Meat in the post-truth era: Mass media discourses on health and disease in the attention economy

Abstract

The debate on meat's role in health and disease is a rowdy and dissonant one. This study uses the health section of the online version of The Daily Mail as a case study to carry out a quantitative and qualitative reflection on the related discourses in mass media during the first fifteen years of the 21st century. This period ranged from the fall-out of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis and its associated food safety anxieties, over the Atkins diet-craze in 2003 and the avian flu episode in 2007, to the highly influential publication of the report on colon cancer by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2015. A variety of conflicting news items was discernible, whereby moments of crisis, depicting the potential hazards of meat eating, seemed to generate reassuring counter-reactions stressing the benefits of meat as a rich source of nutrients. In contrast, when the popularity of meat-rich diets was on the rise due to diets stressing the role of protein in weight control, several warnings were issued. Meat's long-standing and semiotic connotations of vitality, strength, and fertility were either confirmed, rejected or inverted. Often this was achieved through scientification or medicalisation, with references to nutritional studies. The holistic role of meat within human diets and health was thus mostly reduced to a focus on specific food components and isolated biological mechanisms. The narratives were often histrionic and displayed serious contradictions. Since several interests were at play, involving a variety of input from dieticians, (health) authorities, the food industry, vegan or vegetarian movements, and celebrities, the overall discourse was highly heterogeneous.

Technological, Regulatory, and Ethical Aspects of In Vitro Meat: A Future Slaughter‐Free Harvest

“…Overconsumption of meat has been associated with several health conditions such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes, specific cancers, and other noncommunicable diseases (Aston, Smith, & Powles, ; Huang et al., ; Pan et al., ; Zelber‐Sagi et al., ). The association between saturated fat and Western disease and the recent studies associating meat to colon cancer and cardiometabolic diseases have greatly added to the crumbling of meat's healthy image (Leroy, Brengman, Ryckbosch, & Scholliers, ; Micha et al., ). Meta analyses, consumption recall surveys, and risk assessments using modeling studies have attributed several health‐related conditions to the consumption of meat and meat products.…”

“…. disease and the recent studies associating meat to colon cancer and cardiometabolic diseases have greatly added to the crumbling of meat's healthy image (Leroy, Brengman, Ryckbosch, & Scholliers, 2018;Micha et al, 2017). Meta analyses, consumption recall surveys, and risk assessments using modeling studies have attributed several health-related conditions to the consumption of meat and meat products.…”

Chemical hazards in foods of animal origin

“…Consumption of red meat was also positively associated with pancreatic and with prostate cancer (Bouvard et al, 2015). Putting processed meat consumption at the same level as plutonium or tobacco smoke, the outcome of this hazard identification has frequently been misinterpreted and has received polarized and scientific incorrect statements in the media (Leroy et al, 2018). It has to be realized that this evaluation was not a full risk assessment, nor was it intended to make dietary recommendations (Bouvard et al, 2015;De Smet and Vossen, 2016).…”

“…For processed meat, the recommendation was even to avoid its consumption. These recommendations have received widespread attention and have induced changes in dietary guidelines formulated by health and nutrition bodies in several European countries (Leroy et al, 2018). It should be mentioned that the threshold of 500 g per week of red meat is well above the level of consumption of many meat eaters around the world.…”

What does the digital press talk about when it talks about nutrition? An analysis of elpais.com and lavanguardia.com during 2017

“…Abrahams et al (2017) tras estudiar los anuncios en 5 revistas sudafricanas encontraron que el 59% de los mismos correspondían a alimentos poco saludables. Por su parte, Leroy et al (2018) han llevado a cabo una investigación diacrónica, a fin de determinar el tratamiento que se ha venido ofreciendo del consumo de carne durante el periodo 2001-2015 por parte del MailOnline, la versión digital del tabloide julio-diciembre de 2019…”