Casuistic Reasoning in Expert Narratives on Healthy Eating

Abstract

ABSTRACTIndividualisation of healthy eating is a broad tendency in Western culture and is becoming a popular ideal in nutrition science. Public perception of dietary knowledge is central to this individualisation and many experts now aim to present dietary knowledge in a way which relates to individual experience, as well as a casuistic style in which particular cases are discussed in relation to general, universal principles. Analysis of casuistic narrative styles in the public communication about healthy eating by experts makes explicit their flexible use of both particular cases and universal claims, in which clinical and personal cases are narratively employed by the experts to invite readers to personally consider dietary knowledge. Such casuistic narration by experts relates human agency and particular bodies to universal concepts in a way that has generative and critical functions with respect to dietary knowledge and understanding. The public articulation of clinical narratives by experts make salient the intersubjective emergence and accumulation of dietary knowledge between expert reasoning and lay understanding. Personal narratives have an essential role in presenting casuistic reasoning through experts’ personal lives and making their own bodies relevant to public communication about healthy eating. This emphasises the experts’ personal agency in relationship to common norms and general knowledge. Furthermore, both clinical and personal narratives are used by experts in their assessment of the shortcomings in public health messages. Experts’ casuistic narration thus does not merely construct credibility but has epistemic functions in constructing dietary knowledge tangible with respect to actual eating practices.