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Short abstract:

This paper considers the work of food technologists and so-called ‘health and wellness products’ in the US processed food industry in the 2010s. It analyzes how ‘innovation’ was not only a venture into the future but also a problem of grappling with the past, using the concept of ‘aftertaste'.

Long abstract:

In the 2010s, the US processed food industry was wrestling with an image of public health crises it stood accused of precipitating, such as obesity and exposure to carcinogenic ingredients. In response, food technology trade shows were obsessed with ingredient ‘innovations’ meant for the development of so-called ‘health and wellness products’ – products with lower sugar, lower sodium, or the absence of artificial flavors and colors. Despite ‘innovation’ appearing as an epistemic and professional touchstone, I found that industry narratives also framed innovation as a challenge and as a significant point of failure. For food technology, one reason that ‘innovation’ was such a tricky value to uphold was that it was not only a venture into the future but also a problem of grappling with the past. I analyze this problem through the concept of ‘aftertaste’ - an unwanted remainder that persists and lingers. Aftertastes figure both sensorially - such as after a sip of a beverage containing artificial sweetener - and metaphorically, in the psychic consciousness of an American public suspicious of processed food products. I consider the durable embodiments of histories of technoscience as encountered by food technologists in the present attempting to both attract and intervene upon a mass consumer population, one that has been formed by the work of scientists who preceded them. Innovation here reaches forward and backward in time, an effort towards a kind of redemptive capitalism in the future, and a ‘clean’ finish with scientists’ own history – a history with no aftertaste.