Food Systems, Food Advertisements, and Food Quality

Researching the food system provides much-needed theoretical framing into how organizations and individuals interact with one another. We use the conceptualization of the eco-agri-food system, developed by TEEBAgriFood, to frame how food advertisements are a method of communication between the food system and consumers. To theoretically frame this communication, we provide an overview of the food system and the history of advertisements concluding with the contemporary situation of food advertisements. We further evaluate this by coding 100 food advertisements from five magazines, to include the coding of 98 different human bodies present within the advertisements. The purpose of this paper is to explicate how food companies communicate socio-historical rhetoric and norms to consumers through often unseen coding. We seek to answer the following research questions: 1. Do food advertisements reflect producers’ understanding of consumers’ historical distrust of food adulteration and its perceived health implications? 2. How do consumers’ perceptions of appropriate gender roles affect food advertisement companies’ portrayal of gender in food advertisements with bodies?