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Summary:

This work is a powerful critique of dietary reform in the United States from the late nineteenth-century emergence of nutritional science through the contemporary alternative food movement and campaign against obesity. Here the author analyzes the discourses of dietary reform, including the writings of reformers, as well as the materials they created to bring their messages to the public. She shows that while the primary aim may be to improve health, the process of teaching people to "eat right" in the U.S. inevitably involves shaping certain kinds of subjects and citizens, and shoring up the identity and social boundaries of the ever-threatened American middle class. Without discounting the pleasures of food or the value of wellness, the author advocates a critical reappraisal of our obsession with diet as a proxy for health. Based on her understanding of the history of dietary reform, she argues that talk about "eating right" in America too often obscures structural and environmental stresses and constraints, while naturalizing the dubious redefinition of health as an individual responsibility and imperative. -- From publisher's website.

Table of Contents:

• The cultural politics of dietary health
• Scientific moralization and the beginning of modern dietary reform
• Anxiety and aspiration on the nutrition front
• From microscopes to "macroscopes"
• Thinness as health, self-control, and citizenship
• Connecting the dots : dietary reform past, present, and future.

Author/Creator:

Biltekoff, Charlotte, 1970- , author

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

Eating right in America: the cultural politics of food and health [by Biltekoff, C.]

Other Related Resources:

Print version: Eating right in America [by Biltekoff, C.] (ISBN 9780822355441; LCCN 2013013823; OCLC Number 821217792)

Subjects:

Nutrition — United States

Diet — United States

Food habits — United States

Food habits

Culture

Social sciences

Habit

Nutrition

Human behavior

Sociology

Ethnology

Anthropology

Politics, Practical

Manners and customs

Diet in disease

Diet

United States

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 157-198) and index.
Description based on: Print version record.

Creator Demographics:

Food studies scholars
University and college faculty members
Californians
Americans
Women

Physical Description:

1 online resource (208 pages) : illustrations

Digital Characteristics:

text file

Call Numbers:

TX360.U6 B548 2013eb

ISBNs:

9780822377276 (electronic bk.)
0822377276 (electronic bk.)
9780822355441 (cloth, alk. paper) [Invalid]
0822355442 (cloth, alk. paper) [Invalid]
9780822355595 (pbk., alk. paper) [Invalid]
0822355590 (pbk., alk. paper) [Invalid]

OCLC Numbers:

858024754