Food and health have long had dominant position within the subject of Home Economics (HE) in Sweden. However, what constitutes a proper diet, and how it is associated with a healthy lifestyle changes over time. In this article, a discourse analytic approach combined with a didactic perspective are used as the theoretical frame. The aim is to explore how food in relation to health has been constructed within the syllabus of HE. Six HE syllabi from 1962 to 2011 were analysed. From the results three different discourses were identified and named after their main areas of focus: (1) the medical discourse, (2) the consumer discourse and (3) the human ecological discourse. Each discourse represents a different way of constructing food in relation to health, and different representations have dominated over the past fifty years. The construction of food in relation to health is thereby seen in its historical and cultural context according to what this knowledge content includes or excludes.