Health as a Personal Choice: Neoliberalism in the Age of Consumerism

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Health is deeply related to food consumption, both how much and what kind of food we eat. And we’ve been socialized to see our food consumption as choices. Therefore, health is a choice. We can choose to be healthy or we can choose to be unhealthy. In this way, health is a tool of neoliberalism to take the blame of structural inequalities away from corporations and government and place them on the individual.

As Crawford argues in “Health as a Meaningful Social Practice”, the pursuit of health is so salient in our lives that it’s now a key part of our identity. In particular, health is used to identify and divide people, distinguishing healthy people from the “unhealthy others”. This use of health as a status symbol is perpetuated through the ideal of personal control - we have control over our health. But this idea of control is uniquely connected to anxiety over our health as well because in a capitalist society where health can be bought, there always need to be more dangers to keep consumers buying products to increase health. And if we don’t buy the products that guard against that danger, then that’s our choice and it’s our fault if we are unhealthy.

However, this emphasis on health has not made America, as a country, any more healthy. Rozin shows the health disparities between the USA and France in “The Meaning of Food in Our Lives”. Again, this related back to our culture, because we all evolved from the same ancestors. In French culture, the focus is on the pleasurable experience on eating, whereas in America, the focus is on the consequence of eating and quantity over quality. As Rozin explains, these are all played out in minor aspects of daily lives, such as portion size and emphasizing walking over driving. So while there is a natural human tendency to overeat, some cultures have adapted better than others. This also relates back to consumerism and neoliberalism because health is packaged in products that we can buy, especially in food.

Cairns, et. al take this a step deeper in “Feeding the ‘Organic Child’”, looking directly at the relationship between food and perceptions of health among mothers and children with regards to the ideal of an ‘organic child’. This ideal represents the neoliberal expectations of mothers to preserve the purity of children while also raising them to be ethical consumers. What this implies is that mothers are individually responsible for their children’s health, and as such, can achieve control over their health through consumption of organic food. But the trend of organic food also puts forth the idea that buying organic helps the environment, putting the onus of environmentalism on individuals rather than governments or corporations. Again, this is at the core of neoliberalism - personal responsibility.

What these articles have alluded to is that health is a social construct, one that is reinforced by neoliberalism and consumerism in a very particular way. Our culture teaches us that we are responsible for our own health, and in a way, Rozin proves that statement. If Americans ate less and walked more, we would be as healthy as the French. But this idea of personal choice distracts individuals from structural inequalities that are barriers to health and allows corporations and the government to remove themselves from blame. However, the onus of responsibility is not evenly distributed in families. There is a heavy burden on women (wives, mothers) to do the majority of the grocery shopping and cooking, reinforcing traditional gender norms that keep women at home. If a mother has to do all of the research to make sure she is providing for her family in a healthy way, she doesn’t have time for her own career.

Furthermore, the emphasis on personal responsibility and individual consumerism distorts the reasons for health inequalities and perpetuates the idea that hard work will produce healthy results. This misguided ideology is pervasive in America in other spheres as well, including economics - if you work hard you will be economically successful. In this way, health is another aspect of our culture that reinforces neoliberal, capitalist ideals of individual choice and personal responsibility.

It is in the best interest of capitalism to hide and distort structural inequalities and keep individuals in competition with each other. Health is a tool to do this. The idea of health as an achievable end that can be purchased is quite an unsettling one, because if we do take into account structural inequalities that prevent some from “purchasing health”, we can see that health isn’t actually available to everyone. And I think that’s a terrifying thought.