Production of truths and circulation of meanings in the natural versus ultra-processed foods controversy

Abstract

In this article, we address the discursive disputes within the natural versus ultra-processed foods controversy, taking the 2014 second edition of the Food Guide for the Brazilian Population (Ministry of Health), as point of departure. We mobilized tenets of Foucauldian discourse analysis, among others, and concepts, such as discursive rarefactions, to investigate the following question: how do the power relations and disputes of the production of truths and circulation of meanings develop in the aforementioned controversy? The corpus consists of interviews with representatives of entities for and against ultra-processed foods. The analytical procedures encompass the examination of the main statements collected from the speeches of the eight interviewees, the identification of discursive rarefactions contained in these statements and the analysis of the lines of force in the disputes over the production of truths, the circulation of meanings and the knowledge linked to the exercise of power. As for the results, we observe that both sides of the controversy use discursive rarefactions in an attempt to dominate the random event of the discourse, engendering knowledge and power within the logics of Brazilian food consumption. Other research findings include the statements of the advocates of ultra-processed foods that tend to depoliticize the debate, emphasizing aspects of nutrition and hygiene; on the contrary, statements by those in favor of natural foods stress the political dimension of food and the role of public policies, such as the Food Guide for the Brazilian Population – a reference for other guides on population nutrition.