Jessica Loyer is a researcher in social history, food studies, cultural studies, and science and technology studies. She holds a PhD in Humanities from the University of Adelaide, an MA in Gastronomy from the University of Adelaide and Le Cordon Bleu, and a BA in History from Barnard College, New York. Her research investigates historical and contemporary food and nutrition culture, as well as seeks to conceptually connect food production and consumption through interdisciplinary social research methods. Address: 555 La Trobe St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia
Purpose
People with cancer who use medicinal cannabis do so despite risks associated with limited... more Purpose People with cancer who use medicinal cannabis do so despite risks associated with limited clinical evidence, legalities, and stigma. This study investigated how Australians with cancer rationalise their medicinal cannabis use despite its risks.
Methods Ten adults (5 males and 5 females; mean age of 53.3) who used cannabis medicinally for their cancer were interviewed in 2021–2022 about how they used and accessed the substance, attitudes and beliefs underpinning their use, and conversations with others about medicinal cannabis.
Results Participants had cancer of the bowel, skin, oesophagus, stomach, thyroid, breast, and Hodgkin lymphoma for which they were receiving treatment (n = 5) or under surveillance (n = 5), with most (n = 6) encountering metastatic disease. Cannabis was used to treat a variety of cancer-related symptoms such as pain, poor sleep, and low mood. Cannabis was perceived as natural and thus less risky than pharmaceuticals. Participants legitimised their medicinal cannabis use by emphasising its natural qualities and distancing themselves from problematic users or riskier substances. Cost barriers and a lack of healthcare professional communication impeded prescription access. Similarly, participants navigated medicinal cannabis use independently due to a lack of guidance from healthcare professionals.
Conclusion Findings highlight the need for robust data regarding the harms and efficacy of medicinal cannabis and dissemination of such information among healthcare professionals and to patients who choose to use the substance. Ensuring healthcare professionals are equipped to provide non-judgmental and evidence-based guidance may mitigate potential safety and legal risks.
COVID-19's supply chain disruptions saw small-scale, artisanal food and craft producers exper... more COVID-19's supply chain disruptions saw small-scale, artisanal food and craft producers experience surges in demand from consumers seeking locally made goods. This article analyses Australian news coverage promoting this ‘turn to the local’, with a focus on mainstream news outlets from March 2020 to February 2023. We identify two dominant narratives: the ‘producer pivot’ and the ‘consumer-saviour’. Using Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad’s (2018) work on resilience as a regulatory ideal of neoliberalism, we argue that both narratives focus on individual responsibility in ways that make invisible structural and economic impediments to change. The consistent ways in which buying and producing local small-scale goods were presented and understood in the news coverage – across different products, places and stages of the pandemic – highlights the persistent ways in which neoliberal values perform particular kinds of work for capitalism by asserting the necessity of local ‘resilience’ an...
Superfoods have emerged as an increasingly significant category of health food products and relat... more Superfoods have emerged as an increasingly significant category of health food products and related popular discourse about food, health, and values. They are celebrated for their purported extraordinary nutritional and/or medicinal values, “natural” qualities, associations with “exotic” or “pristine” places of origin, and histories of traditional or indigenous use; in short, they are represented as utopian edibles providing not only a nutritional panacea but also an antidote to overly-technological and industrial modern food production practices. The term appears prominently in marketing, on product packaging, and in the media, where tentative scientific conclusions and studies funded by economically-interested parties tend to be presented unproblematically as facts (Weitkamp and Eidsvaag 2014). However, the term “superfood” defies precise definition, and both products and discourse and poorly understood by the public and regulatory bodies, leading to confusion as to what a food with such a label promises. Based on textual and visual analysis of superfoods books and product packaging, and focus group interviews with superfoods consumers, this paper presents a distillation of the discursive construction of “superfoods” as utopian foodstuffs. It demonstrates that the concept of superfoods is a composite of ideas about food, health, and values, and their associated politics, deeply embedded in Western thought and practice, and illustrates how superfoods have emerged and developed at the intersection of discourses of functional nutritionism (Scrinis 2013), nutritional primitivism (Knight 2015), and critical consumption (Yates 2011). Yet these discourses are not uncontested; because superfoods are positioned as existing between established social categories such as food and medicine, nature and culture, primitive and modern, they are both alluring and confusing to consumers and thus provide a distinctive lens through which to examine the tensions that pull at contemporary food culture. Understanding the real hopes, fears, anxieties, and moral dilemmas expressed through superfoods enables us to locate points of possibility to broaden discussions about “good”, “healthy”, and “fair” food and food systems, and how to achieve these goals, in ways that move beyond discursive dualisms and recognise the complexity of values that constitute contemporary foodscapes.Jessica Loye
While religious slaughter is not a new practice in Australia, it has recently attracted public co... more While religious slaughter is not a new practice in Australia, it has recently attracted public concern regarding questions of animal welfare following unfavourable media coverage. However, the details of religious slaughter practices, including related animal welfare provisions, appear to be poorly understood by the Australian public, and no existing literature concisely synthesises current regulations, practices, and issues. This paper addresses this gap by examining the processes associated with various types of religious slaughter and associated animal welfare issues, by reviewing the relevant legislation and examining public views, while highlighting areas for further research, particularly in Australia. The paper finds shortcomings in relation to transparency and understanding of current practices and regulation and suggests a need for more clear and consistent legislative provisions, as well as increased independence from industry in the setting of the standards, enforcement a...
Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, 2nd edition, Aug 26, 2016
Superfoods are an increasingly significant category
of health foods that are celebrated for their... more Superfoods are an increasingly significant category of health foods that are celebrated for their supposed extraordinary nutritional and/or medicinal properties, their histories of traditional use by ancient or indigenous communities, and their “natural” and “authentic” qualities (Loyer 2016). There is no standard definition of the term “superfood”; it is not a legal or regulatory category such as “organic” or “fair trade,” nor is it used by scholarly convention as is the term “functional food” (Lunn 2006). It can be considered a subcategory of the latter because superfoods are marketed for their health benefits and are referred to in the marketing literature as “naturally functional” (Mellentin 2014). The term appears prominently on product packaging, in marketing, and in the media, where tentative scientific findings regarding a food’s healthfulness, often funded by economically interested parties, are frequently exaggerated (Weitkamp and Eidsvaag 2014). While little academic attention has been paid to the category, media stories about superfoods abound; these articles tend to either promote particular superfoods or attempt to “debunk” superfood health claims. However, ethical aspects of producing, promoting, and consuming superfoods are rarely mentioned. Given that these foods are deeply embedded in contemporary global food provisioning networks and nutrition discourse and politics, their production and consumption raise ethical questions regarding their social, environmental, and public health impacts.
Food and Communication: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium of Food and Cookery 2015
In recent years there has been an explosion onto the health food scene of exotic 'superfoods': fo... more In recent years there has been an explosion onto the health food scene of exotic 'superfoods': food products celebrated for their nutritional and medicinal values, derived from indigenous traditions and inserted onto the shelves of wealthy Western marketplaces. These products are presented as something between medicine and foodstuff. Placing these novel food products on the shelves of health food shops – and, increasingly, supermarkets and chemists – around the world has required that the concept of superfood be constructed and communicated to new consumers. This paper takes a closer look at the packaging of one particular superfood product, the Peruvian root maca, as well as draws upon fieldwork in the central Andes in 2014, as a case study of one point at which the superfoods concept is constructed and communicated by drawing upon contemporary discourses about the relationships between food, health, and values. The large quantity of information presented on superfood packaging serves not only to produce and reproduce the concept of superfoods, but also to communicate geographical knowledges about products sold far from their places and cultures of origin. The package in question is presented with a variety of knowledge claims, which should be read critically as representations that serve particular interests rather than as unproblematic attempts to 'defetishize' the commodity. Points of disjuncture between these knowledge claims open up spaces for contestation by other actors involved in the production and consumption of these food products.
Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, 2014
Though notoriously hard to define, this entry adopts an understanding of functional foods as food... more Though notoriously hard to define, this entry adopts an understanding of functional foods as food products marketed for their health benefits. This definition includes products as diverse as calcium-fortified orange juice, omega-3-enriched eggs, and cholesterol-reducing margarine. The concept of functional foods encompasses both the application of nutritional science and technology to the development of food products and ingredients designed to deliver certain health benefits and the unprecedented level of marketing of food, nutrition, and health required to promote the concept (Heasman and Mellentin 2001). It is closely tied to the ability of manufacturers to make direct or implied health claims on product labels and in advertisements, an area of global regulatory friction. Market actors, not public authorities, drive the development of such products. While functional food commodities ma ...
The “hidden hunger” to which Aya Hirata Kimura refers in the title of her critique of fortificati... more The “hidden hunger” to which Aya Hirata Kimura refers in the title of her critique of fortification-based interventions into the problems of hunger and malnutrition in the developing world is generally understood to refer to micronutrient deficiencies, or the lack of sufficient nutrients in the diets of the world’s poor. According to prominent hidden hunger discourse, diseases and disorders caused by a lack of essential micronutrients, such as vitamin A, iron, and iodine, are often invisible to those who suffer from them, therefore the “hunger” is hidden from them and requires expert intervention to cure it. But Kimura points out that something else is hidden in the discourses and practices that characterize interventions to combat micronutrient deficiencies: the voices of the very people who live with hunger, disease, and poverty, many of them women. The fact that these are the very people whose bodies are targeted by “hidden hunger” interventions increases the irony that their voices are silenced as the experts who constitute the international food policy community determine how best to improve their health and nutrition.
Superfoods have emerged as an increasingly significant category of health food products and relat... more Superfoods have emerged as an increasingly significant category of health food products and related popular discourse about food, health, and values. They are celebrated for their purported extraordinary nutritional and/or medicinal values, " natural " qualities, associations with " exotic " or " pristine " places of origin, and histories of traditional or indigenous use; in short, they are represented as utopian edibles providing not only a nutritional panacea but also an antidote to overly-technological and industrial modern food production practices. The term appears prominently in marketing, on product packaging, and in the media, where tentative scientific conclusions and studies funded by economically-interested parties tend to be presented unproblematically as facts (Weitkamp and Eidsvaag 2014). However, the term " superfood " defies precise definition, and both products and discourse and poorly understood by the public and regulatory bodies, leading to confusion as to what a food with such a label promises. Based on textual and visual analysis of superfoods books and product packaging, and focus group interviews with superfoods consumers, this paper presents a distillation of the discursive construction of " superfoods " as utopian foodstuffs. It demonstrates that the concept of superfoods is a composite of ideas about food, health, and values, and their associated politics, deeply embedded in Western thought and practice, and illustrates how superfoods have emerged and developed at the intersection of discourses of functional nutritionism (Scrinis 2013), nutritional primitivism (Knight 2015), and critical consumption (Yates 2011). Yet these discourses are not uncontested; because superfoods are positioned as existing between established social categories such as food and medicine, nature and culture, primitive and modern, they are both alluring and confusing to consumers and thus provide a distinctive lens through which to examine the tensions that pull at contemporary food culture. Understanding the real hopes, fears, anxieties, and moral dilemmas expressed through superfoods enables us to locate points of possibility to broaden discussions about " good " , " healthy " , and " fair " food and food systems, and how to achieve these goals, in ways that move beyond discursive dualisms and recognise the complexity of values that constitute contemporary foodscapes.
Purpose
People with cancer who use medicinal cannabis do so despite risks associated with limited... more Purpose People with cancer who use medicinal cannabis do so despite risks associated with limited clinical evidence, legalities, and stigma. This study investigated how Australians with cancer rationalise their medicinal cannabis use despite its risks.
Methods Ten adults (5 males and 5 females; mean age of 53.3) who used cannabis medicinally for their cancer were interviewed in 2021–2022 about how they used and accessed the substance, attitudes and beliefs underpinning their use, and conversations with others about medicinal cannabis.
Results Participants had cancer of the bowel, skin, oesophagus, stomach, thyroid, breast, and Hodgkin lymphoma for which they were receiving treatment (n = 5) or under surveillance (n = 5), with most (n = 6) encountering metastatic disease. Cannabis was used to treat a variety of cancer-related symptoms such as pain, poor sleep, and low mood. Cannabis was perceived as natural and thus less risky than pharmaceuticals. Participants legitimised their medicinal cannabis use by emphasising its natural qualities and distancing themselves from problematic users or riskier substances. Cost barriers and a lack of healthcare professional communication impeded prescription access. Similarly, participants navigated medicinal cannabis use independently due to a lack of guidance from healthcare professionals.
Conclusion Findings highlight the need for robust data regarding the harms and efficacy of medicinal cannabis and dissemination of such information among healthcare professionals and to patients who choose to use the substance. Ensuring healthcare professionals are equipped to provide non-judgmental and evidence-based guidance may mitigate potential safety and legal risks.
COVID-19's supply chain disruptions saw small-scale, artisanal food and craft producers exper... more COVID-19's supply chain disruptions saw small-scale, artisanal food and craft producers experience surges in demand from consumers seeking locally made goods. This article analyses Australian news coverage promoting this ‘turn to the local’, with a focus on mainstream news outlets from March 2020 to February 2023. We identify two dominant narratives: the ‘producer pivot’ and the ‘consumer-saviour’. Using Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad’s (2018) work on resilience as a regulatory ideal of neoliberalism, we argue that both narratives focus on individual responsibility in ways that make invisible structural and economic impediments to change. The consistent ways in which buying and producing local small-scale goods were presented and understood in the news coverage – across different products, places and stages of the pandemic – highlights the persistent ways in which neoliberal values perform particular kinds of work for capitalism by asserting the necessity of local ‘resilience’ an...
Superfoods have emerged as an increasingly significant category of health food products and relat... more Superfoods have emerged as an increasingly significant category of health food products and related popular discourse about food, health, and values. They are celebrated for their purported extraordinary nutritional and/or medicinal values, “natural” qualities, associations with “exotic” or “pristine” places of origin, and histories of traditional or indigenous use; in short, they are represented as utopian edibles providing not only a nutritional panacea but also an antidote to overly-technological and industrial modern food production practices. The term appears prominently in marketing, on product packaging, and in the media, where tentative scientific conclusions and studies funded by economically-interested parties tend to be presented unproblematically as facts (Weitkamp and Eidsvaag 2014). However, the term “superfood” defies precise definition, and both products and discourse and poorly understood by the public and regulatory bodies, leading to confusion as to what a food with such a label promises. Based on textual and visual analysis of superfoods books and product packaging, and focus group interviews with superfoods consumers, this paper presents a distillation of the discursive construction of “superfoods” as utopian foodstuffs. It demonstrates that the concept of superfoods is a composite of ideas about food, health, and values, and their associated politics, deeply embedded in Western thought and practice, and illustrates how superfoods have emerged and developed at the intersection of discourses of functional nutritionism (Scrinis 2013), nutritional primitivism (Knight 2015), and critical consumption (Yates 2011). Yet these discourses are not uncontested; because superfoods are positioned as existing between established social categories such as food and medicine, nature and culture, primitive and modern, they are both alluring and confusing to consumers and thus provide a distinctive lens through which to examine the tensions that pull at contemporary food culture. Understanding the real hopes, fears, anxieties, and moral dilemmas expressed through superfoods enables us to locate points of possibility to broaden discussions about “good”, “healthy”, and “fair” food and food systems, and how to achieve these goals, in ways that move beyond discursive dualisms and recognise the complexity of values that constitute contemporary foodscapes.Jessica Loye
While religious slaughter is not a new practice in Australia, it has recently attracted public co... more While religious slaughter is not a new practice in Australia, it has recently attracted public concern regarding questions of animal welfare following unfavourable media coverage. However, the details of religious slaughter practices, including related animal welfare provisions, appear to be poorly understood by the Australian public, and no existing literature concisely synthesises current regulations, practices, and issues. This paper addresses this gap by examining the processes associated with various types of religious slaughter and associated animal welfare issues, by reviewing the relevant legislation and examining public views, while highlighting areas for further research, particularly in Australia. The paper finds shortcomings in relation to transparency and understanding of current practices and regulation and suggests a need for more clear and consistent legislative provisions, as well as increased independence from industry in the setting of the standards, enforcement a...
Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, 2nd edition, Aug 26, 2016
Superfoods are an increasingly significant category
of health foods that are celebrated for their... more Superfoods are an increasingly significant category of health foods that are celebrated for their supposed extraordinary nutritional and/or medicinal properties, their histories of traditional use by ancient or indigenous communities, and their “natural” and “authentic” qualities (Loyer 2016). There is no standard definition of the term “superfood”; it is not a legal or regulatory category such as “organic” or “fair trade,” nor is it used by scholarly convention as is the term “functional food” (Lunn 2006). It can be considered a subcategory of the latter because superfoods are marketed for their health benefits and are referred to in the marketing literature as “naturally functional” (Mellentin 2014). The term appears prominently on product packaging, in marketing, and in the media, where tentative scientific findings regarding a food’s healthfulness, often funded by economically interested parties, are frequently exaggerated (Weitkamp and Eidsvaag 2014). While little academic attention has been paid to the category, media stories about superfoods abound; these articles tend to either promote particular superfoods or attempt to “debunk” superfood health claims. However, ethical aspects of producing, promoting, and consuming superfoods are rarely mentioned. Given that these foods are deeply embedded in contemporary global food provisioning networks and nutrition discourse and politics, their production and consumption raise ethical questions regarding their social, environmental, and public health impacts.
Food and Communication: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium of Food and Cookery 2015
In recent years there has been an explosion onto the health food scene of exotic 'superfoods': fo... more In recent years there has been an explosion onto the health food scene of exotic 'superfoods': food products celebrated for their nutritional and medicinal values, derived from indigenous traditions and inserted onto the shelves of wealthy Western marketplaces. These products are presented as something between medicine and foodstuff. Placing these novel food products on the shelves of health food shops – and, increasingly, supermarkets and chemists – around the world has required that the concept of superfood be constructed and communicated to new consumers. This paper takes a closer look at the packaging of one particular superfood product, the Peruvian root maca, as well as draws upon fieldwork in the central Andes in 2014, as a case study of one point at which the superfoods concept is constructed and communicated by drawing upon contemporary discourses about the relationships between food, health, and values. The large quantity of information presented on superfood packaging serves not only to produce and reproduce the concept of superfoods, but also to communicate geographical knowledges about products sold far from their places and cultures of origin. The package in question is presented with a variety of knowledge claims, which should be read critically as representations that serve particular interests rather than as unproblematic attempts to 'defetishize' the commodity. Points of disjuncture between these knowledge claims open up spaces for contestation by other actors involved in the production and consumption of these food products.
Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, 2014
Though notoriously hard to define, this entry adopts an understanding of functional foods as food... more Though notoriously hard to define, this entry adopts an understanding of functional foods as food products marketed for their health benefits. This definition includes products as diverse as calcium-fortified orange juice, omega-3-enriched eggs, and cholesterol-reducing margarine. The concept of functional foods encompasses both the application of nutritional science and technology to the development of food products and ingredients designed to deliver certain health benefits and the unprecedented level of marketing of food, nutrition, and health required to promote the concept (Heasman and Mellentin 2001). It is closely tied to the ability of manufacturers to make direct or implied health claims on product labels and in advertisements, an area of global regulatory friction. Market actors, not public authorities, drive the development of such products. While functional food commodities ma ...
The “hidden hunger” to which Aya Hirata Kimura refers in the title of her critique of fortificati... more The “hidden hunger” to which Aya Hirata Kimura refers in the title of her critique of fortification-based interventions into the problems of hunger and malnutrition in the developing world is generally understood to refer to micronutrient deficiencies, or the lack of sufficient nutrients in the diets of the world’s poor. According to prominent hidden hunger discourse, diseases and disorders caused by a lack of essential micronutrients, such as vitamin A, iron, and iodine, are often invisible to those who suffer from them, therefore the “hunger” is hidden from them and requires expert intervention to cure it. But Kimura points out that something else is hidden in the discourses and practices that characterize interventions to combat micronutrient deficiencies: the voices of the very people who live with hunger, disease, and poverty, many of them women. The fact that these are the very people whose bodies are targeted by “hidden hunger” interventions increases the irony that their voices are silenced as the experts who constitute the international food policy community determine how best to improve their health and nutrition.
Superfoods have emerged as an increasingly significant category of health food products and relat... more Superfoods have emerged as an increasingly significant category of health food products and related popular discourse about food, health, and values. They are celebrated for their purported extraordinary nutritional and/or medicinal values, " natural " qualities, associations with " exotic " or " pristine " places of origin, and histories of traditional or indigenous use; in short, they are represented as utopian edibles providing not only a nutritional panacea but also an antidote to overly-technological and industrial modern food production practices. The term appears prominently in marketing, on product packaging, and in the media, where tentative scientific conclusions and studies funded by economically-interested parties tend to be presented unproblematically as facts (Weitkamp and Eidsvaag 2014). However, the term " superfood " defies precise definition, and both products and discourse and poorly understood by the public and regulatory bodies, leading to confusion as to what a food with such a label promises. Based on textual and visual analysis of superfoods books and product packaging, and focus group interviews with superfoods consumers, this paper presents a distillation of the discursive construction of " superfoods " as utopian foodstuffs. It demonstrates that the concept of superfoods is a composite of ideas about food, health, and values, and their associated politics, deeply embedded in Western thought and practice, and illustrates how superfoods have emerged and developed at the intersection of discourses of functional nutritionism (Scrinis 2013), nutritional primitivism (Knight 2015), and critical consumption (Yates 2011). Yet these discourses are not uncontested; because superfoods are positioned as existing between established social categories such as food and medicine, nature and culture, primitive and modern, they are both alluring and confusing to consumers and thus provide a distinctive lens through which to examine the tensions that pull at contemporary food culture. Understanding the real hopes, fears, anxieties, and moral dilemmas expressed through superfoods enables us to locate points of possibility to broaden discussions about " good " , " healthy " , and " fair " food and food systems, and how to achieve these goals, in ways that move beyond discursive dualisms and recognise the complexity of values that constitute contemporary foodscapes.
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Papers by Jessica Loyer
People with cancer who use medicinal cannabis do so despite risks associated with limited clinical evidence, legalities, and stigma. This study investigated how Australians with cancer rationalise their medicinal cannabis use despite its risks.
Methods
Ten adults (5 males and 5 females; mean age of 53.3) who used cannabis medicinally for their cancer were interviewed in 2021–2022 about how they used and accessed the substance, attitudes and beliefs underpinning their use, and conversations with others about medicinal cannabis.
Results
Participants had cancer of the bowel, skin, oesophagus, stomach, thyroid, breast, and Hodgkin lymphoma for which they were receiving treatment (n = 5) or under surveillance (n = 5), with most (n = 6) encountering metastatic disease. Cannabis was used to treat a variety of cancer-related symptoms such as pain, poor sleep, and low mood. Cannabis was perceived as natural and thus less risky than pharmaceuticals. Participants legitimised their medicinal cannabis use by emphasising its natural qualities and distancing themselves from problematic users or riskier substances. Cost barriers and a lack of healthcare professional communication impeded prescription access. Similarly, participants navigated medicinal cannabis use independently due to a lack of guidance from healthcare professionals.
Conclusion
Findings highlight the need for robust data regarding the harms and efficacy of medicinal cannabis and dissemination of such information among healthcare professionals and to patients who choose to use the substance. Ensuring healthcare professionals are equipped to provide non-judgmental and evidence-based guidance may mitigate potential safety and legal risks.
of health foods that are celebrated for their
supposed extraordinary nutritional and/or medicinal
properties, their histories of traditional use by
ancient or indigenous communities, and their
“natural” and “authentic” qualities (Loyer 2016).
There is no standard definition of the term
“superfood”; it is not a legal or regulatory category
such as “organic” or “fair trade,” nor is it
used by scholarly convention as is the term “functional
food” (Lunn 2006). It can be considered a
subcategory of the latter because superfoods are
marketed for their health benefits and are referred
to in the marketing literature as “naturally functional”
(Mellentin 2014). The term appears prominently
on product packaging, in marketing, and
in the media, where tentative scientific findings
regarding a food’s healthfulness, often funded by
economically interested parties, are frequently
exaggerated (Weitkamp and Eidsvaag 2014).
While little academic attention has been paid to
the category, media stories about superfoods
abound; these articles tend to either promote particular
superfoods or attempt to “debunk”
superfood health claims. However, ethical aspects
of producing, promoting, and consuming
superfoods are rarely mentioned. Given that
these foods are deeply embedded in contemporary
global food provisioning networks and nutrition
discourse and politics, their production and consumption
raise ethical questions regarding their
social, environmental, and public health impacts.
Conference Presentations by Jessica Loyer
People with cancer who use medicinal cannabis do so despite risks associated with limited clinical evidence, legalities, and stigma. This study investigated how Australians with cancer rationalise their medicinal cannabis use despite its risks.
Methods
Ten adults (5 males and 5 females; mean age of 53.3) who used cannabis medicinally for their cancer were interviewed in 2021–2022 about how they used and accessed the substance, attitudes and beliefs underpinning their use, and conversations with others about medicinal cannabis.
Results
Participants had cancer of the bowel, skin, oesophagus, stomach, thyroid, breast, and Hodgkin lymphoma for which they were receiving treatment (n = 5) or under surveillance (n = 5), with most (n = 6) encountering metastatic disease. Cannabis was used to treat a variety of cancer-related symptoms such as pain, poor sleep, and low mood. Cannabis was perceived as natural and thus less risky than pharmaceuticals. Participants legitimised their medicinal cannabis use by emphasising its natural qualities and distancing themselves from problematic users or riskier substances. Cost barriers and a lack of healthcare professional communication impeded prescription access. Similarly, participants navigated medicinal cannabis use independently due to a lack of guidance from healthcare professionals.
Conclusion
Findings highlight the need for robust data regarding the harms and efficacy of medicinal cannabis and dissemination of such information among healthcare professionals and to patients who choose to use the substance. Ensuring healthcare professionals are equipped to provide non-judgmental and evidence-based guidance may mitigate potential safety and legal risks.
of health foods that are celebrated for their
supposed extraordinary nutritional and/or medicinal
properties, their histories of traditional use by
ancient or indigenous communities, and their
“natural” and “authentic” qualities (Loyer 2016).
There is no standard definition of the term
“superfood”; it is not a legal or regulatory category
such as “organic” or “fair trade,” nor is it
used by scholarly convention as is the term “functional
food” (Lunn 2006). It can be considered a
subcategory of the latter because superfoods are
marketed for their health benefits and are referred
to in the marketing literature as “naturally functional”
(Mellentin 2014). The term appears prominently
on product packaging, in marketing, and
in the media, where tentative scientific findings
regarding a food’s healthfulness, often funded by
economically interested parties, are frequently
exaggerated (Weitkamp and Eidsvaag 2014).
While little academic attention has been paid to
the category, media stories about superfoods
abound; these articles tend to either promote particular
superfoods or attempt to “debunk”
superfood health claims. However, ethical aspects
of producing, promoting, and consuming
superfoods are rarely mentioned. Given that
these foods are deeply embedded in contemporary
global food provisioning networks and nutrition
discourse and politics, their production and consumption
raise ethical questions regarding their
social, environmental, and public health impacts.