31 The public and private faces of food activism in the fight against childhood
31 The public and private faces of food activism in the fight against childhood obesity in the UK
Jennifer Cole, University of Leicester
In February 2016 Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt declared childhood obesity as national emergency. This was in response to the announcement that the controversial sugar tax, championed by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, would be introduced in 2018. Whilst Oliver campaigned for the tax as deterrent against the consumption of sugary drinks, critics of the tax including other celebrity chefs, felt that the tax would not be effective in combating the obesity crisis. They suggested that this tax would ultimately only benefit the government by generating a new revenue stream, rather than cutting the number of drinks consumed.
Top medical journal The BMJ has also published many articles on the debate, a whole range of experts echo the pros and cons of sugar taxation discussed by these celebrity chefs. So why is it celebrity chefs not these qualified experts that we are hearing from in our mainstream media?
This role that celebrity chefs were playing caught my attention as it reminded me of the work by Tania Lewis. Lewis suggests that traditional roles in expertise such as nutritionists are now being filled by popular lifestyle experts. This is demonstrated in the coverage of the sugar tax where the sole expert presented alongside rationales for its introduction is Jamie Oliver. Oliver’s celebrity status and the fact that he is well known as being a father with four (soon to be five) children, adds credibility to his cause and allows him access to publicise the issue in a way that a traditional expert would be unlikely to achieve within the same time frame. Throughout this debate, Oliver has becomes the media-appointed face of food and children’s health in the UK.
Drawing on the celebrity as a culturally powerful figure to front the campaign is a modern form of activism where attention in generated from TV shows, blogs and tweets, This allows for direct engagement with the public and creates hype which has the potential, as seen here, to lead to changes in legislation.
There are also links between the debates emerging here and my PhD research. My research did not set out to analyse how people felt about the amount of sugar in products or childhood obesity, but in a context where the majority of participants were mothers and all had a strong interest in food as an integral part of their lifestyles the topic was inevitably discussed. The women in my study did not consider themselves to be activists in the way that many of them referred to Jamie Oliver (who at the time of my research was fronting the campaigns to change school dinners), because they were not public figures and their actions did not aim to have wider reaching social implications. Yet many felt that their singular efforts, combined with those of like-minded parents, could contribute to a future society with a more rational approach to food education and to tacklin