Processed food dream or nightmare? Influential online sentiment coalitions

The framing of processed foods by groups of positive, negative or balanced online actors expresses the public mood about processed food and at the same time influences public views and policy. In this paper, we studied the framing of processed food by online sentiment coalitions – groups of online actors that are united by their positive, negative, or balanced stance towards processed food. We innovatively integrated digital methods with textual and visual analyses of 164 webpages and 344 online visualizations published by a total of 89 actors, such as academics, food technologists, journalists, governmental actors, NGOs, industry actors, nutrition specialists. The analysis shows that the online “dream” coalition of processed food framed it in a way to convey the human aspects of food processing: processed food is understood as a way to improve human lives, and photographs of industrially processed food produced by humans show it is not as industrialized as often thought of. The online “nightmare” coalition of processed food framed it primarily as posing health threats and accompanied this with photographs of unhealthy but colourful foods. The balanced coalition gave a balanced description of the benefits and drawbacks of processed food and accompanied this frame with photographs emphasizing the difficulty in making food choices. Extending the knowledge about the ways sentiments about processed food are communicated online is essential as it provides important insights into people’s understanding of the notion of “processed food” and the meaning that is given to it by various online interpretive communities.