Food, bodies, health (risks): the biopolitics of organic materiality testing in the context of diet-associated health risk management practices

Abstract

This article analyses the apparatus of practices dedicated to reducing long-term diet-associated health risks so as to question how risk is framed and worked upon in everyday risk governance contexts. In 2020–2021, I conducted 10 semi-structured interviews with public & environmental health researchers and programme managers at both federal (Canada) and provincial (Quebec) levels, as well as with clinical practitioners (clinical physician, dietician). I also used these interviews and the information provided by my interviewees to gather a corpus of materials comprised of clinical protocols, empirical guidelines, governmental screening programmes, and more. In the analysis, I contrast testing practices dedicated to preventing and controlling chronic conditions associated with food ingestion such as type 2 diabetes, with others dedicated to predicting and preventing health conditions associated with the ingestion of pesticides and contaminants. I use Foucauldian discourse analysis methods as well as Sheila Jasanoff’s (1999) “songlines of risk” in her analysis of environmental risk assessment practices to analyse how the risk mitigation practices under study integrate different approaches to risk and thus different ways of caring for health and bodies. This leads me to a discussion on the biopolitical approach to risk and health that informs these practices and the apparatus they constitute, contributing to orienting where the onus of the responsibility lies when it comes to managing or preventing diet-associated health conditions. I argue that the apparatus plays a role in invisibilizing the environmental factors in disease causation and reinforcing the individualisation of health (responsibility) rather than its collectivisation.