Las TIC en la enseñanza de una lengua extranjera

Activities in nutrition in Australia increased during the post-war period, especially from the 1960s. As knowledge about nutrition developed, research into the eating habits of the population served as a constant reminder of the need for more work,

not only on the relationship between diet and health, but also into ways of deploy- ing nutrition knowledge in the community. The results of nutrition activities in the post-war period in Australia have been impressive. Individuals today spend more time than ever before considering food purchases on the basis of nutritional val- ues. People’s knowledge of food and health has increased as has their understanding of what may now be considered to be a ‘nutritious’ diet. Nutrition is a highly active and highly researched area. A range of nutritional studies is available on matters such as the nutritional merits of the Australian diet, where people get information on nutrition, how they use it, whether or not people believe they are meeting nutrition recommendations, and the barriers to putting nutrition recommendations into practice (see Worsley, 1989; Lester, 1994: 126–135; Stickney et al., 1994; Hughes et al., 1996).

A major issue in nutrition concerns the ‘truth’, or, more correctly, misinforma- tion on matters of the diet. Sources of nutrition knowledge are constantly called into question. Professionals known to advise the public about food and health are, for example, examined to see if their nutrition knowledge corresponds with that of nutrition experts. Thus the nutrition knowledge, opinions and beliefs of general practitioners (Worsley and Worsley, 1991) and community nurses (Coveney and Miller, 1991) take on a special significance. As with earlier discourses on nutri- tion, the media continue to play an important role in distributing knowledge about food and health (Santich, 1995a: 127–157), and the extent to which media infor- mation accurately reflects the ideas of nutrition experts has itself become an area of research. Cardwell and Begley (1996), for example, looked at over 400 articles on nutrition appearing between 1992 and 1994 in a range of popular Australian magazines. Over 90 per cent of the articles were considered to accurately repre- sent current recommendations. The content of Australian television shows has also been scrutinised for the accuracy of the food and nutrition information they contain. Thus Morton (1991) has examined discussions around food and health in three popular Australian ‘soap operas’, finding that nutrition messages were gen- erally portrayed with a high degree of ‘truth’ in relation to the Australian dietary guidelines.

As with earlier concerns about food and health, schools are a continuing focus for nutrition intervention. Nutrition is taught in primary and secondary schools in all states. It is also actively integrated into other aspects of school life because it was considered that ‘too often the school environment contradicts rather than sup- ports classroom nutrition education messages’ (National Health and Medical Research Council, 1989). Thus school canteens, or ‘tuckshops’, school sporting events and other activities have been pulled into line in order to present a united front to children about nutritious foods.

In Australia a number of agencies have been established to ensure that the pub- lic receive accurate information about food and health. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Division on Human Nutrition was established in 1975 as the nation’s premier nutrition research body. The CSIRO produces findings on the relationships between food and health

which are then dispersed as recommended practices by a number of other agen- cies involved in maintaining the ‘regimes of truth’ about nutrition. These include the Australian Nutrition Foundation, the Anti-Cancer Council and the National Heart Foundation. A National Food Authority (later called the Australian and New Zealand Food Authority) has also been established with a concern, first, for food safety issues and, second, for the portrayal of accurate nutrition information. Nutritional surveillance, then, sweeps across the community, examining people’s food habits, their values and beliefs, and auditing not only sources of advice about food, but also advertising that promotes nutrition and any media or entertainment forms that may include it. A constant vigilance is maintained to ensure that sources of misinformation about nutrition are identified and, where possible, rec- tified. Of particular concern are nutrition and health claims by food manufacturers. As we shall see later, the food supply has come under scrutiny in terms of the nutritional quality of foods available. It has therefore become a site of active nutrition reform. However, this reform has raised two problems. First, the food industry sponsors a large amount of nutrition research in Australia. The inde- pendence of nutrition knowledge and the public advice which flows from it may therefore be called into question. Second, there is often debate among nutrition experts about what priorities should be adopted in the formulation of a ‘healthy’ diet and the ways nutrition research findings should be interpreted in relation to the food supply. The large amount of publicity given to these debates is often believed to undermine the credibility of nutrition experts. The concern here is, therefore, with ‘mixed’ information rather than misinformation.

The formal response by the Australian Commonwealth government to a grow- ing concern about nutrition culminated in The National Food and Nutrition Policy. This was launched in 1992 (Commonwealth Department of Health, Housing and Community Services, 1992). The policy enshrines the Australian Dietary Guidelines as the target or benchmark measurements against which peo- ple’s diets should be compared. These guidelines were first established in 1979 but have been reviewed, modified and quantified as new knowledge about food and health has become available. Australia is unique in also formulating a sepa- rate set of guidelines for children (Commonwealth Department of Health, Housing, Local Government and Community Services, 1994). All states have now been urged to develop their own nutrition policies based on the national ones and a number of states have moved a long way in this process.

How has nutrition managed to position itself so well in the political, social and biological spaces of Australian life? What concerns, opportunities and problems have enabled discourses in nutrition to increase their influence in what appears to be ever-widening circles in the post-war period? These are the issues that we shall now examine. Taking the period of the Second World War to the present, major developments and transformations in nutrition will be tracked on two fronts. In this chapter we will consider the ‘landscape of nutrition’: the growing expanse of nutrition knowledge, rationales and understandings about food in terms of scien- tific and medical concerns. In the next chapter we will look at the ‘homescape of

nutrition’: the incorporation of nutrition discourse into the lives of individuals, especially at the level of the family. The purpose of dividing the development of nutrition in this way is to identify the considerations that have been germane to each area and, importantly, to look at how these areas have interacted with each other.