Setting Nutritional Standards. Theory, Policies, Practices

In recent decades, historical studies on the science of nutrition have offered fresh and innova-tive perspectives on the relationships and negotiations between science, experts, politicalpower, and social order. Some of the most exciting trends in the field of history of science(such as the material turn, historical epistemology, scientific expertise and the governmentof life, and science and imperialism/colonialism) have been articulated in creative ways byscholars dealing with historical processes of the production and application of modern nutri-tional knowledge across the globe. The edited volume under review is an extraordinaryexample of some of these theoretical and historiographical entanglements. The book is theresult of an international symposium held in 2010 at Brock University and funded by the Insti-tute of Nutrition, Metabolism, and Diabetes of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research; itgathered together historians of science and medicine, and social and political historians. Mostof the chapters focus on the history of nutrition in Western European contexts (Germany,France, and Britain) from the late nineteenth century to the first decades of the twentiethcentury. This period saw the emergence of modern experimental science, the rise of interven-tionist and welfare nation states, and the expansion of European imperialism. At the cross-road of these scientific and political processes, food and the body –working, female, child,colonial, and racial bodies –became objects of intense scientific scrutiny and politicalintervention.