About the Project

The Staples to Superfoods Project aims to document stories, traditions, recipes, and beliefs about edible medicines from nature's pharmacopeia used by diverse cultures around the world.

But what exactly are superfoods?

There's no single definition of the term superfood, and it's not a legal or regulatory category like "organic." But usually when people use the word "superfood" they mean:

• It's a whole food - for example, a berry or a seed, or even a dried and powdered plant, rather than an isolated component like a single vitamin.

• It can be eaten as part of the normal diet - the level of toxicity is very high, so unlike a medicine or supplement, you can eat superfoods in larger quantities.

• It has a history of folk or indigenous culinary and medicinal use.

The foods and food products currently marketed as superfoods in Australia and other Western countries are drawn from cultures all over the world.  Some of them have long been familiar to us - for example, cranberry - and others are new entries, such as chia seed, maca, and açaí berry.  But before these diverse health-promoting foods came together under the banner of "superfoods," they each had (and continue to have) their own history of cultivation, food and medicine use, and cultural significance to a group of people.

This project asks how these diverse superfoods from around the globe have come together with new, shared meanings in the Western health food market.  The goals of the project are:

• To create several case studies looking at different superfoods from around the world, comparing each food/medicine historically and cross-culturally. 

• To document the historical narrative of how superfoods became a distinct group of commodities in Australia.

• To develop theoretical understandings of global foodways and agricultural commodity networks that challenge the global/local dichotomy and that emphasise the cultural dimension of globalisation.

The project looks at questions of globalisation, commodification, the contemporary food system, and concepts of food and medicine within different cultures.  It compares the uses and meanings of these foods in their cultures of origin with those of new consumers in Western markets.  In order to do this, the project uses the following methods:

• Oral History: Interviews with key actors in the development of superfood commodities in Australia.

• Focus Groups: Conducted with superfoods consumers in Adelaide, in order to understand how and why they consume superfoods.

• Ethnographic Fieldwork: Participant observation and other methods, conducted among the communities who historically/traditionally cultivate and consume the foods.

• Analysis of primary material, including historical writings, artefacts, government documents, and media.

The project is part of my PhD research in Food Studies at the University of Adelaide, South Australia.  The results will be published in a series of peer reviewed articles, as well as in a widely accessible book format.