The 'truth' of science and the branding of food products and organizations

In this paper we examine the branding of food and how organizations deploy a discourse based upon scientific truth claims in order to shift consumer understandings of food brands and the organizations that produce them. We propose that food science not only changes the process of food production but also changes the meanings that consumers attribute to food brands. Our analysis utilises Foucault's (1988) theory of discourse technologies - including technologies of production, sign systems, power, and the self - to explore the use of scientific discourse in the branding of food products and food organizations (Motion and Leitch, 2002). The application of science may facilitate a discursive shift in which a product that was conceived as a food is rebranded as a nutraceutical or medicine and the organizational identity associated with the brand is similarly transformed.