Governing food choices: a critical analysis of school food pedagogies and young people's responses in contemporary times

Recently a proliferation and intensification of school programmes
that are directed towards teaching children and young people about
food has been witnessed. Whilst there is much to learn about food,
anxieties concerning the obesity epidemic have dramatically shaped
how schools address the topic. This article draws on governmentality
to consider ‘the conditions of possibility’ for teaching about food in
contemporary times. In particular the form that knowledge about
food takes in the midst of an obesity epidemic, the authorities on
which it draws for its legitimacy and the learnings made possible are
considered. To do this two Australian studies investigating students’
engagement with school-health knowledge are considered. It is
suggested that the obesity epidemic has potently shaped the ways
schools seek to teach about food and the possibilities for how young
people come to understand their own, and others’, food choices.