Three great books about food and nutrition
With a focus on the history of science
As I reported last month, I spent a lot of time over the past year reading, mostly focused on food and nutrition policy and the construction of science and scientific knowledge. Here are three books that are worth your time.
Xaq Frohlich’s From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age (University of California Press, 2023) is the best book I read all year. I can’t wait to teach a grad class on food policy because this is definitely going to be a core text.
Like most titles in UC Press’ California Studies in Food and Culture series, From Label to Table is written in an engaging, accessible style and is wonderfully transdisciplinary. There’s a terrific amount about the history of labeling foods in the US, alongside a critical analysis of how certain types of food facts were privileged, and the consequences of such privileging on the development of public understanding of “safe” and “healthy” foods. Frohlich’s analysis focuses on three kinds of experts who shape the information environment in which people make decisions. I’ve written a lot about the consequences of the information environment myself, so this was particularly interesting to me.
Lisa Haushofer’s Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition (University of California Press, 2022) was a surprise hit for me. I had come across it several times and just kept ignoring it because it seemed too historical and not immediately relevant. But then—not sure what it was, it’s possible I stumbled on a podcast interview or a mention in another text—I actually read it. And it is so good! It was a great companion read to From Label to Table with respect to their arguments about the effects of food packaging and associated labeling. Haushofer argues that nutritionism arose not only because of the scientific focus, as Scrinis has argued, but also because of science’s economic focus. Through fascinating historical analyses, she shows how our modern understanding of food and dietary health were fundamentally racist, imperialist constructions.
Although the entire book is terrific, I was blown away by Haushofer’s analysis and framing of consumer research relating to nutritional yeast. For years, advertising for nutritional yeast had featured its healthfulness as a primary claim: Eat yeast, have good digestion. When infamous J Walter Thompson advertising agency took over marketing, they realized that such claims were backfiring: Modern people associated medical claims in marketing with quacks. Nonetheless, people continued to consume nutritional yeast, but for a variety of purposes—which were then integrated into new product messaging. Haushofer’s discussion about how this new approach to marketing reflected not just a particular reframing but a focus on a particular type of science is insightful and well worth your time to read. Although the research in question occurred nearly a century ago, reading it felt like reading about message design research in any health communication journal today. Which is to say, I think we could learn a lot as a field by reading more historical research.
Charlotte Biltekoff is a big name in food studies with a unique background as a former cook at the famed San Francisco restaurant, Greens; her book, Eating Right in America: The Cultural Politics of Food & Health (Duke University Press, 2013) is a classic…that I only finally read last year. Better late than never, I say!
Biltekoff’s book advances two key ideas: (1) Health is a cultural concept, not an objective, biological truth; (2) Dietary ideals convey guidelines for how to be a good person. As with Wonder Foods, some of the histories told in Eating Right in America resonated all too clearly with my experiences doing nutrition communication research in the 21st century. For example: She talks about the programs that are the precursors to modern SNAP-Ed, the nutrition and cooking education programs for low-income people who receive food assistance. The public kitchens of yesteryear were utter failures because the foods the (well-intentioned, presumably) reformers who designed them failed to account not only for the nutritional needs of the poor and immigrant participants, but also their tastes and culture. That these demonstration meals and ideals were hits among middle-class, literate middle Americans illustrates the group whose values were, well, valued. But the problem, as Biltekoff notes here, and as I have written about modern-day would-be reformers, is not just that populations in need are failed (go hungry)—the greater concern is that the failure of the intervention is seen as a personal or cultural failure on the part of the participants.
Did you know that UC Press makes all of its books available free online through UC libraries? So go ahead and assign UC Press books for your classes, UC faculty! Some UC Press books also have funding to support open access for everyone.