Betina Freidin

Alimentación y riesgos para la salud: visiones sobre la alimentación saludable y prácticas alimentarias de mujeres y varones de clase media en el Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires

In this article we analyze notions about healthy food and the perceptions of risks related to industrialized foodstuffs within a group of young and middle-aged females and males who belong to the middle class and live in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires. Data come from eight focus groups that were carried out in 2013. The study shows that the participants of the focus group have incorporated scientific-nutritional knowledge into their conceptions of healthy food. However, few discuss the risks of industrialized food beyond the growing public attention regarding trans fats and salt content. Although organic foods are positively valued, participants object to their high cost and the location of their commercialization. We show how in their food practices, the participants of the focus groups weigh their concern about health against other priorities such as costs, convenience, aesthetics, pleasure and sociability.

Choosing Ayurveda as a healthcare practice in Argentina

This article analyzes the process of adoption of Ayurveda as a healthcare practice in Buenos Aires, focusing on sociocultural dimensions and material aspects which either facilitate or discourage the following of this foreign medical tradition. Ayurveda is an ancient Indian medicine whose popularity has been on the rise among the Argentinean middle and upper classes. Introduced as a ‘lifestyle’ medicine, it resonates with the new health consciousness of individual responsibility in health maintenance and improvement. Based on in-depth interviews conducted with 20 followers of Ayurveda in Buenos Aires, the article shows that it attracts New Agers, adherents to food-driven subcultures, and patients dissatisfied with the limitations of biomedicine. Followers develop new skills for self-understanding, self-healing, and wellbeing. As adherents to a foreign medical approach, however, they adopt Ayurvedic practices in flexible ways, and some even hold critical views on the elitist market niches of Ayurvedic specialists and products.