Unpacking Norms, Narratives, and Nourishment: A Feminist HCI Critique on Food Tracking Technologies

Title of the Paper

Unpacking Norms, Narratives, and Nourishment: A Feminist HCI Critique on Food Tracking Technologies

Paper Information

• Research Domain: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Women's Health, Socio-Cultural Critique
• Keywords: Food tracking, nutrition apps, self-tracking, feminist HCI, anti-fat culture, diet culture, neoliberalism, health technologies, individualized health, body politics

Research Background and Issues

• Identified Problems or Challenges:

  • Food tracking applications can offer benefits (e.g., identifying food intolerances) but may also lead to health risks such as eating disorders.
  • Current research lacks an in-depth socio-cultural, ethical, and political analysis of food tracking applications from a feminist HCI perspective.
  • The design of these applications often embeds normative narratives about the "ideal body," disproportionately affecting women and perpetuating anti-fat narratives.

• Significance:

  • Food tracking has become a key component of many nutrition plans, influencing not only users' physical health but also reinforcing societal biases about body image.
  • Mitigating the negative psychological, social, and physical health impacts of food tracking technologies is crucial, especially in the realm of women's health.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • This paper addresses the research gap in feminist HCI regarding food tracking applications as a women's health issue.
  • It draws on frameworks from critiques of menstrual tracking, fat bias, and body politics to explore the cultural and design norms embedded in food tracking applications.

Solutions

• Research Methods:

  • Utilized the "walkthrough method" proposed by Light et al., conducting a detailed analysis of three commercial food tracking applications (MyFitnessPal, Noom, Ate).
  • Adopted a reflective feminist perspective, incorporating fat liberation theory.

• Innovations:

  • This study not only conducts technical analyses of application interface design and functionality but also reveals how these designs are embedded within broader socio-cultural contexts, propagating harmful body politics and health narratives.
  • Proposed specific design improvement suggestions, such as integrating anti-fat bias safeguards, reducing unnecessary weight tracking features, and decentralizing calorie analysis.

• Implementation Steps and Key Techniques:

  1. Identify the application usage context, including objectives, target user groups, and revenue models.
  2. Conduct a technical walkthrough: analyze user experiences across three key stages—registration, daily use, and exit—using virtual user scenarios.
  3. Critically analyze design elements through feminist HCI and cultural theory lenses.
  4. Construct thematic findings through multiple rounds of coding, emphasizing normative narratives and implicit health ideologies in design.

Research Results

• Specific Findings:

  • Categorized three major norms and narrative types embedded in food tracking applications:
    1. Embedded Normativity:
       • Moral values around food and nutrition, definitions of health, and body image.
       • All applications included anti-fat culture narratives, associating fatness with laziness, isolation, and poor health.
    2. Embedded Narrativity:
       • Emphasized quantification and simplification of food and health.
       • Individualized health goals, ignoring social structures and constraints.
       • Interface designs encouraged users to obsessively pursue "continuous optimization" and self-reflection.
    3. Neoliberalism and Individualized Health:
       • Framed health as a form of personal labor, even requiring emotional investment.
       • Reduced food enjoyment to a concept that must be "earned through labor."

• Advantages:

  • This study proposed a theoretical framework for health application design, emphasizing user health while avoiding reinforcement of societal biases about body image.
  • Offered inspiring alternative design directions, such as building future health technologies from perspectives of body liberation, food abundance, and empathy.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Limitations:
    • Analysis primarily conducted from a Western, white perspective, lacking coverage of cross-cultural, racial, or other marginalized group experiences.
    • Focused solely on food tracking technologies targeting women, excluding other genders or diverse groups.
  • Future Directions:
    • Expand to areas of racial justice, disability justice, and cross-cultural design.
    • Explore how food tracking technologies are repurposed by users in unintended ways.
    • Develop participatory design models involving fat liberation activists and grassroots users in the technology design process.

Conclusion

• Food tracking technologies perpetuate normative narratives about the body in social culture, particularly regarding definitions of fatness, health, and diet.
• These applications simultaneously mask their deeply ingrained anti-fat biases by blending "body positivity" and "diet culture" language.
• This paper proposes decentralized narrative design directions, encouraging technologies to embrace abundance, joy, and embodied experiences, supporting authentic connections between individuals and food health.

Acknowledgments

The authors express gratitude to reviewers and the research team for their support, and extend special respect to activists advocating for fat liberation and feminist health issues.