現今人們正處於身體與健康議題受到高度關注的世紀，「樂活」的概念更帶出對健康的重視。到底是什麼原因讓人們積極響應這股追求健康的熱潮？人們相信身體的健康和飲食息息相關，因而使得保健食品以我國傳統文化中的「食療」理論為基礎，藉由生物科技的發展、披上科學的外衣，建構出擬似醫療化的手段，創造無限的健康市場商機。因此，保健食品的崛起，是處於社會建構的歷程。保健食品透過人們對「身體」的重視，展現其不可或缺的重要性；人們亦從保健食品所傳遞的健康論述，不斷關注自己的身體和健康。因此，本研究以文本分析為主，參與觀察和深度訪談為輔，試圖解析保健食品的社會建構歷程，以及健康論述的形成如何建構出健康身體的想像，將論述植入與內化於身體中，形成一套「自我反身性」的監控機制，讓人們在「想像的真實性」效應下，積極追求「理想化」的健康或身體狀態。 This is the era that people are highly attentive to the issues of body and health, especially the idea of “Lohas.” But what causes people to enthusiastically pursuing the trend of being healthy? Since people are convinced that healthy body is related to what we eat, so that today’s health food industry can make use of the theory of “eat therapy” of traditional culture as its basis, and in the course of the advance of bio-technology, to build up a means of pseudo-medicalization, to create unlimited marketability of health industry. Therefore, we assume the rise of Health Food Industry is a process of social construction. Due to people’s appreciation of “body,” the increase of Health Food becomes indispensably significant. Besides, throughout the formation of health discourse, people start to constantly care about their own body and health. Thus, this research employs textual analysis, plus participatory observation and in-depth interviewing, in order to scrutinize the process of Health Food’s social construction. Thereby, to understand how the formation of health discourse helps to construct the imaginary of healthy body, and in turn to implant and internalize such discourse into our body, that turns out to be a self-reflecting mechanism which complies people to the effect of “imagining reality,” and thus to actively pursue an “idealized” state of health and body.
