Building Nature's Market: The Business and Politics of Natural Foods
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Building Nature's Market: The Business and Politics of Natural Foods
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Overview
Building Nature’s Market shows how the meaning of natural foods was transformed as they changed from a culturally marginal, religiously inspired set of ideas and practices valorizing asceticism to a bohemian lifestyle to a mainstream consumer choice. Laura J. Miller argues that the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the leadership of the natural foods industry. Rather than a simple tale of cooptation by market forces, Miller contends the participation of business interests encouraged the natural foods movement to be guided by a radical skepticism of established cultural authority. She challenges assumptions that private enterprise is always aligned with social elites, instead arguing that profit-minded entities can make common cause with and even lead citizens in advocating for broad-based social and cultural change.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226501406 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 11/22/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Markets and Movements
Consider the following excerpts from a widely read book on natural foods:
We know that certain food products of modern commercialism, such as white flour, refined sugar, corn syrup, candy, crackers, preserved meats and many other widely advertised foods, are lacking in the essential organic salts and vitamins. ... And yet civilized man eats an ever increasing variety of factory-made products, which are devitalized in the process of manufacture and often contain harmful chemical preservatives.
There is no doubt that the United States Government, through the Department of Agriculture, and the separate states through their agricultural colleges are largely to blame for these conditions. They have spent vast sums to propagate the idea of money-making by crop specialization; of industrial methods as applied to agriculture; of wrong soil fertilization; of farm life which is merely an imitation of decadent city culture. (Carqué 1925, 46–47, 93–94)
These words, with the possible exception of the reference to "organic salts," sound as if they could have been uttered by any number of twenty-first century advocates of sustainable, organic, small-scale farming practices, who promote a diet rich in unprocessed, fresh, nutritious food. But in fact, these passages were published in a 1925 book, titled Natural Foods: The Safe Way to Health, by Otto Carqué, an influential proponent of food reform. Along with writing numerous articles and books and lecturing on the subject of natural foods, Carqué produced his own line of dried fruit, nuts and nut butters, whole grains, honey, raw sugar, and olive oil that he sold through mail order, likeminded retailers, and his own storefront.
Carqué's ideas about how to achieve good health through diet, the ill effects on the food supply that come from a single-minded pursuit of material wealth, and the beneficial attributes of the natural world have been mirrored throughout the last two centuries by others working to reform dominant systems of food production and consumption. His pronouncements about the inefficiency of raising livestock compared to plants for human consumption, or the value of eschewing imported food for sustenance produced on native ground are echoed in the arguments of several generations' worth of natural foods advocates. But the continuity over time in the movement to promote natural foods goes beyond critiques of the prevailing agrifood system and beyond guidelines for sound eating practices. What Carqué also had in common with most leaders of the natural foods movement who came before and after him was involvement in commercial endeavors tied to natural foods. At the same time that Carqué forcefully condemned the commercialism that produced unhealthful food, a degraded environment, and the exploitation of both humans and nonhuman animals, he devoted his energies to businesses that turned the nature he revered into products sold to consumers. In this way, Carqué embodied one of the distinguishing traits of the American natural foods movement: commercial activities have been present since the 1830s and have been a significant part of the movement since the first systematic development of health food commodities began in the 1870s. Thus, for much of its history, the natural foods movement has to a large degree been constituted by a natural foods industry at the same time as it has retained a critique of the corrupting influence of commercialism on the social organization of diet and health.
Despite such continuities, the natural foods landscape of the twenty-first century United States does not, of course, look the same as it did in the 1870s or 1920s or even the 1970s. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, natural foods seemed to be everywhere. From hospitals to schools to workplace cafeterias, mainstream institutions were touting their healthy eating options. Public figures from film stars to the First Lady championed fresh-from-the-garden ingredients in everyday meals. Not only were broad segments of the population switching to organic milk and snacking on granola bars, but a broad variety of businesses, including major food corporations, sought to burnish their moral images and profit lines by selling goods labeled as natural or organic. By 2008, "all-natural," "organic," "whole grain," and "without additives or preservatives" comprised the most common set of claims made for new food and beverage products introduced that year, attached to 33 percent of new products released in the United States ("'Natural' Tops Product Claims" 2009). This marketing strategy was inspired by the pace of sales, which continued to increase even during the recession that began in 2008. Whereas in 1970, retail sales of the category then called "health food" amounted to approximately $100 million (Wright 1972), they grew to $1.7 billion in 1979 (Research Department of Prevention 1981, iii). By 2011, retail sales of natural products totaled more than $73 billion.
With natural foods now appearing to be simply another part of the mix of popular consumption options, it is easy to forget that not so long ago, this category was widely seen as embodying philosophical and political ideals, as well as culinary practices, far from the mainstream. Associated with nature cure believers, religious minorities, and other unconventional groups such as bodybuilders and hippies, natural foods were either ignored or mocked by most Americans. More organized opposition came from the medical establishment as well as agrifood interests and government agencies, which regarded users and producers alike as kooks and faddists, with more high-profile advocates branded as dangerous quacks. Segregated from the conventional food industry, production and sales were contained within a small, specialized sector that retained familial and other personal ties to its founders, many of whom were Seventh-day Adventist, Jewish, or immigrant. Although the constituency for natural foods steadily grew through the twentieth century, it was not until the 1980s that broad-based support for this approach to eating really took hold. One might wonder, then, how this shift in the fortunes of natural foods came about, and whether the mainstreaming process that has brought cultural legitimacy and market growth to this class of food represents a triumph of the philosophies of the movement that had promoted it since the nineteenth century.
The key to answering these questions takes us back to the situation whereby a movement confronting powerful interests in the realm of food production and policy has been sustained by individuals and organizations acting simultaneously as representatives of business and as self-conscious agents of social and cultural change. It may at first seem counterintuitive to consider an industry as leading efforts to shake up the status quo. After all, when social movements and private enterprise are considered in tandem, they are typically assumed to be adversaries. Along with a lengthy history of antagonism between labor movements and capital, citizen groups have mobilized over the last century to protest consumer exploitation, health hazards, environmental damage, and undue public influence on the part of for-profit companies (Hilton 2007; Pellow 2007; Seidman 2003; Soule 2009; A. Starr 2000). Indeed, some of the most visible protest actions of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries — such as those involving the antinuclear movement, or events taking place at meetings of the World Trade Organization, or the Occupy encampments — have targeted the corporate sector as, at the least, an equal partner with the state in perpetuating wrongs.
However, it is not always the case that private enterprise stands in opposition to movements for social change. Movements that seek to alter political, cultural, or social arrangements, and that fall on both the left and the right of the political spectrum, can include businesses and their representatives as active participants. Such overlaps between the private sector and social movements have been especially notable since the 1980s as people who considered themselves activists of various sorts in their youth become entrepreneurs who seek to "do well by doing good." Involving themselves in social change activity from environmentalism, to socially responsible investment, to campaigns to loosen marijuana laws, a variety of for-profit enterprises have made common cause with more classic social movement actors. These alliances are not without their skeptics, though, and are not always welcomed by others in business or activist circles. The ambiguous nature of this activity, which creates uncertainty about the extent to which the greater good and the corporate good can be simultaneously served, invites us to consider the consequences of merging citizen and entrepreneur identities and interests.
The prominent role played by industry in promoting a natural foods ethic and politics underlies the questions that are addressed in this book: What was the path that took natural foods from the marginal to the mainstream in the United States? What ideas and practices were altered along the way? In the course of providing answers to these questions, I consider a more general question: What possibilities open up and what limits emerge when private industry is involved in advocating for broad-based social and cultural changes? Before considering this latter question in more detail, it may be helpful to better identify just what the natural foods movement actually consists of.
Natural Foods as Material Good, Philosophy, and Social Movement
So far, I have been discussing the terms natural foods and natural foods movement as if what they refer to is self-evident. That is definitely not the case, and indeed, the contested nature of these terms is one theme that will come up repeatedly in this account. Nevertheless, a basic definition of natural foods, which would probably achieve consensus among advocates, is foods (and often other body-care products) that are subject to minimal processing or additives. Natural foods proponents have tended to promote diets centered on substances with direct origins in nature, especially fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains. The common understanding among adherents that natural is equivalent to healthier gave rise to the term health food, originally coined in 1874 by Frank Fuller, a maker of bread products, and subsequently picked up and popularized by Seventh-day Adventist food companies. As I will explain in chapter 2, health food refers more precisely to certain manufactured products targeted to those interested in a natural foods diet. Still, health food became the dominant way to refer to natural foods for about a century, notwithstanding those, such as Carqué, who were sharply critical of the slippage. It was not until the 1980s that the term natural foods regained ascendancy, for reasons I will explore in chapter 6. While I will employ the phrase natural foods when referring in a general sense to relevant food, philosophies, and the movement, following the custom of that era, I am more likely to use the term health food when discussing historical events and entities from the late nineteenth century up to the mid-1980s.
A natural foods movement, comprised of people acting collectively to promote such food, first took root in the United States in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The general goals of this movement have remained intact over time: advocates seek to integrate natural foods into their own and others' food-related practices and to further the conditions that make natural foods widely available and culturally acceptable. Drawing on the centrality of the nature–health connection, a key element of the movement has been a commitment to following and spreading food-related practices that bolster not only personal health but also the health of the natural environment. In this view, just as one should tamper as little as possible with the products of nature in order to receive their full benefit, one should respect the integrity of the natural world in order for its inherently good properties to be manifested. These abstract principles have spawned an array of more practical concerns, including opposition to the slaughter of animals and the greater resources needed to raise meat as opposed to vegetable food; the ecological effects of monoculture — that is, the intensive production of a single crop — as well as the application of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides; and the adverse effects of a food industry that is oriented to profit and controlled by large corporations. These various concerns, which arose between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, have furthered an interest in vegetarianism, organic and sustainable farming, food cooperatives, and other practices that seek to change how and which foods are produced and sold. They have also given rise to efforts to compel public policy and food-related institutions to make these practices economically feasible and socially legitimate.
It has never been the case that all natural foods proponents embraced all of these practices; one only has to compare "junk-food vegetarians" (H. Henderson 1987) with the enthusiasm among some natural foods advocates for eating organ meats (Davis 1947; Hewitt 1971; Albright 1982) to see how the particular commitments associated with the natural foods movement do not necessarily cohere. Indeed, following the typical path of ever-increasing specialization that characterizes the division of labor, the various strands of the natural foods movement now often pursue single-minded agendas as, for instance, one group campaigns for the legalization of raw milk while another concerns itself with keeping growth hormones out of the feed of dairy cows. Such diversity of purpose raises the question of whether one can even speak of a single natural foods movement or if what we have here is really an assortment of distinct, occasionally overlapping movements. Certainly, many scholars do choose to treat these strands separately. However, I believe it is useful to refer to the natural foods movement in the singular, not as a way to gloss over cleavages but to better recognize the intertwined interests and fates of those whose priorities might lie with vegetarianism, organic farming, combating genetically engineered life forms in the food supply, and so on. As I will argue in this book, what most unifies these various strands is a coordinated natural products industry that not only supplies so many of the goods these disparate advocates seek but also, through its communication organs, gatherings, and other opportunities for members to network with another, articulates the connections among these diverse goals.
Perhaps a more fundamental question, though, is whether efforts to promote the production and consumption of natural foods qualify as a social movement. After all, this is a field of people, practices, and beliefs that is directed at changing individual lifestyles, whose principal organizations are mostly unknown to natural foods consumers, and that is notable more for spawning new products than protests. Much social movement scholarship has preferred to study the organizational activity of those movements that target the state or state policies by engaging in coordinated collective action, especially outside of institutional channels. However, by delimiting the range of movements studied in this way, we overlook significant social change agents who have consciously created ideologies and institutions that promote behavioral, cultural, and structural change.
Indeed, the scholarly literature contains a range of useful challenges to placing overly narrow strictures on the category of social movements. Together, these critiques suggest that not just movements with clearly defined political goals and organization, and not just protest activity by those disenfranchised from established social institutions, also deserve our attention. In particular, by broadening our focus, we can better study the cultural impact and aim of social movements. For instance, the prevailing emphasis in American sociology has been on highly organized movements, with most analytical focus on formal social movement organizations, an outcome of the resource mobilization perspective, which explicitly directs attention to them (McCarthy and Zald 1977, 1216). Among others, though, Gusfield argues for a more fluid perspective on social movements that is "less confined to the boundaries of organizations and more alive to the larger contexts of change at the same time as it is open to awareness of how the movement has consequences and impacts among nonpartisans and nonmembers as well as participants and devotees" (1981, 323). As he says, by deliberately blurring the line between trend and movement, we can better assess how cultural meanings change over time and affect a part of the population larger than those who identify as activists.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Preface and AcknowledgmentsChapter 1 Markets and Movements
Chapter 2 Escaping Asceticism: The Birth of the Health Food Industry
Chapter 3 Living and Working on the Margins: A Countercultural Industry Develops
Chapter 4 Feeding the Talent: The Path to Legitimacy
Chapter 5 Questioning Authority: The State and Medicine Strike Back
Chapter 6 Style: Identifying the Audience for Natural Foods
Chapter 7 Drawing the Line: Boundary Disputes in the Natural Foods Field
Chapter 8 Cultural Change and Economic Growth: Assessing the Impact of a Business-Led Movement
Source Abbreviations
Notes
References