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Biopolitics of health and the controversial attempt to revise the Food Guide for the Brazilian Population

Abstract

What you eat and what you drink is quite hotly debated nowadays. On one side, we have the natural food enthusiasts, who avoid processed food and abhor ultra-processed food. On the other, there are the advocates of processed and ultra-processed foods as part of a healthy and nutritious diet. The goal of this paper is to examine the tracks and capture the mediations in search of the associations created by and between the actors in the controversy, that occurred in September 2020, which arose from a technical note from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MAPA) revealing this body’s plan to revise the Food Guide for the Brazilian Population. We also analyzed the biopolitical aspects arising from the disputes surrounding healthy food. Authors on communication, consumption, food, biopolitics and actor-network theory (ANT) are mobilized, using cartography of controversies (CC) as methodology, which enables the analysis of the actors, mediations and the clashes between these two worldviews.

Keywords
food consumption; biopolitics; cartography of controversies; actornetwork theory

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