Abstract
Trajectories of illness and obesity are consistently recounted by Paleo dieters as having been arrested by the uptake of Paleo principles and practices. In this chapter, I explore the re-authoring of identity narratives among Paleo dieters in order to suggest that their dietary practices serve as a form of resistance. This is to the neoliberal political economy, broadly, and Western biomedicine, particularly, which are seen respectively as having created, and failed to resolve, the perceived health crisis. I argue that this spirit of resistance is best understood in the light of the rise of populism globally, where anti-elite sentiments, a sense of crisis, and the democratisation of knowledge enabled by the Internet are fuelling the proliferation of alternative health beliefs and practices.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ballard, A. 2016. An Aussie Doctor has Delivered Pete Evans the Most Glorious Smack Down We’ve Ever Seen. Mamamia. Available at: http://www.mamamia.com.au/pete-evans-dairy/. Accessed 29 Apr. 2017.
Cassell, E. 2004. The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
CCA. 2017. What’s Your Story? Crohn’s & Colitis Australia. Available at: https://www.crohnsandcolitis.com.au/about-crohns-colitis/member-stories/. Accessed 12 Apr 2017.
Clapp, R., G. Howe, and M. Jacobs. 2006. Environmental and Occupational Causes of Cancer Re-visited. Journal of Public Health Policy 27 (1): 61–76.
CMA. 2015. Complementary Medicines Australia 2015/16 Federal Pre-Budget Submission. Complementary Medicines Australia. Available at: http://cmaustralia.org.au/Resources/Documents/Technical-Alerts/2015/Complementary%20Medicines%20Australia%20Pre-Budget%20Submission%202015–16.pdf. Accessed 4 May 2017.
Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge and Keegan Paul.
El-Safadi, S., H. Tinneberg, R. von Georgi, K. Munstedt, and F. Bruck. 2005. Does Dark Field Microscopy According to Enderlein Allow for Cancer Diagnosis? A Prospective Study. Research in Complementary and Classical Natural Medicine 12 (3): 148–151.
Garro, L. 1994. Narrative Representations of Chronic Illness Experience: Cultural Models of Illness, Mind, and Body in Stories Concerning the Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ). Social Science and Medicine 38 (6): 775–788.
Garro, L., and C. Mattingly. 2000a. Narrative as Construct and Construction. In Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing, ed. C. Mattingly and L. Garro, 1–49. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Garro, L., and C. Mattingly. 2000b. Narrative Turns. In Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing, ed. C. Mattingly and L. Garro, 259–269. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gibson, P., and S. Shepherd. 2010. Evidence-based Dietary Management of Functional Gastrointestinal Symptoms: The FODMAP Approach. Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology 25 (2): 252–258.
Guallar, E., S. Stranges, C. Mulrow, L. Appel, and E. Miller. 2013. Enough is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements. Annals of Internal Medicine 159 (12): 850–851.
Gunnarsson, A., and M. Elam. 2012. Food Fight! The Swedish Low-Carb/High Fat (LCHF) Movement and the Turning of Science Popularisation against the Scientists. Science as Culture 21 (3): 315–334.
Guthman, J. 2011. Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Halmos, E., and P. Gibson. 2015. Dietary Management of IBD—Insights and Advice. Nature Reviews: Gastroenterology and Hepatology 12 (3): 133–146.
Halmos, E., V. Power, S. Shepherd, P. Gibson, and J. Muir. 2014. A Diet Low in FODMAPs Reduces Symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Gastroenterology 146 (1): 67–75.
Harvey, D. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haskey, N., and D. Gibson. 2017. An Examination of Diet for the Maintenance of Remission in Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Nutrients 9 (259): 1–20.
Holt, D., B. Strauss, and G. Moore. 2017. Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease and their Treating Clinicians Have Different Views Regarding Diet. Journal of Human Nutrition & Dietetics 30 (1): 66–72.
Jain, L. 2013. Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kirmayer, L. 2000. Broken Narratives: Clinical Encounters and the Poetics of Illness Experience. In Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing,ed. C. Mattingly and L. Garro, 153–180. Berkeley: University of California.
Kleinman, A. 1988. The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition. New York: Basic Books.
Lanza, F., J. Goff, C. Scowcroft, D. Jennings, and P. Greski-Rose. 1994. Double-blind Comparison of Lansoprazole, Ranitidine, and Placebo in the Treatment of Acute Duodenal Ulcer. American Journal of Gastroenterology 89 (8): 1191–1200.
Leitch, A. 2003. Slow Food and the Politics of Pork Fat: Italian Food and European Identity. Ethnos 68 (4): 437–462.
Levinovitz, A. 2015. The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths about What You Eat. New York: Nero.
Mark’s Daily Apple. 2016. Mark Sisson. Mark’s Daily Apple. Available at: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/mark-sisson/. Accessed 28 Apr. 2017.
Mayes, C., I. Kerridge, R. Habibi, and K. Lipworth. 2016. Conflicts of Interest in Neoliberal Times: Perspectives of Australian Medical Students. Health Sociology Review 25 (3): 256–271.
Mitka, M. 2014. Emerging Data Continue to Find Lack of Benefit for Vitamin-Mineral Supplement Use. Journal of the American Medical Association 311 (5): 454–455.
Moerman, D. 2002. Meaning, Medicine and the ‘Placebo Effect’. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moffitt, B. 2016. The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Murphy, R. 1987. The Body Silent. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Ng, S. 2015. Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Asia: Emergence of a ‘Western’ Disease. Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology 30 (3): 440–445.
Phillips, T. 2015. Law, Environmental Illness and Medical Uncertainty: The Contested Governance of Health. New York: Routledge.
Rouse, C., and J. Hoskins. 2004. Purity, Soul Food, and Sunni Islam: Explorations at the Intersection of Consumption and Resistance. Cultural Anthropology 19 (2): 226–249.
Saurette, P., and S. Gunster. 2011. Ears Wide Shut: Epistemological Populism, Argutainment and Canadian Conservative Talk Radio. Canadian Journal of Political Science 44 (1): 195–218.
Scott, J. 2008. [1985]. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Shivappa, N., J. Hebert, S. Rashvand, B. Rashidkhani, and A. Hekmatdoost. 2016. Inflammatory Potential of Diet and Risk of Ulcerative Colitis in a Case-Control Study from Iran. Nutrition and Cancer 68 (3): 404–409.
‘t Hart, P, and Tindall, K. 2009. Leadership by the Famous: Celebrity as Political Capital. In Dispersed Democratic Leadership: Origins, Dynamics and Implications, J. Kane, H. Patapan, and P. ‘t Hart (ed.), 255–78. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Teut, M., R. Lüdtke, and A. Warning. 2006. Reliability of Enderlein’s Darkfield Analysis of Live Blood. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 12 (4): 36–41.
The Paleo Network. 2012. 24 Mistakes People Make on a Paleo Diet. The Paleo Network. Available at: http://paleo.com.au/paleo-mistakes/. Accessed 1 May 2017.
Thomas, S., J. Hyde, A. Karunaratne, D. Herbert, and P. Komesaroff. 2008. Being ‘Fat’ in Today’s World: A Qualitative Study of the Lived Experiences of People with Obesity in Australia. Health Expectations 11 (4): 321–330.
Thomson, P., J. Jones, M. Browne, and J. Leslie. 2014. Why People Seek Complementary and Alternative Medicine before Conventional Medical Treatment: A Population Based Study. Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice 20 (4): 339–346.
Triantafillidis, J., C. Vagianos, and A. Papalois. 2015. The Role of Enteral Nutrition in Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Current Aspects. BioMed Research International 2015 (1): 1–12.
Wikipedia. 2017. Live Blood Analysis. Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_blood_analysis. Accessed 16 Mar 2017.
Wilkinson, I. 2013. The Problem of Suffering as a Driving Force of Rationalization and Social Change. The British Journal of Sociology 64 (1): 123–141.
Yuen, A. 2007. Discovering Children’s Responses to Trauma: A Response Based Narrative Practice. The International Journal of Narrative and Community Work 4 (1): 3–18.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gressier, C. (2018). Narratives of Paleo Redemption: Agency, Resistance and the Rise of Health Populism . In: Illness, Identity, and Taboo among Australian Paleo Dieters . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67250-2_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67250-2_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-67249-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-67250-2
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)