Selling Nutrition Knowledge in the Neoliberal Age: The Case of the Allerhande

Through a computational examination of a textual discourse in commercial food magazine, this paper examines the expression of neoliberal thinking in Dutch food culture. A particular striking shift in western notions of what constitutes healthy food can be located in the second half of the twentieth century. Not only has it seen the finalization of the turn from a quantitative-based food culture to one based on qualitative aspects (like the extent to which food contains vitamins), which took off in the Interwar period (Neswald et.al. 2017). It is also the period in which the adage of “eat more” is replaced by the dictum of “eat less” (Nestle 2002). The latter trend, in particular, has been related to the rise of a neoliberal discourse. After all, eating less did not imply buying less. On the contrary: “[t]he worthy neoliberal citizen must want less while spending more” (Guthman and DuPuis 2006). This paper tries to model this paradoxical development in the commercial food magazine Allerhande , published by retailer Albert Heijn. Our examination underscores how food companies, (chain) restaurants, and retailers have played a vital role in the spread of neoliberal ideas within food culture. By modeling word associations related to “good food”, this paper will show discourse in this food magazine embodies the neoliberalization of food culture in the Netherlands after the Second World War.