Abstract
In the twenty-first century, a widening array of unassuming fruits, vegetables, seeds and grains have been crowned “superfoods.” While many are exotic imports marketed to Western consumers through neocolonial narratives, others are familiar domestically-grown supermarket staples spectacularly rebranded. Why has “superfood” status become so central to the American produce industry? What sort of subjectivities does a superfood cultivate among consumers? This paper charts the ascent of the almond to superfood status as the latest in a series of spatial fixes alleviating the pains of chronic overproduction. The spatial-fix is a material-semiotic process with important psychosocial dimensions often downplayed in the historical materialist tradition. Drawing on historical archives, advertising materials, interviews with current and recently retired almond industry marketing professionals, and observation at the annual industry conference from 2015 to 2018, I show that as almond production surges the industry must constantly work to change the way consumers see almonds (from seasonal specialty to superfood) and the way they see themselves (from sophisticated to superhuman). While consumers resist and reinterpret the shifts in food meanings fashioned to compensate for overproduction, a century of effective material-semiotic fixes attests to the industry’s influence on foodways. The case of almonds is used here to theorize the broader superfood trend and its imagined “super” subjects as produced through the political economy of industrial agriculture. Understanding the political economic underpinnings of superfoods reveals not only the historical foundation of this contested contemporary food phenomenon, but also sheds light on the metamorphoses of food meanings fundamental to agrarian capitalism.
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Notes
The interviews with seven almond industry professionals at Blue Diamond and the Almond Board of California described here formed part of a larger study involving 70 interviews with growers, researchers, farm service providers and industry representatives. All interviews took place in California between June 2018 and March 2019. Conferences presented an especially instructive opportunity to witness how worrisome overproduction is for the industry and the specific strategies almond marketers deploy to foment almond consumption.
Fruits and vegetables with relatively lower prices per weight than nuts also contain a high level of water weight, making them heavy to transport and generally inefficient for non-food uses.
Imports from Europe were not directly in competition with California almonds at this time because European almonds were sold shelled to reduce shipping weight and were largely destined for the confectionary trade.
The Bracero Program, operating from 1942 to 1964, was a set of legal and diplomatic arrangements facilitating temporary work permits for Mexicans in the United States to fill low-wage, primarily agricultural, jobs. For an extensive analysis see Mitchell (2012).
$11.14 million (1995 crop of 557.1 million lbs at 0.2/lb), of which at least 60% was likely intended for advertising.
It may be even higher, considering after substantial searching I failed to find a single academic paper exclusively dedicated to almond nutrition produced without ABC involvement.
Almond milk, like most beverages, contains a relatively low quantity of almonds per unit weight and thus its popularity is unlikely to be the primary driver of increased almond consumption. Due to its relatively low almond composition, suitability for low-grade almonds and high resale value however, almond milk has substantially contributed to industry profitability.
Because Marketing Order budgets are determined by a fee per unit weight, the relatively large size of the almond industry is reflected in its sizable marketing funds relative to other US grown nuts.
Particularly when courting food industry customers, almond marketers routinely compare the nutrition profile almonds to other nuts in order to legitimate their distinctive healthfulness.
The Chairman of the Nutrition Research Committee cited here, Mark Dreher, is a nutrition science consultant who has developed strategic research plans for food industry multi-nationals such as Nabisco and Frito-Lay.
Abbreviations
- ABC:
-
Almond Board of California
- CAGE:
-
California Almond Growers Exchange
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This research was supported by a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant and the Heller Agroecology Graduate Student Research Fellowship of the University of California Santa Cruz.
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Reisman, E. Superfood as spatial fix: the ascent of the almond. Agric Hum Values 37, 337–351 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-019-09993-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-019-09993-4