What do we study when we study health in food marketing context?

As a particular critical topic in the food marketplace, health has become a broad and fluid category balancing between biomedical nutritionist logic and a more pragmatic approach striving to address consumers' numerous interpretations of health value. In this study we attempt to better understand what marketing academics actually study when it comes to health in food. Through a systematic literature review we find that marketing research into health-related issues in food context, skews towards biomedical and nutritionist logic with its pronounced focus on labeling, but is also very much driven by pragmatic imperative of managerial relevance and satisfaction of consumer (existing or future) needs. The platform that could unify the two approaches on the theoretical level is not currently in wide use, but is likely on the way thanks to such propositions as “food well-being” (Block et al., 2011).