Since the beginning of history of management, many mechanisms to guarantee the company's competitiveness and productivity have been generated and validated by the rise of neoliberalism (GAULEJAC, 2008). This movement has resistances, and at the same time, it generates some institutional pressures for responsibility towards its environment. Since then, some initiatives were observed in the business environment. Some of then are truly effective, others are critisized. The main assumption of this research is that there are contraditions in the company’s strategies.
The objective of this research was understanding how the discourses of processed food advertising mask the harmfulness of obesogenic products in the current Corporate Food Regime. Although processed food, sugary drinks and the fast-food business are directly involved in the current epidemic of chronic non-contagious diseases, the strategies’ focus of these food corporations has been to keep on developing and marketing their brands, through advertising irrespective of the harmfulness of their content. These strategies coexist with a sustainable, environmental, and socially discourse.
This paper explores the topic of food advertising at the interdisciplinary interface between business and health studies, adopting a critical perspective from the social determination of health (BREILH, 2021) and the political economy of food (FRIEDMANN, 1982). In this sense, the critical discourse analysis was used to reveal the hidden messages in the selected ads (FAIRCLOUGH, 2001).
This is a qualitative study that includes a longitudinal analysis over four decades. The source for the analyzed corpus is the universe of food and drink adverts from Vistazo magazine, published in Ecuador. The selected period spans from 1980 to 2020 and after applying the filters for selection, 40 advertisements for ultra-processed food and beverages aimed at children and adolescents were analyzed through critical discourse analysis (FAIRCLOUGH, 2001). Two stages of analysis are considered: description and discussion, in their relationships with context and theoretical framework.
The results were organized considering the four periods of the selected advertisers. The selected ads include images with children or teenagers accompanied by textual messages. After each figure of the ads, we provided a table with the accompanying texts translated into English. The Critical Discourse Analysis were applied with the support of the theoretical framework of Social Determination of Health (BREILH, 2021) and some inter-discourses and discursive devices were identified in their Ads, related to health, ecological, environmental, diversity, inclusion, bodies and nationalism.
The central argument of this article has shown that the material and semiotic biplanarity in the production and consumption of food is linked to the manipulation of procreative productive forces in the domestic space as means to control discourse and modify perceptions of food in terms of its use value. Also exposed is the semiotic distortion of social relations mediated by food merchandise in the home and the concealment of the harm caused by the material content of these products – the higher the level of processing involved, the more advertising investment they seem to require.
BREILH, J. Critical Epidemiology and the People’s Health. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.
FAIRCLOUGH, N. Discurso e mudança social. Brasília: Editora UnB, 2001.
FRIEDMANN, H. The Political Economy of Food: The Rise and Fall of the Postwar International Food Order. American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 88, S248–S286, 1982. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3083245
GAULEJAC, V. Gestão como doença social: ideologia, poder gerencialista e fragmentação social. Aparecida/SP: Ideias &Letras, 2008.