Celebrities and food

Abstract

From early television “celebrity” chefs, who appeared in the decades after the Second World War on many early television programmes in Europe, US and across the world (Tominc, 2022) to contemporary successful Instagram influencers and activists, ‘food celebrities’ are famous media-produced personalities who are uniquely positioned to tie themselves and their brands to fashionable food advice discourses. They profoundly impact our thinking on what is considered appropriate and inappropriate food as they frame food discourses through categories of gender, religion, class, nation and race, often repositioning the more traditional identity boundaries or transgressing them altogether, often through a moral lens. Their advice on how to lead our lives, however, does not always conform to the mainstream views of what counts as ‘good’ food, as a number of food celebrities also act as digital food activists, critically questioning the current food system and advocate for change.