In volume 4.2 of RHM, Danielle Stambler contributes an article titled: “Eating Data: The Rhetorics of Food, Medicine, and Technology in Employee Wellness Programs”. This article explores how food-related practices are discursively constructed in an employee wellness program (EWP). Drawing on qualitative grounded theory analyses of internal- and external-facing EWP materials, Danielle theorizes how food-related practices, technology, institutional power, and wellness intersect. By entwining health, medicine, and food under the umbrella of wellness, the EWP promotes food-as-wellness (eating the right foods will lead to individual holistic well-being by improving the already-healthy person) while incenting and effectuating food-as-medicine (eating the right foods can help cure individual illness/disease or intervene as a treatment for a disease risk factor such as overweight or obesity) because of food-as-economics (collectively eating the right foods can help solve rising health insurance costs). The theory advanced in this article expands our understanding of wellness discourses and points to the need for research examining how such discourse impacts lived experience.
For her study, Danielle examined how the University of Minnesota EWP described and promoted food-related wellness practices. Danielle coded the 209 internal-facing and external-facing UMN texts and categorized them by concept and code. The appendix visualizes the concepts of wellness uncovered throughout her research.
In an interview with Assistant Editor Bryna Siegel Finer, Danielle places her research both a teaching and writing standpoint.
Recommended Citation
Siegel Finer, Bryna and Stambler, Danielle (2021) “RHM Author Interview: Bryna Siegel Finer, RHM Assistant Editor, interviews Danielle Stambler on her article, “Eating Data: The Rhetorics of Food, Medicine, and Technology in Employee Wellness Programs,” Rhetoric of Health & Medicine: Vol. 4 : Iss. 2.
Read the Appendix Here
Interview Transcription Here
