The way I would put a dominant discourse is how something is being viewed at the time based on what many people think but at the same time how the media decides to show it. There may be many views on the topic, but the dominant discourse is the view that is showed and focused on the most. I do believe that the dominant discourses that are related to food today are definitely that food is poison or that food is medicine. Eating healthy is a much bigger issue than it used to be and the media is showing how some foods are bad for your health and/or showing what foods are good for your health. People believe what they hear on the media because often the information is being displayed with evidence done in tests. This way it's not just anyone giving their ideas it is doctors and scientists that found evidence of foods being bad for your or foods being good for you. Usually for foods that the media shows is good for you are foods that are low on fat.
Fast food restaurants are shown as selling unhealthy food that's bad for you. So in this discourse fast food places are the bad guys. I found an article about the public school's food system. "In the past three years, the government has provided the nation's schools with millions of pounds of beef and chicken that wouldn't meet the quality or safety standards of many fast-food restaurants, from Jack in the Boxand other burger places to chicken chains such as KFC, a USA TODAY investigation found", (http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-12-08-school-lunch-standards_N.htm?csp=34&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+usatoday-NewsTopStories+%28News+-+Top+Stories%29). This quote is basically saying that the government is feeding schools with food that is very unhealthy. They use fast food restaurants as an example to show how unhealthy the meats are. They use fast food as if it is impossible to get worse food then fast food uses. The meat fed to the schools gets much less testing for contamination than fast food restaurants get. This shows the dominant discourse because an investigation was done on the food in the schools and is showing how the food the children in our country is poison, it's worse and less safe then fast food.
I came across another article that is about the same thing as the previous article. This again stressed how bad the food being fed to children at schools was unsafe and unhealthy. "According to the New York Times, if changes like this are enacted, it will mark the first time since the 1970s that nutrition rules for school lunches are updated. Expect Congress to start its review after the first of the year", (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2009/12/school_lunch_nutrition_worse_t.html). This quote is saying that the government is going to look over the nutritional rules for the school systems foods. This also shows the dominant discourse because this will be the first time since the 1970s that the rules for the schools food have changed. This means almost 40 years and the foods rules haven't been changed, just now is the healthiness of the schools foods is being payed attention to.
Based on these articles it does seem that the writing does think that we are living in a time where significant reform of U.S. foodways might occur because they think that the investigation will cause the government to change the rules for the schools foods. They are writing these articles to show how the schools food system is unhealthy and unsafe, that way people will be aware and it will be changed. I imagine that the food practices of a reasonably well-informed member of our society whose worldview gets sculpted by the dominant discourse might be that they eat very healthy with many fruits, vegetables, low fat and low sugar foods. I think that person thinks of food as a necessity, something they need. They need to have food but they have to keep track of everything they're eating and the fat and calories so they can stay healthy and in shape.
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