David Schleifer | Public Agenda (original) (raw)
Papers by David Schleifer
Health Services Research, Aug 1, 2020
Attempts to screen for social determinants of health in pediatrics should be grounded in an under... more Attempts to screen for social determinants of health in pediatrics should be grounded in an understanding of parents’ receptivity to discussing social needs and should be responsive to their concerns about doing so. Yet little research has asked parents, particularly low‐income parents, for their perspectives about social determinants of health and how screenings can be implemented successfully. This research seeks to explore questions including which social stressors concern low‐income parents; what roles these parents think pediatricians could play in addressing social needs; and how these parents think pediatricians should discuss social determinants of health with them.Eight focus groups in New York City with low‐income parents of children ages five years and younger. Each focus group lasted two hours. Two of the groups were conducted in Spanish and six in English. Focus groups were audio recorded and professionally transcribed and translated. The research team collaboratively developed a coding scheme and coded the transcripts using Dedoose software.Low‐income parents of children ages five years and younger in New York City.First, parents in the focus groups cited a broad range of social stressors that affected their children’s health and well‐being, including some that screening tools for social determinants of health may not currently include. Second, the parents did not immediately identify pediatricians as sources of help with social stressors. They saw some topics, such as nutrition, education, and minor behavioral issues, as appropriate to discuss with pediatricians, but others, such as domestic violence, parents’ mental health, and legal issues, as more sensitive. Third, parents’ concerns about discussing sensitive social needs with pediatricians included worries about being judged and discriminated against, fear of intervention by a child welfare agency, lack of time during appointments, and frustration at the prospect of disclosing sensitive information without getting help.Parents’ recommendations for pediatricians about discussing social determinants of health included building trust, choosing the right moment, and making clear that screening is standard protocol. Parents recommended that screening should not take place in front of children. They emphasized that pediatricians should be transparent about what triggers reporting to child welfare. Parents said that if pediatricians ask about sensitive issues, they should be able to offer or suggest help.As social determinants of health screenings become more common in pediatric primary care, pediatricians and their staffs must work with parents to build parents' comfort with disclosing information about social stressors by creating long‐term trusting relationships with them. Attempts to screen for social determinants of health may be more successful if pediatricians develop partnerships with the community organizations and other social service providers that low‐income families may already trust and turn to for information and services for social needs. Further qualitative and quantitative research can explore parents’ experiences of those screenings and can continue to engage parents in conversations about how to promote their children’s health and well‐being by addressing social needs.United Hospital Fund.
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Science As Culture, Sep 1, 2005
During a series of clinical trials conducted from 1989 to 1994, the experimental compound UK-9248... more During a series of clinical trials conducted from 1989 to 1994, the experimental compound UK-92480 proved to be a poor treatment for angina. But men participating in the trials reported a curious side effect: their penises became and remained erect when taking UK-92480, also known as sildenafil. When Pfizer began marketing sildenafil as Viagra in 1998, that ‘happy accident’ became the fastest-selling drug in history (p. 8). Viagra is significant because it was the first orally-administered pharmaceutical approved to treat impotence in the United States. Meika Loe’s The Rise of Viagra is significant because it is the first book-length sociological study of Viagra, and because it constitutes the first research not funded by Pfizer to examine individuals’ experiences with the drug. Loe intends for her book to ‘reveal . . . why sex in America will never be the same again’, after Viagra, but she fails to substantiate this ambitious hypothesis (p. 5). She consistently gestures towards outsized conclusions which reach far beyond the scope and character of her sample. Instead of capturing the texture of how individuals use technologies, Loe trivializes men’s erotic desires and implies that technologies of sex and gender are all objectionable. Lost in the shuffle is some promising data about how erectile dysfunction became a biomedical disease, what Viagra means for older women, and the inconclusive quest for a ‘female Viagra’. Medical treatments for flagging erectile capacities are not unique to our time or to our culture. In Europe and America, for most of the twentieth century, psychological factors were regarded as both causes and consequences of impotence. American men’s impotence was often attributed to their wives, three quarters of whom were deemed ‘frigid’ by the American Medical Association in the 1950s (Luciano, 2001 cited in the book under review on pp. 30–31). Loe summarizes, but declines to detail, the ‘many events over Science as Culture Vol. 14, No. 3, 293–296, September 2005
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Science As Culture, Sep 1, 2010
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Food, Culture, and Society, Dec 1, 2008
begins as an apple—recognized by the early moderns and Milton as a “cordial” fruit—but clearly be... more begins as an apple—recognized by the early moderns and Milton as a “cordial” fruit—but clearly becomes a peach—the words “nectar” and “ambrosial,” used in Paradise Lost, are inapplicable to the apple. Chapter 6 brings us back to Shakespeare and again a small but important moment in one of his plays: the noise that we are to suppose is made by Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night just before he says “A plague o’ these pickled herring!” (1.5.116–17). Is it a belch, a fart, or a hiccup? Appelbaum decides it is probably a belch and although it is “a heroic gesture ... defiant of the niceties of courteously restrained, which is to say, repressed behaviour” (p. 203) it was probably less offensive to the early moderns than we find it today since intolerance toward the passing of wind in public, and especially at the dinner table, only emerges in the late seventeenth century. This chapter also contains an engrossing discussion of herring as a remarkably ambivalent foodstuff: at once a sign of wealth and poverty, gluttony and abstinence, an “icon of Lent and Lenten fare” (p. 212) yet denounced by medical writers who, like Sir Toby, found it difficult to digest. The cannibalism suggested by the baked meats in Hamlet leads us, in Chapter 7, to Jean de Léry’s visit to Brazil, as recounted in his Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil (1578) Léry had hopes of establishing a reformed community among the Tupinamba Indians whom he claimed practiced ritual cannibalism. He quarreled with Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon, the founder of the colony, over religious matters including transubstantiation; on his return voyage to France those on board ship almost starved to death and cannibalism was for a time a considered option, which irony was apparently lost on Léry. Also discussed here is Richard Ligon’s A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (1657). Ligon, an English trader in slaves and sugar, took delight in travel and pride in his knowledge of how to cook fish. His book is not merely a list of what is available on the island but an account of “how it is cultivated, gathered and prepared” and “an explication of the art of the colony—or better, of the colony as a work of art” (p. 275). Concluding with Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Rousseau’s Émile, Appelbaum notes that the former is not about mere survival “it is about what it means to survive, and then go beyond survival and live life in full man-hood” (p. 288). At least that’s how Rousseau responded to the novel, and that was what he recommended to his fictional pupil Émile: there were lessons to learn “about the nature of need, and the personal and social arrangements deployed to accommodate it” (p. 289). It is typical of the inquisitiveness and humor evident throughout this book that Appelbaum should consider the kind of dinner described by early modern writers and wonder how it would have been served. He concludes that he probably wouldn’t have been invited since he is descended from peasants. Alas that is likely true for most of us but this is the kind of book that makes us wonder what it would have been like all the same.
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NEJM Catalyst, Jun 26, 2018
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New York University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2020
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Local Development & Society
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Issues in Science and Technology, 2014
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Hungarian Educational Research Journal, 2020
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This Public Agenda/USA TODAY Hidden Common Ground survey, which is also part of Public Agenda'... more This Public Agenda/USA TODAY Hidden Common Ground survey, which is also part of Public Agenda's ongoing series of Yankelovich Democracy Monitor surveys, was fielded in May 2021. The research updates and expands on findings from Public Agenda's two previous Yankelovich Democracy Monitor surveys, published in 2019 and 2020. The report concludes with reflections on the findings and implications for moving towards a less divisive, more collaborative, and healthier democracy
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Journal of American History, 2008
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Issues in Science and Technology, 2014
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Health-care experts may assume that insurance shields most Americans from the actual costs of the... more Health-care experts may assume that insurance shields most Americans from the actual costs of their health care, leaving them unconcerned about cost effectiveness. And, in the past, the public seemed relatively disinterested in talking about efforts to contain cost. However, this research raises the question: if we help citizens learn about and deliberate over approaches to contain costs, could they contribute to policy solutions?For this study on curbing health-care costs, average Americans, aged 40 to 65, gathered, in a series of four extended focus groups, to address cost containment in health care. When given the opportunity to learn about and deliberate over various policy proposals, focus group participants became not only willing but eager to consider complicated approaches for containing costs. And they did so thoughtfully and civilly.The research, while modest in scope, provides substantial clues for health-care leaders and policymakers regarding the approaches that the pub...
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Trans fats became part of the American food system due to a complex interplay among activism, ind... more Trans fats became part of the American food system due to a complex interplay among activism, industrial technology, and nutritional science. Some manufacturers began using partially hydrogenated oils, which contain trans fats, in the early twentieth century. Medical authorities began framing saturated fats as unhealthy in the 1950s. In the 1980s, activist organizations, including the Center for Science in the Public Interest, condemned food corporations’ use of saturated fats and endorsed trans fats as an acceptable alternative. Nearly all targeted corporations responded by replacing saturated fats with trans fats, which fit easily into their existing products. Trans fats thus became the perfect solution to the political problem of saturated fats and to the technical problem of what to use in their place. Activists helped precipitate technological change, but by 1994, trans fats were no longer regarded as a solution. Instead, they became regarded as a new nutritional problem.
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ABSTRACT “Life without saccharin would be dreadful.” So wrote one Lynn Hamilton to the Food and D... more ABSTRACT “Life without saccharin would be dreadful.” So wrote one Lynn Hamilton to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) when that agency threatened to ban saccharin in 1977 (p. 141). Hamilton was one of over a million individuals who wrote passionate defenses of their right to a suspected carcinogen. In Empty Pleasures, Carolyn de la Peña shows how the status of saccharin and other artificial sweeteners shifted during the twentieth century, from maligned adulterants to ubiquitous objects of ardent attachment. Beyond the fascinating particulars of saccharin, cyclamates, and aspartame, de la Peña contributes to the history of technology by taking marketing and pleasure seriously. Empty Pleasures starts by doing what the best histories often do, namely making our own cultural moment seem strange. In contrast to the value currently accorded to low-calorie foods, Americans in the 1910s actively rejected saccharin, the first artificial sweetener, because they valued caloric sugar. The nascent FDA questioned saccharin along with other “adulterants.” A 1908 panel found no evidence of harm but noted that saccharin had no value as food. Soda manufacturers and other companies were quick to announce their use of pure sugar rather than the questionable chemical. Advertisements advised mothers to keep their children “running on high” by buying only pure sugar (p. 31). Non-nutritive saccharin was relegated to the pharmacy as an aid for diabetics. Because sugar was ostensibly vital for soldiers’ energy, it was rationed during World War II. Women on the homefront saved sugar for their children and reluctantly tried non-nutritive sweeteners. In the decade after the war, women continued experimenting with saccharin and cyclamates, pills and powders that were produced by pharmaceutical companies and not commodified as food products. In a refreshing contrast to views of women’s dieting as submissive responses to homogenizing power, de la Peña argues that their experiments with sweeteners were instantiations of creativity, control, and self-care. One 1956 cookbook urged the “creative cook to modernize and de-calorize the old anachronistic recipes,” an approach that fit with other contemporaneous examples of better living through chemistry like vitamin-fortification and Valium (pp. 57–58). While admitting that more research is needed, de la Peña surmises that sweeteners were unlikely to appeal to people of color at mid-century because they were marketed exclusively with images of white people and not advertised in African-American or Latino/a publications. However, minorities often identify, albeit uneasily, with systems of meaning that do not represent them. Gay and lesbian people aspire to dyadic marriage, an arrangement in which they have not seen themselves represented, just as people of color may in fact have aspired to consumer products advertised to whites. Empty Pleasures is weakest when de la Peña reads meaning into images—how significant is the whiteness of lab coats in cyclamate-manufacturer Abbott’s brochures? But the bulk of her work admirably investigates how marketing claims are made and how they matter to technologies’ successes and failures. The first artificially sweetened food besides soda was Diet Delights canned fruits, manufactured by California Canners and Growers (CCG). Using correspondence between Abbott and a CCG food technologist, de la Peña shows that Abbott did more than sell cyclamate. Abbott gained the canners’ trust, helped with machinery and formulations, allayed fears about cyclamate safety, and navigated regulatory hurdles. When the FDA banned cyclamates in 1969, Abbott managed to look like the good guy for sharing safety studies with regulators. But CCG had so closely associated itself with cyclamates through marketing that its reputation was destroyed. De la Peña brilliantly shows how marketers of low-calorie foods dissociated dieting from restriction. She highlights women like Weight Watchers founder Jean Nidetch, who encouraged Americans to embrace artificially sweetened “legal” pleasures. By 1977, when the FDA threatened to ban saccharin, consumers fought back. Searle successfully linked its aspartame to choice, pleasure, and health, and eventually got NutraSweet into major brands like Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke. Whether or not sweeteners are physically unhealthy, de la Peña earns the right to drop her scholarly neutrality and argue that these technologies cause problems. By allowing people to eat without apparent weight gain, sweeteners are...
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Social Studies of Science, 2012
This article explains how regulators use categorization, quantification, and labeling to change h... more This article explains how regulators use categorization, quantification, and labeling to change how corporations manufacture commercial products. The Food and Drug Administration wanted to create an incentive for manufacturers to replace trans fats by requiring food labels to disclose trans fat content. The Food and Drug Administration initially proposed categorizing trans fats as saturated fats and quantifying both substances with one number on labels, but industry actors largely favored quantifying trans fats separately from saturated fats. Industry actors argued that such an approach would show consumers which products had been reformulated to contain 0 g of trans fats, thus allowing manufacturers to market reformulated products as ‘healthier’ and rewarding investments in alternative technologies. The Food and Drug Administration ultimately decided to categorize and quantify the two fats separately, specifically designing the disclosure of quantitative information in order to enc...
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PLoS ONE, 2012
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Health Services Research, Aug 1, 2020
Attempts to screen for social determinants of health in pediatrics should be grounded in an under... more Attempts to screen for social determinants of health in pediatrics should be grounded in an understanding of parents’ receptivity to discussing social needs and should be responsive to their concerns about doing so. Yet little research has asked parents, particularly low‐income parents, for their perspectives about social determinants of health and how screenings can be implemented successfully. This research seeks to explore questions including which social stressors concern low‐income parents; what roles these parents think pediatricians could play in addressing social needs; and how these parents think pediatricians should discuss social determinants of health with them.Eight focus groups in New York City with low‐income parents of children ages five years and younger. Each focus group lasted two hours. Two of the groups were conducted in Spanish and six in English. Focus groups were audio recorded and professionally transcribed and translated. The research team collaboratively developed a coding scheme and coded the transcripts using Dedoose software.Low‐income parents of children ages five years and younger in New York City.First, parents in the focus groups cited a broad range of social stressors that affected their children’s health and well‐being, including some that screening tools for social determinants of health may not currently include. Second, the parents did not immediately identify pediatricians as sources of help with social stressors. They saw some topics, such as nutrition, education, and minor behavioral issues, as appropriate to discuss with pediatricians, but others, such as domestic violence, parents’ mental health, and legal issues, as more sensitive. Third, parents’ concerns about discussing sensitive social needs with pediatricians included worries about being judged and discriminated against, fear of intervention by a child welfare agency, lack of time during appointments, and frustration at the prospect of disclosing sensitive information without getting help.Parents’ recommendations for pediatricians about discussing social determinants of health included building trust, choosing the right moment, and making clear that screening is standard protocol. Parents recommended that screening should not take place in front of children. They emphasized that pediatricians should be transparent about what triggers reporting to child welfare. Parents said that if pediatricians ask about sensitive issues, they should be able to offer or suggest help.As social determinants of health screenings become more common in pediatric primary care, pediatricians and their staffs must work with parents to build parents' comfort with disclosing information about social stressors by creating long‐term trusting relationships with them. Attempts to screen for social determinants of health may be more successful if pediatricians develop partnerships with the community organizations and other social service providers that low‐income families may already trust and turn to for information and services for social needs. Further qualitative and quantitative research can explore parents’ experiences of those screenings and can continue to engage parents in conversations about how to promote their children’s health and well‐being by addressing social needs.United Hospital Fund.
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Science As Culture, Sep 1, 2005
During a series of clinical trials conducted from 1989 to 1994, the experimental compound UK-9248... more During a series of clinical trials conducted from 1989 to 1994, the experimental compound UK-92480 proved to be a poor treatment for angina. But men participating in the trials reported a curious side effect: their penises became and remained erect when taking UK-92480, also known as sildenafil. When Pfizer began marketing sildenafil as Viagra in 1998, that ‘happy accident’ became the fastest-selling drug in history (p. 8). Viagra is significant because it was the first orally-administered pharmaceutical approved to treat impotence in the United States. Meika Loe’s The Rise of Viagra is significant because it is the first book-length sociological study of Viagra, and because it constitutes the first research not funded by Pfizer to examine individuals’ experiences with the drug. Loe intends for her book to ‘reveal . . . why sex in America will never be the same again’, after Viagra, but she fails to substantiate this ambitious hypothesis (p. 5). She consistently gestures towards outsized conclusions which reach far beyond the scope and character of her sample. Instead of capturing the texture of how individuals use technologies, Loe trivializes men’s erotic desires and implies that technologies of sex and gender are all objectionable. Lost in the shuffle is some promising data about how erectile dysfunction became a biomedical disease, what Viagra means for older women, and the inconclusive quest for a ‘female Viagra’. Medical treatments for flagging erectile capacities are not unique to our time or to our culture. In Europe and America, for most of the twentieth century, psychological factors were regarded as both causes and consequences of impotence. American men’s impotence was often attributed to their wives, three quarters of whom were deemed ‘frigid’ by the American Medical Association in the 1950s (Luciano, 2001 cited in the book under review on pp. 30–31). Loe summarizes, but declines to detail, the ‘many events over Science as Culture Vol. 14, No. 3, 293–296, September 2005
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Science As Culture, Sep 1, 2010
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Food, Culture, and Society, Dec 1, 2008
begins as an apple—recognized by the early moderns and Milton as a “cordial” fruit—but clearly be... more begins as an apple—recognized by the early moderns and Milton as a “cordial” fruit—but clearly becomes a peach—the words “nectar” and “ambrosial,” used in Paradise Lost, are inapplicable to the apple. Chapter 6 brings us back to Shakespeare and again a small but important moment in one of his plays: the noise that we are to suppose is made by Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night just before he says “A plague o’ these pickled herring!” (1.5.116–17). Is it a belch, a fart, or a hiccup? Appelbaum decides it is probably a belch and although it is “a heroic gesture ... defiant of the niceties of courteously restrained, which is to say, repressed behaviour” (p. 203) it was probably less offensive to the early moderns than we find it today since intolerance toward the passing of wind in public, and especially at the dinner table, only emerges in the late seventeenth century. This chapter also contains an engrossing discussion of herring as a remarkably ambivalent foodstuff: at once a sign of wealth and poverty, gluttony and abstinence, an “icon of Lent and Lenten fare” (p. 212) yet denounced by medical writers who, like Sir Toby, found it difficult to digest. The cannibalism suggested by the baked meats in Hamlet leads us, in Chapter 7, to Jean de Léry’s visit to Brazil, as recounted in his Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil (1578) Léry had hopes of establishing a reformed community among the Tupinamba Indians whom he claimed practiced ritual cannibalism. He quarreled with Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon, the founder of the colony, over religious matters including transubstantiation; on his return voyage to France those on board ship almost starved to death and cannibalism was for a time a considered option, which irony was apparently lost on Léry. Also discussed here is Richard Ligon’s A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (1657). Ligon, an English trader in slaves and sugar, took delight in travel and pride in his knowledge of how to cook fish. His book is not merely a list of what is available on the island but an account of “how it is cultivated, gathered and prepared” and “an explication of the art of the colony—or better, of the colony as a work of art” (p. 275). Concluding with Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Rousseau’s Émile, Appelbaum notes that the former is not about mere survival “it is about what it means to survive, and then go beyond survival and live life in full man-hood” (p. 288). At least that’s how Rousseau responded to the novel, and that was what he recommended to his fictional pupil Émile: there were lessons to learn “about the nature of need, and the personal and social arrangements deployed to accommodate it” (p. 289). It is typical of the inquisitiveness and humor evident throughout this book that Appelbaum should consider the kind of dinner described by early modern writers and wonder how it would have been served. He concludes that he probably wouldn’t have been invited since he is descended from peasants. Alas that is likely true for most of us but this is the kind of book that makes us wonder what it would have been like all the same.
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NEJM Catalyst, Jun 26, 2018
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New York University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2020
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Local Development & Society
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Issues in Science and Technology, 2014
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Hungarian Educational Research Journal, 2020
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This Public Agenda/USA TODAY Hidden Common Ground survey, which is also part of Public Agenda'... more This Public Agenda/USA TODAY Hidden Common Ground survey, which is also part of Public Agenda's ongoing series of Yankelovich Democracy Monitor surveys, was fielded in May 2021. The research updates and expands on findings from Public Agenda's two previous Yankelovich Democracy Monitor surveys, published in 2019 and 2020. The report concludes with reflections on the findings and implications for moving towards a less divisive, more collaborative, and healthier democracy
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Journal of American History, 2008
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Issues in Science and Technology, 2014
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Health-care experts may assume that insurance shields most Americans from the actual costs of the... more Health-care experts may assume that insurance shields most Americans from the actual costs of their health care, leaving them unconcerned about cost effectiveness. And, in the past, the public seemed relatively disinterested in talking about efforts to contain cost. However, this research raises the question: if we help citizens learn about and deliberate over approaches to contain costs, could they contribute to policy solutions?For this study on curbing health-care costs, average Americans, aged 40 to 65, gathered, in a series of four extended focus groups, to address cost containment in health care. When given the opportunity to learn about and deliberate over various policy proposals, focus group participants became not only willing but eager to consider complicated approaches for containing costs. And they did so thoughtfully and civilly.The research, while modest in scope, provides substantial clues for health-care leaders and policymakers regarding the approaches that the pub...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Trans fats became part of the American food system due to a complex interplay among activism, ind... more Trans fats became part of the American food system due to a complex interplay among activism, industrial technology, and nutritional science. Some manufacturers began using partially hydrogenated oils, which contain trans fats, in the early twentieth century. Medical authorities began framing saturated fats as unhealthy in the 1950s. In the 1980s, activist organizations, including the Center for Science in the Public Interest, condemned food corporations’ use of saturated fats and endorsed trans fats as an acceptable alternative. Nearly all targeted corporations responded by replacing saturated fats with trans fats, which fit easily into their existing products. Trans fats thus became the perfect solution to the political problem of saturated fats and to the technical problem of what to use in their place. Activists helped precipitate technological change, but by 1994, trans fats were no longer regarded as a solution. Instead, they became regarded as a new nutritional problem.
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ABSTRACT “Life without saccharin would be dreadful.” So wrote one Lynn Hamilton to the Food and D... more ABSTRACT “Life without saccharin would be dreadful.” So wrote one Lynn Hamilton to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) when that agency threatened to ban saccharin in 1977 (p. 141). Hamilton was one of over a million individuals who wrote passionate defenses of their right to a suspected carcinogen. In Empty Pleasures, Carolyn de la Peña shows how the status of saccharin and other artificial sweeteners shifted during the twentieth century, from maligned adulterants to ubiquitous objects of ardent attachment. Beyond the fascinating particulars of saccharin, cyclamates, and aspartame, de la Peña contributes to the history of technology by taking marketing and pleasure seriously. Empty Pleasures starts by doing what the best histories often do, namely making our own cultural moment seem strange. In contrast to the value currently accorded to low-calorie foods, Americans in the 1910s actively rejected saccharin, the first artificial sweetener, because they valued caloric sugar. The nascent FDA questioned saccharin along with other “adulterants.” A 1908 panel found no evidence of harm but noted that saccharin had no value as food. Soda manufacturers and other companies were quick to announce their use of pure sugar rather than the questionable chemical. Advertisements advised mothers to keep their children “running on high” by buying only pure sugar (p. 31). Non-nutritive saccharin was relegated to the pharmacy as an aid for diabetics. Because sugar was ostensibly vital for soldiers’ energy, it was rationed during World War II. Women on the homefront saved sugar for their children and reluctantly tried non-nutritive sweeteners. In the decade after the war, women continued experimenting with saccharin and cyclamates, pills and powders that were produced by pharmaceutical companies and not commodified as food products. In a refreshing contrast to views of women’s dieting as submissive responses to homogenizing power, de la Peña argues that their experiments with sweeteners were instantiations of creativity, control, and self-care. One 1956 cookbook urged the “creative cook to modernize and de-calorize the old anachronistic recipes,” an approach that fit with other contemporaneous examples of better living through chemistry like vitamin-fortification and Valium (pp. 57–58). While admitting that more research is needed, de la Peña surmises that sweeteners were unlikely to appeal to people of color at mid-century because they were marketed exclusively with images of white people and not advertised in African-American or Latino/a publications. However, minorities often identify, albeit uneasily, with systems of meaning that do not represent them. Gay and lesbian people aspire to dyadic marriage, an arrangement in which they have not seen themselves represented, just as people of color may in fact have aspired to consumer products advertised to whites. Empty Pleasures is weakest when de la Peña reads meaning into images—how significant is the whiteness of lab coats in cyclamate-manufacturer Abbott’s brochures? But the bulk of her work admirably investigates how marketing claims are made and how they matter to technologies’ successes and failures. The first artificially sweetened food besides soda was Diet Delights canned fruits, manufactured by California Canners and Growers (CCG). Using correspondence between Abbott and a CCG food technologist, de la Peña shows that Abbott did more than sell cyclamate. Abbott gained the canners’ trust, helped with machinery and formulations, allayed fears about cyclamate safety, and navigated regulatory hurdles. When the FDA banned cyclamates in 1969, Abbott managed to look like the good guy for sharing safety studies with regulators. But CCG had so closely associated itself with cyclamates through marketing that its reputation was destroyed. De la Peña brilliantly shows how marketers of low-calorie foods dissociated dieting from restriction. She highlights women like Weight Watchers founder Jean Nidetch, who encouraged Americans to embrace artificially sweetened “legal” pleasures. By 1977, when the FDA threatened to ban saccharin, consumers fought back. Searle successfully linked its aspartame to choice, pleasure, and health, and eventually got NutraSweet into major brands like Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke. Whether or not sweeteners are physically unhealthy, de la Peña earns the right to drop her scholarly neutrality and argue that these technologies cause problems. By allowing people to eat without apparent weight gain, sweeteners are...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Social Studies of Science, 2012
This article explains how regulators use categorization, quantification, and labeling to change h... more This article explains how regulators use categorization, quantification, and labeling to change how corporations manufacture commercial products. The Food and Drug Administration wanted to create an incentive for manufacturers to replace trans fats by requiring food labels to disclose trans fat content. The Food and Drug Administration initially proposed categorizing trans fats as saturated fats and quantifying both substances with one number on labels, but industry actors largely favored quantifying trans fats separately from saturated fats. Industry actors argued that such an approach would show consumers which products had been reformulated to contain 0 g of trans fats, thus allowing manufacturers to market reformulated products as ‘healthier’ and rewarding investments in alternative technologies. The Food and Drug Administration ultimately decided to categorize and quantify the two fats separately, specifically designing the disclosure of quantitative information in order to enc...
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PLoS ONE, 2012
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