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Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
In recent decades, many members of the public have come to see processed food as a problem that needs to be solved by eating "real" food and reforming the food system. But for many food industry professionals, the problem is not processed food or the food system itself, but misperceptions and irrational fears caused by the public's lack of scientific understanding. In her highly original book, Charlotte Biltekoff explores the role that science and scientific authority play in food industry responses to consumer concerns about what we eat and how it is made. As Biltekoff documents, industry efforts to correct public misperceptions through science-based education have consistently misunderstood the public's concerns, which she argues are an expression of politics. This has entrenched "food scientism" in public discourse and seeded a form of antipolitics, with broad consequences. Real Food, Real Facts offers lessons that extend well beyond food choice and will appeal to readers interested in how everyday people come to accept or reject scientific authority in matters of personal health and well-being.
In recent decades, many members of the public have come to see processed food as a problem that needs to be solved by eating "real" food and reforming the food system. But for many food industry professionals, the problem is not processed food or the food system itself, but misperceptions and irrational fears caused by the public's lack of scientific understanding. In her highly original book, Charlotte Biltekoff explores the role that science and scientific authority play in food industry responses to consumer concerns about what we eat and how it is made. As Biltekoff documents, industry efforts to correct public misperceptions through science-based education have consistently misunderstood the public's concerns, which she argues are an expression of politics. This has entrenched "food scientism" in public discourse and seeded a form of antipolitics, with broad consequences. Real Food, Real Facts offers lessons that extend well beyond food choice and will appeal to readers interested in how everyday people come to accept or reject scientific authority in matters of personal health and well-being.
- GenresFood
273 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 27, 2024
About the author
Charlotte Biltekoff
4 books4 followersCharlotte Biltekoff is Assistant Professor of American Studies and Food Science & Technology at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of
Eating Right in America
. Previously, she was a chef at Greens, a well-known vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco.
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March 23, 2025
Recent critiques of the food system have found more resonance since Pollan’s prominence in the early 2000s with a range of themes including concerns over the environment, animal welfare, obesity, the safety of chemical additives, GMOs and, more recently, ultraprocessed foods. Charlotte Biltekoff argues that these are all parts of a broad wave of dissatisfaction with the current industrial food system and a desire for something, one based around the idea of “real food”.
The food industry has responded by defending current practice through a “real facts” frame. They imagine a public, fearful and ill-informed, whose concerns can be addressed with scientific facts (i.e., the deficit model of science communication). In doing so they are shutting down the real underlying concerns and holding control and authority over the food system to a scientific elite which supports industry practices. By arguing that all problems are technical problems, and all concerns can be addressed through a one-way “communication” (i.e., persuasion) they are guilty of scientism and are trying to suppress political debate around the issues (i.e., anti-politics). She explores these ideas by contrasting educational materials prepared by IFIC with those designed around the “Food Inc.” film, a critique of public and industry responses to the FDA’s effort to regulate the term “natural” on food labels, an analysis of the educational and public relations work of the Center for Food Integrity and their advocacy of “transparency” and a brief discussion of how Impossible Foods communicated their disruptive vision of the future of meat.
I was looking forward to this book, first because of how much I loved the author’s other book (“Eating Right in America”, 2013) but also because I’ve been interested in how food scientists try to “communicate” for a while. When I was in leadership at IFT I advocated for some form of public communication on behalf of the profession (https://www.ift.org/news-and-publicat... - is interesting to look back on). Later I developed an “Arguing about Food” class for food scientists to try to understand the controversies around food processing (https://ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/d...) and drastically transformed the large “Food Facts and Fads” general education course (the title, not mine, is a classic of the “Real Facts” frame. I do not follow it). I’ve tried to maintain a distance between the perspective of the food industry and the perspective of food scientists, but that’s always been difficult. Many food scientists reflexively take on the perspective of their industry. I recall arguing at one IFT meeting that we shouldn’t refer to the people we were trying to communicate with as “consumers” and getting precisely nowhere.
There are multiple forms of “science communication” that scientists should be aware of and distinguish. Communication within science (between scientists) is essentially a matter of rhetoric (how to be persuasive) within ethical and epistemological constraints. Draw your graphs like this, use analogies (but carefully), make these claims (but be clear on their limitations), share credit appropriately. Communications between scientists and non-scientists are much more challenging, and any scientist involved should listen to the critiques in this book.
Biltekoff mainly focuses on trade associations (i.e., IFIC, Center for Food Integrity, IFT), as the source of the “real facts” voice. This is reasonable as they are the only people motivated to speak for “the industry” as a whole. However, we should be cautious about identifying this as the totality of the “response of the food industry”. Almost exclusively, the response of the food industry to its critics is developing new products, making new claims (“free from”) and attacking other segments of the industry in advertising.
Biltekoff’s subject is the response of the food industry using the “real facts” frame, but I’m also interested in the way the “real food” critics frame their arguments. I recall an interview with Vani Hari about her successful azodicarbonamide campaign where she said she was motivated by Subway’s involvement in Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” program and their slogan that people should “Eat Fresh”. Hari felt that a food could not be “fresh”, or even really a food if it contained a chemical from plastics processing. This seems to be reasonable, and there are lots of ancient ideas of purity and contamination she could have drawn on, perhaps in an almost religious argument. However, the argument she did raise was purely in scientific terms trying to demonstrate harm. A truck containing azodicarbonamide crashed and they had to evacuate a wide area – and they put this in bread! This form of rhetoric is scientism just as much as the Real Facts response to it - but much more effective.
The company concerned (Subway) responded quickly to the economic power of Hari’s underlying values argument by withdrawing the chemical and did not get drawn into defending the specific scientific claims. The “real facts” response from people like The Sci Babe (!), and also me https://johncoupland.tumblr.com/post/...) were marginal and uncoordinated. In my view, food companies are doing what companies do – maximizing their interests. Consumer pressure, especially when coupled with effective and responsible journalism, along with regulation can have some influence. Asking companies to take part in some sort of open democratic debate with their consumers seems unrealistic.
The real question is what would the debate look like at a social/political level if non-scientific claims were weighed more seriously? Essentially all decisions about how food is allowed to be processed would be political. This is true to an extent now - strong campaigning can get specific additives banned or made legal (see the history of saccharin or tobacco regulation) – but most regulation is delegated to agencies drawing on standards of scientific evidence. While these agencies should be reformed and there are troubling systemic biases, I can’t envision a purely political process being better, and certainly not in terms of public health outcomes.
So how should scientists respond to the criticism underlying the “real foods” worldview without resorting to scientism? The question is, of course, much wider than food, and could be applied to any part of the modern industrial world. It takes a lot of effort to look past the empirical flaws in a critic’s argument and see deeper social concerns that deserve attention. It’s easy if the institution being criticized is one you are already suspicious of, for example the food industry, but could you see the value in the critics of global warming, vaccines, and gender identity or will you get hung up on specific “real facts”? The new presidency may provide many stereotypically liberal scientists opportunities to find out.
I believe there is a role for scientific organizations and scientists, but it will be more effective when the focus is within science (e.g., improving standards, inspection schemes, data sharing, scientific integrity) than when trying to resolve issues of external criticism. One area scientific organizations should be stronger on is resisting (or at least recognizing) the biases imposed on it by its funding agencies, particularly industry.
What is missing in the debate is an advocacy of the value of industrial food and, in a larger sense, the value of some form of capitalism constrained by democratic decision making and with both informed by reliable empirical facts. There are huge problems created by industrialism, but they shouldn’t leave us unaware of the problems solved by factories, standards, science, transportation and trade.
The food industry has responded by defending current practice through a “real facts” frame. They imagine a public, fearful and ill-informed, whose concerns can be addressed with scientific facts (i.e., the deficit model of science communication). In doing so they are shutting down the real underlying concerns and holding control and authority over the food system to a scientific elite which supports industry practices. By arguing that all problems are technical problems, and all concerns can be addressed through a one-way “communication” (i.e., persuasion) they are guilty of scientism and are trying to suppress political debate around the issues (i.e., anti-politics). She explores these ideas by contrasting educational materials prepared by IFIC with those designed around the “Food Inc.” film, a critique of public and industry responses to the FDA’s effort to regulate the term “natural” on food labels, an analysis of the educational and public relations work of the Center for Food Integrity and their advocacy of “transparency” and a brief discussion of how Impossible Foods communicated their disruptive vision of the future of meat.
I was looking forward to this book, first because of how much I loved the author’s other book (“Eating Right in America”, 2013) but also because I’ve been interested in how food scientists try to “communicate” for a while. When I was in leadership at IFT I advocated for some form of public communication on behalf of the profession (https://www.ift.org/news-and-publicat... - is interesting to look back on). Later I developed an “Arguing about Food” class for food scientists to try to understand the controversies around food processing (https://ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/d...) and drastically transformed the large “Food Facts and Fads” general education course (the title, not mine, is a classic of the “Real Facts” frame. I do not follow it). I’ve tried to maintain a distance between the perspective of the food industry and the perspective of food scientists, but that’s always been difficult. Many food scientists reflexively take on the perspective of their industry. I recall arguing at one IFT meeting that we shouldn’t refer to the people we were trying to communicate with as “consumers” and getting precisely nowhere.
There are multiple forms of “science communication” that scientists should be aware of and distinguish. Communication within science (between scientists) is essentially a matter of rhetoric (how to be persuasive) within ethical and epistemological constraints. Draw your graphs like this, use analogies (but carefully), make these claims (but be clear on their limitations), share credit appropriately. Communications between scientists and non-scientists are much more challenging, and any scientist involved should listen to the critiques in this book.
Biltekoff mainly focuses on trade associations (i.e., IFIC, Center for Food Integrity, IFT), as the source of the “real facts” voice. This is reasonable as they are the only people motivated to speak for “the industry” as a whole. However, we should be cautious about identifying this as the totality of the “response of the food industry”. Almost exclusively, the response of the food industry to its critics is developing new products, making new claims (“free from”) and attacking other segments of the industry in advertising.
Biltekoff’s subject is the response of the food industry using the “real facts” frame, but I’m also interested in the way the “real food” critics frame their arguments. I recall an interview with Vani Hari about her successful azodicarbonamide campaign where she said she was motivated by Subway’s involvement in Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” program and their slogan that people should “Eat Fresh”. Hari felt that a food could not be “fresh”, or even really a food if it contained a chemical from plastics processing. This seems to be reasonable, and there are lots of ancient ideas of purity and contamination she could have drawn on, perhaps in an almost religious argument. However, the argument she did raise was purely in scientific terms trying to demonstrate harm. A truck containing azodicarbonamide crashed and they had to evacuate a wide area – and they put this in bread! This form of rhetoric is scientism just as much as the Real Facts response to it - but much more effective.
The company concerned (Subway) responded quickly to the economic power of Hari’s underlying values argument by withdrawing the chemical and did not get drawn into defending the specific scientific claims. The “real facts” response from people like The Sci Babe (!), and also me https://johncoupland.tumblr.com/post/...) were marginal and uncoordinated. In my view, food companies are doing what companies do – maximizing their interests. Consumer pressure, especially when coupled with effective and responsible journalism, along with regulation can have some influence. Asking companies to take part in some sort of open democratic debate with their consumers seems unrealistic.
The real question is what would the debate look like at a social/political level if non-scientific claims were weighed more seriously? Essentially all decisions about how food is allowed to be processed would be political. This is true to an extent now - strong campaigning can get specific additives banned or made legal (see the history of saccharin or tobacco regulation) – but most regulation is delegated to agencies drawing on standards of scientific evidence. While these agencies should be reformed and there are troubling systemic biases, I can’t envision a purely political process being better, and certainly not in terms of public health outcomes.
So how should scientists respond to the criticism underlying the “real foods” worldview without resorting to scientism? The question is, of course, much wider than food, and could be applied to any part of the modern industrial world. It takes a lot of effort to look past the empirical flaws in a critic’s argument and see deeper social concerns that deserve attention. It’s easy if the institution being criticized is one you are already suspicious of, for example the food industry, but could you see the value in the critics of global warming, vaccines, and gender identity or will you get hung up on specific “real facts”? The new presidency may provide many stereotypically liberal scientists opportunities to find out.
I believe there is a role for scientific organizations and scientists, but it will be more effective when the focus is within science (e.g., improving standards, inspection schemes, data sharing, scientific integrity) than when trying to resolve issues of external criticism. One area scientific organizations should be stronger on is resisting (or at least recognizing) the biases imposed on it by its funding agencies, particularly industry.
What is missing in the debate is an advocacy of the value of industrial food and, in a larger sense, the value of some form of capitalism constrained by democratic decision making and with both informed by reliable empirical facts. There are huge problems created by industrialism, but they shouldn’t leave us unaware of the problems solved by factories, standards, science, transportation and trade.
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