Capital and Unhealthy Diets

Abstract

Unhealthy diets are responsible for many common non-communicable diseases and are one of the leading causes of health loss in developed capitalist countries. In this thesis, I bring together critiques of production and reproduction under capital to theorise unhealthy diets as a problem created by the capitalist mode of production. Drawing on my reading of Karl Marx alongside the contemporary Marxian scholarship of Patrick Murray and Massimiliano Tomba, I argue that ultra-processed foods have arisen from the real subsumption of food production under capital. Ultra-processed foods can be thought of as capitalist foods, a consequence of capital’s drive towards maximising surplus value. Further, using the work of early social reproduction theorists including Leopoldina Fortunati and Silvia Federici, I conceptualise unhealthy diets as part of the reproduction of labour-power. I demonstrate that unhealthy diets are not only the consequence of capitalist food production but also the result of cheapening the reproduction of labour-power for workers in the capitalist mode of production. Understanding unhealthy diets as part of the dynamics of capitalist production and reproduction reframes possible solutions. I argue that we must remove food production and retail from the capitalist mode of production so that it is oriented towards need rather than profit. Addressing unhealthy diets as part of the reproduction of labour-power will also require a broader resistance to the capital-relation as such. This thesis offers a reorientation of public health approaches to unhealthy diets, demonstrating that opposition to capitalism is a crucial aspect of population health.