Dynamic Press Discourses of School Meal Reform in Poland:from Expertise Implementation to Resistance and Rejection

Abstract

The implementation of school meal reform in Poland in 2015 has been withdrawn in because of vast social resistance. The analyses of press discourse in daily newspapers reveals how the critics and resistance has been shaped. The use of content analysis and critical discourse analysis helps to identify how power relations and ideologies connected to the anti-junk-food law has been contested and redefined. The changes were manifested by abandoning healthist framing in favour of construction of new discursive worlds. In the discourse of resistance, cultural food symbols such as hunger and satiety, the ceremonial nature and pleasure of eating, economic freedom and consumer freedom were employed, and the status of taste in consumption among children was highlighted. Historical and cultural context has given the basis for such redefining and provided cultural meanings for undermining expert narrative, which has been reform’s rationale and hegemonising frame.