This article explores the intersection of the emerging field of nutritional science with the dietary practices of colonizers in French Equatorial Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Beginning with an exploration of the increasing interest in diet and nutrition in France in this period, the article then turns to the specific nutritional advice that dietary experts provided to people destined for the tropics. Moving from advice to practice, the final section examines how colonists in French Equatorial Africa interpreted these dietary recommendations, and what other considerations affected their culinary choices. The article argues that for French scientists and consumers alike, both scientific and more popular ideas about what constituted healthy food were strongly informed not only by nutritional considerations, but also by assumptions about French culinary and cultural superiority.
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