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objectification of women in food and fitness industry.

Food Politics And Gender
Pernicious Practices of Food Giants

Introduction To Food Politics
Food, basic paradigm of energy and a source of fulfillment and prosperity, might seem even not to be the remotest kin of politics, a term redolent of power, manipulation, and commerce, but the two are tightly linked. Commercial interests affect nearly every aspect of the systems of food production, distribution, and consumption, from farm to fork. The food industry is so big and with that it engages in different practices with new advancements which become hot topics of conflicts and statutes are demanded to be made in society’s interest. The conflicts come out due to non similar interests regarding all aspects of important concern. But all stakeholders have a common benefit from a food supply that is safe, economical, no hazardous, culturally appropriate, affordable, and of good taste. The food industry, however, has an additional and compelling interest—to sell products. This practice of food corporations is not in consonance with whole class of stakeholders is a principal reason why food issues are so controversial.

Women And Objectification
It has been a trend in the food industry to engage women in advertisements for their products as women have been stereotyped for cooking as well as nurturing qualities and the sole caretakers in respect to the health of the whole family. They are hence used as a tool to promote and sell what the food industry produces with an assurance of quality and health.This is not the only engagement of women in the food and health sector. Rather, a fear in the minds is created regarding health consciousness to sell the products by using women as an object. When advertisements contend and promote health in consonance with specific waist sizes, this creates a fear of eating consciously what we have been consuming for years and ages. With developments in the technological aspects, food industry is an emerging sector and has politicized the young minds in a way that traditional foods are not healthy and are either bad carbohydrates or bad fats. The shift in our mentality have come up from one generation only and the whole credit goes to use of women as a tool for influencing our minds to eat processed and packed food items which are according to them fully safe to consume with high nutritional values.

Problems With Objectification
Legal Issues
Basically the legal problem with objectification of women with respect to ideal lean body figures and weights is the problems created into the lives of women who do not resemble the same figures and are forced to buy the products due to being politicized by the food giants. These women are subjected to mental cruelty, depression and a felling of inferiority with the so called ideal figured ones. Right to live with human dignity is a right of every woman having all sizes and shapes but these practices violate enjoyment of such right by women as they starve themselves striving for ideal body shapes and are not satisfied with their body sizes and shapes. Being healthy means remaining joyful, active and free from any illness. The feeling of joy and happiness is connected with one’s food. The food which the food industry guarantees to be super healthy by using women and their bodies as object is misrepresentation of all such facts that deceive the consumers as no food product can act as weight loss agent until complemented with enough physical activities and workouts. We are deceived by first detaching us from local and fresh foods as to be unhealthy and secondly attracting towards processed food as a substitute to our indigenous foods. Also, the nutritional value such foods serve is almost equal to zero because they do not contain any amounts of sugar or any other energy giving substances.

The legal aspect focuses on making new laws in this field specifically to stop these practices of using attractive body figures and flaunts thereby making body of a woman as an object to be straightly jacketed in appealing clothes which can only be achieved by being health conscious consuming so called health and diet foods that are 99% fat free and not eating the food that is produced in the areas we live in, which suits our body types, climates and of course provide us happiness and feeling of satiety.

Socio- Economical Issues
As far as the concept of food politics and gender is concerned, there are a lot of aspects to look into it but we have focused here only on the aspect related to political tactics used by the food industry and corporations just to sell off their products and for that they have crossed the limits. Women have been associated with cooking and taking care of the whole family’s nutrition. Using them for advertisements is accepted but the method by which they have been doing it is wrong. Specifying body weights and figures as to be healthy is a wrong practice and is going to be pernicious for the society.

The social and economic impacts of such tactics are devastating and that is why the movements of feminism demand legislations in this regard. Since a generation has passed and along with an upsurge of food industries our mentalities have also been shifted to consuming foods of high brands that are low on calories and highly processed. We count calories before eating a spoon of ghee or sugar as to be wholly of fat content. All this is due to the mindset and fear created by the heath food industries as to bloat like a balloon if we consume more carbohydrates or fats and this is what creating a gap between health and fuel required to maintain it.

1. Young minds are easily influenced to be in perfect shapes and the whole lot of such people is maintaining a distance with our staple foods.

2. Dairy products are sold as fat free or toned packets of milk which takes care of the waist sizes.

3. Local farmers are suffering as the food that grows to our lands naturally is not in demand and is considered as bad due to being high in calorific values.

4. The farmers are forced to grow fruits and vegetables that are non-seasonal, non-indian and cannot be grown naturally without using seeds which are altered genetically to grow in unsuitable climates. All this is of no use to our bodies as we are not adapted to eat such foods as well as they are not good in taste also.

5. All the technology that is used in the production of foods that are in demand due to trend of eating low calorie food some way or the other harms us economically as these foods are very expensive as well as turn the lands barren due to use of fertilizers and chemicals in a huge quantity.

6. Economy suffers with sufferings of farmers as well as the dependence of farmers and the people on foods grown in other countries according to their lands and climate like quinoa that is a whole protein diet

7. The use of technology on growing foods that are in high demand gives rise to a lot of unidentified and devastating unusual diseases to humans and researches have proved it so far. This is because human bodies cannot tolerate alterations in the natural food items and thereby this intolerance is reflected through everyday upcoming of a new kind of virus or flu that spreads like an epidemic.

8. We are a developing nation and seriously cannot afford a lot of expenditure on researches on new diseases or curing them as practically the public health facilities are at a very rickety stage even today.

9. Lastly, as Indians we are associated with foods and cultures for hundreds and thousands of years and the practices of these food corporations are suppressing the facts, hiding the true contents of the highly processed and health foods, exemplify our natural food items as bad for our bodies and focusing on being in particular body shapes regardless of the fact that every body shape is unique and is designed in a different way.

Suggestions & Recommendations
· The socio-economic impacts of the present situation are so deep and intense that if not controlled or taken care of, will suck the roots of the society in the long run and the objectification is in itself not an issue but connected with food politics is a wider aspect.

· It is therefore the suggestion to make laws that are stricter specifically upon the idealization of bodies of women as best shapes or curves.

· It is also the duty upon the state to emphasize on growing of fresh and local food items and encouraging the citizens to consume all that is seasonal, fresh and locally grown. This way the food cycle is balanced along with growth of agriculture and income to farmers without heavy investments.

· The food industries must be directed statutorily not to use our bodies as objects and thereby creating differences amongst women as fitness freaks and old fashioned or not health conscious just to market their products.

· It is to be made clear into the minds of people that the foods which are locally grown are high in nutrition and portion control or substituting such foods with diet or health foods will only worsen their bodies. Also, awareness has to be created that what we have been eating since generations is healthy and processed foods are turning to be harmful for us.

Conclusion
This is to be made really clear that our traditional food items were never rich in calories but high on nutrition. Food industries have created fears that people today fear consuming bananas, grapes and mangoes just because they are highly sweet and high on calorie and tend to eat strawberries, avocados, kiwis etc. We have forgotten that instead of sugar the older generation used sugarcane shakkar which has now become old fashioned and all processed sugar has taken its place. Cherry on the cake is that sugar is now shown to us as bad or white fat and alternates like diet sugar or zero sugar are replacing it. Have we ever asked them it was these giants only who shifted us from using shakkar to processed white sugars? And now they are creating fears into our minds of being fat and avoiding all of the foods that we still consume as our traditional diets that too by objectification of women into ideal bodies. These people and practices need to be stopped by framing laws related to the aspect of women objectification as an offence and thus control our economies from becoming parasites on food giants who sit and control our minds from the outside world.

End-Notes
# Marion Nestle on Food Politics retrieved on march 03, 2017 at 9.00 p.m. available at http://www.foodpolitics.com/
# Fabio Parse coli on food Politics and politicians retrieved on March 03,2017 at 9.30 p.m. available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fabio-parasecoli/food-politics-and-politic_b_9346504.html
# Dawn, Lauren and Erika, Sexual objectification of women advance to theory to research retrieved on march 03,2017 on 05.00 p.m. available at https://www.apa.org/education/ce/sexual-objectification.pdf
# Allen and Sachs on Women and food chains retrieved on march 03,2017 at 07.00p.m Available at http://ijsaf.org/archive/15/1/allen_sachs.pdf
# Rujuta Diwekar on why not skip ghee, rice and sugar retrieved on march 05,2017 at 6.00 p.m. available at http://www.hindustantimes.com/health-and-fitness/nutritionist-rujuta-diwekar-on-why-you-shouldn-t-skip-rice-ghee-and-sugar/story-AYmmiMAULc1Kd7gnagcZGJ.html
# Bina Agarwal on Food security, productivity and gender inequality retrieved on march05,2017 at 8.00 p.m. available at http://www.iegindia.org/upload/publication/Workpap/wp320.pdf
# Supra n. 05
# Janot Larsen on Look at the Face retrieved on march07,2017 at 4.00 p.m. available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-larson/look-at-that-face-bad-advice-for-self-confident-girls-and-women_b_8120992.html
# Infra
# Supra n. 05
# Andrea Freeman on Unbearable Whiteness of Milk retrieved on March 08,2017 at 6.00 p.m. available at http://www.law.uci.edu/lawreview/vol3/no4/Freeman.pdf

ISBN No: 978-81-928510-1-3
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