'Health should not have to be a problem': talking health and accountability in an internet forum on veganism.

This article draws upon insights from discursive psychology to examine how participants in an Internet forum on veganism orient to the relationship between food choice, health and accountability. First, we explore the ways in which participants ascribe responsibility for health problems like vitamin deficiency to individual recipients. By suggesting individual practices as a cause for problems, speakers undermine the notion that problems arise through veganism as a matter of principle. Second, we show how participants construct solutions to individual health problems as involving mundane and simple actions. Both discursive procedures enable speakers to resist negative assumptions about the potentially complicated nature of veganism in relation to health protection.

Quitting is not an option: An analysis of online diet talk between celiac disease patients.

This is an empirical study of the way in which celiac disease patients manage the risk of gluten intake in their everyday life.The article examines naturally occurring conversational data in order to study how patients cope interactionally with constantly being at risk in their day-to-day living. They reject quitting the diet as a valid option, and instead construct a 'diet world' in which dietary transgression is presented as an integrated part of everyday life. In this way, patients can manage occasional diet lapses without putting the validity of the diet itself at stake. By examining how the gluten-free diet is treated in interaction, we find out more about the pre-existing everyday strategies that have to be taken into account when new therapies are being introduced.

About evidence based and beyond: a discourse-analytic study of stakeholders' talk on involvement in the early development of personalized nutrition.

This paper draws on discourse analysis to examine how Dutch stakeholders in health education, health care, health insurance, social science, the food industry and the media make sense of innovations in the field of 'personalized nutrition' and their own role and significance in an early stage of technology development. Previous research has focused on factors that help or hinder collaboration between stakeholders, and on the development, management and implementation of joint programs. However, no attention has been paid to how stakeholders themselves handle issues of responsibility and initiative in relation to early technology development and collaborative interactions. The present study shows how such stakeholders establish themselves as gatekeepers of innovation by displaying authority on what consumers 'want' and 'cannot do', while avoiding a proactive role. Uncertainty in scientific knowledge, fixed roles and responsibilities and dependency on incompetent or biased others are drawn upon to account for a wait-and-see policy.

Disputing taste: food pleasure as an achievement in interaction.

While identity has been a dominant topic in research on food choice, literature on identity in consumers' everyday life is scarce. In this article we draw on insights from discursive psychology to demonstrate how members of an online forum on food pleasure handle the hedonic appreciation of food in everyday interaction. We examined 40 discussions consisting of 1715 e-mails related to culinary topics. The analysis focuses on the way in which the participants of this forum work up and establish their identities as "gourmets". A dominant tool in performing this identity work is the discursive construction of independent access to knowledge of and experience with food items, so as to compete with or resist the epistemic superiority of a preceding evaluation. Data are presented with nine examples of the 73 manifestations of the construction of independent access. Contrary to sensory approaches to food choice, this study depicts the enjoyment of food as an interactional achievement rather than a pure physiological sensation. Wider implications of this study for the relation between food, identity and taste are discussed.

Disputing taste: foods pleasure as an achievement in interaction.

While identity has been a dominant topic in research on food choice, literature on identity in consumers' everyday life is scarce. In this article we draw on insights from discursive psychology to demonstrate how members of an online forum on food pleasure handle the hedonic appreciation of food in everyday interaction. We examined 40 discussions consisting of 1715 e-mails related to culinary topics. The analysis focuses on the way in which the participants of this forum work up and establish their identities as 'gourmets'. A dominant tool in performing this identity work is the discursive construction of independent access to knowledge of and experience with food items, so as to compete with or resist the epistemic superiority of a preceding evaluation. Data are presented with nine examples of the 73 manifestations of the construction of independent access. Contrary to sensory approaches to food choice, this study depicts the enjoyment of food as an interactional achievement rather than a pure physiological sensation. Wider implications of this study for the relation between food, identity and taste are discussed.