The emergence of vitamins as bio-political objects during World War I

Smith, Robyn

doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2009.06.006

Cited by 13 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Of course, the understanding of food as a source of energy did not entirely replace the understanding of food as a source of building materials for the body, and the notion of food as substrate emerged with renewed force with the twentieth century elaboration of vitamins or ‘accessory food factors', those things that bodies would perish without even if their food intake was calorically sufficient (Kamminga, 1998; Smith, 2009). …”

Section: Food As Exposure: Nutritional Epigenetics and The New Metabomentioning

confidence: 99%

Food as exposure: Nutritional epigenetics and the new metabolism

2011

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Nutritional epigenetics seeks to explain the effects of nutrition on gene expression. For social science, it is an area of life science whose analysis reveals a concentrated form of a wider shift in the understanding of food and metabolism. Rather than the chemical conversion of food to energy and body matter of classic metabolism, food is now also a conditioning environment that shapes the activity of the genome and the physiology of the body. It is thought that food in prenatal and early postnatal life impacts adult-onset diseases such as diabetes and heart disease; exposure to food is seen as a point of potential intervention in long-term health of individuals and populations. This article analyzes how food has become environment in nutritional epigenetics, with a focus on the experimental formalization of food. The experimental image of human life generated in rodent models, it is argued, generates concepts of food as a form of molecular exposure. This scientific discourse has profound implications for how food is perceived, manufactured and regulated, as well as for social theories and analyses of the social body that have a long history of imbrication with scientific models of metabolism.

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Section: Food As Exposure: Nutritional Epigenetics and The New Metabomentioning

confidence: 99%

Food as exposure: Nutritional epigenetics and the new metabolism

2011

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“…In southern Ghana, where kwashiorkor was first described in medical literature and where the word has its origins, it had been understood by the Ga population as a psycho‐social condition, “In general conversation, if a child is crying, one might say to it, ‘What, is your mother pregnant, are you getting kwashiorkor?’” Emerging in the early twentieth century, the “nutritionist” dietetic paradigm, or the reductive concentration on individual nutrients, downplayed any such social interactions (Scrinis ). Foucauldian histories have explained the discovery of individual nutrients and the definition of individual deficiencies as “biopolitical” tools to be understood in the context of “biopower,” the shift from repressive rule to paternalistic authority over the body of the individual and the collective bodies of the wider populace (Foucault , 135–145; Smith ). In Africa, this emerged as a particular concentration on protein, something which was both heavily informed by the culture and politics of imperialism and which largely ignored the often adverse relationship between colonization and economic, domestic, and dietary change (Moore and Vaughan ; Nott ).…”

Section: Looking Past Protein Eventually: the Durability Of Colonialmentioning

confidence: 99%

“How Little Progress”? A Political Economy of Postcolonial Nutrition

Nott¹

2018

Population & Development Rev

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“…Small quantities of essential nutrients were thus added to the basic equation of calories in and calories out (Smith 2009). Throughout, however, the logic of catalyzed interconversion proved remarkably powerful for the twentieth century.…”

Section: Public Culturementioning

confidence: 99%