Media Portrayals of Food Issues

Media examinations and muckraking are relevant to food issues because food has long been at the center of important policies and practices that affect public health, labor practices, land and water use, ecological balance, animal treatment, and social equality. Media examinations and muckraking have critiqued a wide range of food issues, including, but not limited to, the loss of topsoil, animal treatment, environmental impacts such as deforestation and water contamination [Page 950]from chemical fertilizers and pesticides, deleterious health effects, carbon footprint, global warming, corruption, labor inequalities, hunger and obesity, fast food, genetic engineering of food, biodiversity loss, agribusiness economics, cultural imperialism, loss of self-reliance, and overdependence on multinational corporations.

This entry examines the role and rhetoric of historically recent, dominant, and critical media examinations of various ...