Making Sense of Dietary Shifts in Chile

• In Event: 1577 - Food and Agriculture

Abstract

From the ’70 onwards, food procurement and diets have shifted globally, affecting to a greater degree poorer populations. These changes are linked economic and political structures that have contributed to growing socioeconomic disparities within Latin America. Drawing upon the food regimes framework, I utilize the case of Chile to explore how these trends unfold. In the last 30 years, Chilean diets transitioned towards the so-call ‘affluent diet’, even when around 28% of the population reporting they cannot afford to buy food with their salaries. At the same time, Chileans experienced an expansion of consumer credit, directed by supermarkets. This led poor Chileans to use credit debt as a tool for feeding their families. Yet, current research has paid little attention to how people articulate these changes in food provisioning. Using secondary data and interviews in Santiago, Chile, I explore: What role play the neoliberal food regime (including supermaketization, financialization, and increasing global trade)in shaping the main dietary transformations that Chile has experienced and how people articulate these food changes that they have experienced? Findings suggest that not only does supermaketization, financialization, and increasing global trade shape specific products within dietary shifts, but also Chileans have moved away from self-sufficiency and local food markets towards global food chains. Food debt, class and gender influences the way families construct meaning around food, increasing family conflict as they struggle to provide food while lacking a social safety net. This case stands to provide conceptual tools to understand the effects of globalizing trends in Latin America, and how people make sense of them.

Author

• Daniela Jeanette Garcia Grandon, North Carolina State University