.
The referents of trust have also changed. Consumer confidence in past periods
was tied to nearby sources like the family and tradition. They knew what
a «good meal» was, and the products to prepare it were accessible to the
consumer. If information was lacking they could call on someone close to
them who with their experience and traditional knowledge, would indicate to
the younger generation «how to eat well.» Culinary knowledge was transmitted
from mothers to daughters, and in this way, one learned how to eat adequately.
Today trust and information are based on specialized sources; experts in
nutrition and health indicate to the public what is good to eat. Nevertheless,
the transmission of culinary information still occurs on an informal terrain,
but now through magazines, television programmes, etc. and not necessarily
from mothers to daughters. Now it is more diverse, but also more confusing.
Currently the public follows the recommendations of doctors and nutritionists
who inform the population and advice the government on what is good
and bad to eat, based on scientific advances in their fields. However, a
historical analysis of the changes in the concept of a healthy diet and the
scientific recommendations of institutions reveals that these concepts and
recommendations have not been stable over time. Without a doubt, this
contributes to the increasing scepticism with regard to «scientific truth» and
undermines the confidence in the institutional referents on health and diet.

Still, despite the multiple and growing disconcerting situations, everything
seems to indicate that citizens of modern societies do trust in society’s food
control systems. When there are food crises, trust in the overall system of
control breaks down, but a process to recover the credibility of the system is
generated through new regulations, sanctioning of transgressors, new food
advertising campaigns, appeals to experts and their latest research and creation
of new bodies to protect the health of the public, etc.
As was mentioned previously, consumer habits are also sending out warning
signals with respect to food. We have been able to establish some of the factors
that influence food choices. In the first place, we should consider personal
likes, which are socially conditioned and marked by a trend toward hedonism
characteristic of society today. There are food likes which coincide with
healthy diets, but there are also those which do not. In view of this, it should not
be forgotten that advertising adapts well to likes because it offers consumers
desires, not reasons, but healthy diets are based on «nutritional rationality.»
In the second place, environmental pressures to consume have to be considered.
As we have mentioned, it is not clear if the current models of food consumption
are models in which demand predominates, in the sense that preferences
condition the supply of foodstuffs; or if they are models of supply, in which
the food industry conditions preferences. But we cannot forget that some of
the products that are important for a healthy diet, such as fresh vegetables, fish
and meat are not promoted through the advertising channels or the marketing
strategies of industrial food products. They are, therefore, at a disadvantage.
A third factor that conditions consumption has to do with the organization
of daily life. Daily life is irregular, plagued by micro events that prevent the
routinisation of meals (variable timetables, trips, different diners at different
times with distinct routines, etc.). Adapting daily life to eating well is difficult
for families, in particular for women that have responsibilities outside of the
home yet also have to attend to food for their families. Without a doubt for
any person, but more for these women, it is easier, more comfortable and
economical to resolve daily eating by buying packaged industrial products
rather than fresh ones.
The repercussion of these factors on food habits varies in relation to social
class. Approaching a healthy diet is also connected to income and educational

level. The incidence of food crises are felt more in some groups than in others.
Behind anorexia and obesity are social factors that are more marked among the
more disadvantaged classes. Because of all this, it is important to remember
that the appearance of a general improvement in food questions should not
hide the presence of what is now known as the «new poor,» disadvantaged
social groups whose definition of poverty does not coincide with that of earlier
periods of food scarcity.
It is foreseeable that the series of problems mentioned here will take on
new dimensions in the future, sharpening tensions and polarisation between
two food models: one, based on the industrial production of foods and their
standardisation, aimed especially at lower income groups; and another, based
on quality, organic production, diversity and differentiation aimed at higher
income groups.
In short, the problem is not only if we are increasingly eating worse, but rather
if it is possible to eat well in the society in which we live. It is not only if there
is or is not a separation from diets considered to be healthy, but rather if there
are optimal social conditions (political, cultural, and economic) so that each
and every person can eat healthily. It is clear that policies directed at improving
eating habits, through the spread of healthy diets and food recommendations
don’t work without support, not only in solid scientific knowledge about diet
and nutrition, but also in a sociological understanding of the social conditions
of food in human groups.
We believe that the objective of those who have the obligation to safeguard
the healthiness and safety of food is to offer to the public a supportive
environment in which to achieve it. Here we have been able to verify that
there are many fronts in which problems exist and many doubts about how to
adequately confront them. In view of the work presented here we can affirm
that neither an exclusively medical conception of health and food, nor the
individualization of food problems seem to be the most appropriate ways to
achieve this.
Without a doubt we find ourselves before complex social phenomena that
make understanding difficult, but the multidisciplinary perspectives we have
offered here are opening a space to achieve this understanding.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY 267
Index of Graphs and Tables
Graphs
6.1 Acceptance/rejection of different food groups 148
6.2 Acceptance/rejection of different ways of preparing foods 150
6.3 The pyramid of likes 152
6.4 The most frequent eating days 153
6.5 Breakfast foods 155
6.6 Breakfast drinks 156
6.7 Lunch foods 160
6.8 Lunch drinks 161
6.9 Typical lunch profile 162
6.10 Typical dinner profile 164
6.11 Typical mid-morning snack profile 170
6.12 Typical merienda profile 171
6.13 Typical aperitif profile 172
8.1 Evolution of the prevalence of obesity in the population
between 6 and 13 years of age in Spain 214
8.2 Comparison of the profile of frequency of consumption
of the Spanish school age population (6-13 years of age)
in the middle of the 1980s with the years 1998-2000 222
8.3 Areas of intervention and determinants of food behaviour
that the PERSEO Project intends to modify through intervention
in the school environment with the participation of families
and community support 228

Tables
4.1 Characteristics of food advertising in Spain 120
8.1 Impact of childhood obesity on physical health 206
8.2 Impact of childhood obesity on emotional and social health 206
8.3 Prevalence of obesity in the child, adolescent and young adult
population in Spain by age and sex 210
8.4 Comparison of the prevalence of obesity among different
developed countries 212
8.5 Environmental risk factors: other evidence 219
8.6 Estimation of the prevalence of unhealthy eating habits
that place the child, adolescent and young adult population
at risk in Spain 221
INDEX OF GRAPHS AND TABLES 269

Available on the Internet: www.laCaixa.es/ObraSocial
Published titles
• YEARBOOK OF SOCIAL 7. YOUNG PEOPLE AND THE

INDICATORS EUROPEAN CHALLENGE
Joaquim Prats Cuevas (director),
1. FOREIGN IMMIGRATION
Cristòfol-A. Trepat i Carbonell
IN SPAIN
(coordinator), José Vicente Peña Calvo,
(Out of stock)
Rafael Valls Montés and Ferran Urgell
Eliseo Aja, Francesc Carbonell,
Plaza
Colectivo Ioé (C. Pereda, W. Actis
and M. A. de Prada), Jaume Funes 8. SPAIN AND IMMIGRATION (*)
and Ignasi Vila Víctor Pérez-Díaz, Berta Álvarez-
Miranda and Carmen González-
2. VALUES IN SPANISH SOCIETY AND
Enríquez
THEIR RELATION TO DRUG USE
(Out of stock) 9. HOUSING POLICY FROM A
Eusebio Megías (director), Domingo COMPARATIVE EUROPEAN
Comas, Javier Elzo, Ignacio Megías, PERSPECTIVE
José Navarro, Elena Rodríguez and Oriol Carme Trilla
Romaní
10. DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
3. FAMILY POLICIES FROM A (Out of stock)
COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE Inés Alberdi and Natalia Matas
(Out of stock)
11. IMMIGRATION, SCHOOLING AND
Lluís Flaquer
THE LABOUR MARKET (*)
4. YOUNG WOMEN IN SPAIN Colectivo Ioé (Walter Actis, Carlos
(Out of stock) Pereda and Miguel A. de Prada)
Inés Alberdi, Pilar Escario and Natalia
12. ACOUSTIC CONTAMINATION IN
Matas
OUR CITIES
5. THE SPANISH FAMILY AND Benjamín García Sanz and Francisco
ATTITUDES TOWARD EDUCATION Javier Garrido
(Out of stock)
13. FOSTER FAMILIES
Víctor Pérez-Díaz, Juan Carlos
Pere Amorós, Jesús Palacios, Núria
Rodríguez and Leonardo Sánchez Ferrer
Fuentes, Esperanza León and Alicia
6. OLD AGE, DEPENDENCE AND Mesas
LONG-TERM CARE
14. PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES AND
(Out of stock)
THE LABOUR MARKET
David Casado Marín and Guillem López
Colectivo Ioé (Carlos Pereda, Miguel A.
i Casasnovas
de Prada and Walter Actis)
(*) English version available on the Internet

15. MOSLEM IMMIGRATION IN 21. THE IMMIGRANT BUSINESS
EUROPE COMMUNITY IN SPAIN
Víctor Pérez-Díaz, Berta Álvarez- Carlota Solé, Sònia Parella and
Miranda and Elisa Chuliá Leonardo Cavalcanti
16. POVERTY AND SOCIAL 22. ADOLESCENTS AND ALCOHOL.
EXCLUSION THE PARENTAL VIEW
Joan Subirats (director), Clara Riba, Eusebio Megías Valenzuela (director),
Laura Giménez, Anna Obradors, Maria Juan Carlos Ballesteros Guerra,
Giménez, Dídac Queralt, Patricio Bottos Fernando Conde Gutiérrez del Álamo,
and Ana Rapoport Javier Elzo Imaz, Teresa Laespada
Martínez, Ignacio Megías Quirós and
17. THE REGULATION OF
Elena Rodríguez San Julián
IMMIGRATION IN EUROPE
Eliseo Aja, Laura Díez (coordinators), 23. INTERGENERATIONAL
Kay Hailbronner, Philippe de Bruycker, PROGRAMMES. TOWARDS A
François Julien-Laferrière, Paolo SOCIETY FOR ALL AGES (*)
Bonetti, Satvinder S. Juss, Giorgio Mariano Sánchez (director), Donna
Malinverni, Pablo Santolaya and M. Butts, Alan Hatton-Yeo, Nancy A.
Andreu Olesti Henkin, Shannon E. Jarrott, Matthew
S. Kaplan, Antonio Martínez, Sally
18. EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL
Newman, Sacramento Pinazo, Juan Sáez
SYSTEMS: CRISIS OR
and Aaron P. C. Weintraub
TRANSFORMATION?
Joaquim Prats and Francesc 24. FOOD, CONSUMPTION
Raventós (directors), Edgar Gasòliba AND HEALTH (*)
(coordinator), Robert Cowen, Bert P. Cecilia Díaz Méndez y Cristóbal Gómez
M. Creemers, Pierre-Louis Gauthier, Benito (coordinators), Javier Aranceta
Bart Maes, Barbara Schulte and Roger Bartrina, Jesús Contreras Hernández,
Standaert María González Álvarez, Mabel Gracia
Arnaiz, Paloma Herrera Racionero,
19. PARENTS AND CHILDREN
Alicia de León Arce, Emilio Luque
IN TODAY’S SPAIN
and María Ángeles Menéndez Patterson
Gerardo Meil Landwerlin
20. SINGLE PARENTING AND
CHILDHOOD
Lluís Flaquer, Elisabet Almeda and Lara
Navarro
Design and desktop
publishing: www.cege.es
Ciutat d’Asunción, 42
08030 Barcelona
Translated by Jed Rosenstein
The objective of this present study is to offer an analysis of the
current food situations that have awakened great social concern.
Our intention is to focus on the social dimension of these problems
and the motives for their recent appearance in public debate. The
study is an investigation of the concepts of good diet, food safety,
risk and health, as well as an inquiry into their changing character
and implications for today. The new roles of public and private
institutions in relation to consumers and new eating disorders
such as obesity and anorexia are also analysed. The study begins
from a paradox: never before has so much been known about
food and nutrition; never before has food safety and dietary health
been the object of so much attention (and regulation), yet never
before has there been so much confusion and concern about what
to eat as consumers find themselves faced with a proliferation of
recommendations and dietary advice. While for their part, institutions
are concerned about dietary changes and their repercussions on
public health.
This book offers some keys to understanding the social roots of
these issues. It is a response to some of the questions raised by
this new scenario in which there is no lack of food, but in which,
curiously, food has become a problem.
Electronic edition available on the Internet:

www.laCaixa.es/ObraSocial
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Food , consumption and health

Book · January 2008

Cecilia Díaz-Méndez Cristobal Gómez Benito

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GOVERNING BODIES OF ”LA CAIXA” SOCIAL PROJECTS

BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE ”LA CAIXA” FOUNDATION

Social Studies Collection

Food, consumption and health

Cecilia Díaz Méndez

Javier Aranceta Bartrina

Electronic edition available on the Internet:

Part one: FOOD AND INSTITUTIONS

I. The evolution of institutional recommendations

II. Scientific advances in nutrition and food 51

III. Food policies and consumer safety 75

V. Obesity, beyond the consumer: structural roots

Part Two: THE CONSUMER’S RESPONSE

VI. Preferences and food consumption:

VIII. Childhood obesity: new eating habits

Conclusions: current problematics related to food,

Index of Graphs and Tables 268

During recent decades, western societies have reached a level of abundance in

Isidro Fainé Casas

Barcelona, February 2008

Food and Health in Modern Societies

12 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

14 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

16 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

18 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

20 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

FOOD AND INSTITUTIONS

THE EVOLUTION OF INSTITUTIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS ON HEALTH AND FOOD 23

24 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

THE EVOLUTION OF INSTITUTIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS ON HEALTH AND FOOD 25

26 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

1.2. Development models and food models

THE EVOLUTION OF INSTITUTIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS ON HEALTH AND FOOD 27

28 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

The nutritional state of the Spanish as deficient and imbalanced

THE EVOLUTION OF INSTITUTIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS ON HEALTH AND FOOD 29

Cultural factors and spending on food

30 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

Small food shops as part of the problem

Bad eating habits

THE EVOLUTION OF INSTITUTIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS ON HEALTH AND FOOD 31

Progress and modernity in food

32 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

THE EVOLUTION OF INSTITUTIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS ON HEALTH AND FOOD 33

34 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

The role of the household economy

THE EVOLUTION OF INSTITUTIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS ON HEALTH AND FOOD 35

Connections with the agrifood sector and the institutional framework

36 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

New problems: fraud and the adulteration of food

THE EVOLUTION OF INSTITUTIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS ON HEALTH AND FOOD 37

If we observe the evolution of dietary recommendations (DR) (28) from a

38 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

THE EVOLUTION OF INSTITUTIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS ON HEALTH AND FOOD 39

40 FOOD, CONSUMPTION AND HEALTH

THE EVOLUTION OF INSTITUTIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS ON HEALTH AND FOOD 41