The Soul Diet Goes Prime Time: Television and the Making of a Black Health Crisis

This paper analyzes how public health discourse and popular culture intersected in the 1970s to shape understandings of hypertension in Black communities. As Black cardiologists Jarone Johnson and James Mays advanced the “Soul Diet” thesis, their critiques of soul food migrated into the realm of popular media—most notably through sitcoms such as Sanford and Son and Good Times. These programs crafted didactic storylines that reframed hypertension as a disease of personal responsibility rooted in domestic food practices, effectively turning entertainment television into a public health classroom. By examining episodes including, “Fred’s Cheating Heart,” and “The Check-Up,” the paper shows how sitcoms helped construct soul food as a biomedical threat while positioning Black women’s cooking as central to disease prevention. Yet moments of resistance, particularly Florida Evans’s pushback against class‑blind nutritional advice, reveal how popular culture also challenged public health narratives. Together, these texts illuminate television’s pivotal role in producing and contesting Black health discourse.