Food Brexit and Chlorinated Chicken: A Microcosm of Wider Food Problems

This paper situates food safety concerns raised in the Brexit debate since the referendum and suggests that, although the issue of chlorinated chicken entered public discourse, it represents wider concerns about food safety standards. Food safety has had high resonance in the UK since the 1980s, but Brexit shows how it connects to wider concerns also raised about Brexit, such as impacts on healthcare, the effects of austerity on food poverty, the limitations of low waged employment, concerns about migration and labour markets, and regional economic disparities. Brexit’s impact on the UK food system is immense because food has been highly integrated into EU governance. While food standards can be portrayed as a single narrow issue, the paper suggests it provides a useful lens with which to examine, interrogate and comprehend these wider Brexit politics. The complex realities of food politics and wider food system dynamics undermine any simplistic political narrative of ‘taking back control’.     

Meaning and material in the language of the street

This paper describes the materiality of street signs, an unappreciated and ubiquitous type of everyday written text. Drawing on social semiotics, linguistic landscapes and writing system research, it uses a categorisation of social roles associated with street signs and of the functions of street signs applied to street signs in Newcastle upon Tyne, with some other wider examples. The materials are divided into: stone and metal signs, which use capitals and archaic letters, convey permanence and quality, and are locating in function; signs handwritten or printed on paper, which also use capitals, convey temporary status and novelty and are mostly informing; painted signs, which often use lower case, have highly individual letter forms to express identity, and are usually informing; other materials ranging from glass to snow, expressing diverse ideas of permanence. The conclusion is that the meaning of street signs depends in part on the materials they are made of, particularly to convey permanence and identity.     

Sociocultural Variations in the Body Image Perceptions of Urban Adolescent Females

This study investigated the influences of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and ethnic peer group composition on awareness and internalization of socially sanctioned standards of appearance using the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire (SATAQ). The researchers surveyed a convenience sample of 208 adolescent females at an ethnically diverse urban high school. Statistical analyses found that ethnicity influenced awareness of socially sanctioned standards of appearance but the effects of ethnicity varied by level of caregiver educational attainment. Ethnicity and caregiver educational attainment together accounted for variance in the internalization of these standards. Moreover, African American girls with ethnically heterogeneous peer groups had significantly higher awareness and internalization scores than those without mixed friends. These findings highlight the importance of multiple ecological factors in assessing risk for disturbed body image and eating disorders. Ethnicity remains an important predictor of disturbed body image but should be treated as a dynamic, rather than a fixed risk factor.     

Structural and legal implications of e-health

Web and attendant e-Commerce phenomena are irretrievably at odds with the traditional structure and hence legal regulation of health delivery. E-Health delivers healthcare information, diagnosis, treatment, care, and prescribing of drugs in a nonlinear, nonhierarchical manner that encourages patients to "enter" the system at an infinite number of points, thus defying current regulatory constructs. Similarly, e-Commerce fundamentals such as disintermediation and disaggregation result in medical information being delivered through unfamiliar channels, creating immensely difficult questions for health lawyers.