Food as a Sociocultural Practice: Analyzing Discourses on Healthy Eating in an Argentine Mega-Influencer's Instagram Page

Abstract

Food is a complex sociocultural practice structured around language. This implies that individuals produce and consume multiple discourses that delimit the act of eating, including those related to health. Currently, these ways of talking about food are expressed in digital languages that are shaping the eating experience. The objective of this research was to analyze the meanings of "healthy eating" (HE) on one of the Instagram (IG) pages of an Argentine mega-influencer nutritionist (2022-2023).

A qualitative, interpretative, and flexible design was used. A single-case study was conducted, selecting an IG account of an Argentine nutritionist, defined by the large audience it attracts and considering that it engages with socially legitimized values and practices. Information was collected through the observation of the virtual space. The analysis consisted of coding, reduction, and the relationship between empirical and theoretical categories. Analysis categories: culinary grammars of eating; discourses on "HE". The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest in conducting this research.

The analysis shows a specific cuisine that defines HE, constructing an individual commensality for an affluent eater, with time and information as decisive organizers of eating. The information is mainly based on the effects that different nutrients have on body modification (biologistic approach) that equates health with dietary restriction and control. This reveals the naturalization of thinness as the ideal bodily standard of a 'healthy body'. The mediatization of HE proposes novel eating times/spaces guided by the dominance of sight and the immediacy of images as the hegemonic way to think about and experience food.

This research complicates the view of HE and the sociocultural dynamics in which it is embedded. It also encourages critical reflection on the role of Information and Communication Technologies in the production of meanings about eating and body care, and how these relate to unique and unequal food realities.