1st Edition
Doing Nutrition Differently Critical Approaches to Diet and Dietary Intervention
'Hegemonic nutrition' is produced and proliferated by a wide variety of social institutions such as mainstream nutrition science, clinical nutrition as well as those less classically linked such as life science/agro-food companies, the media, family, education, religion and the law. The collective result is an approach to and practice of nutrition that alleges not only one single, clear-cut and consented-upon set of rules for 'healthy eating,' but also tacit criteria for determining individual fault, usually some combination of lack of education, motivation, and unwillingness to comply. Offering a collection of critical, interdisciplinary replies and responses to the matter of 'hegemonic nutrition' this book presents contributions from a wide variety of perspectives; nutrition professionals and lay people, academics and activists, adults and youth, indigenous, Chicana/o, Latina/o, Environmentalist, Feminist and more. The critical commentary collectively asks for a different, more attentive, and more holistic practice of nutrition. Most importantly, this volume demonstrates how this 'new' nutrition is actually already being performed in small ways across the American continent. In doing so, the volume empowers diverse knowledges, histories, and practices of nutrition that have been marginalized, re-casts the objectives of dietary intervention, and most broadly, attempts to revolutionize the way that nutrition is done.
Biography
Allison Hayes-Conroy received her PhD in geography from Clark University and her MA in geography from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. She is currently an assistant professor in the department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. She has authored two books on the culture and politics of food and agriculture, as well a number of papers on the visceral politics of food. Her current research centers on food security in Medellin, Colombia. Jessica Hayes-Conroy received her PhD in geography and women’s studies from Penn State University and her MA in geography from the University of Vermont. She recently served a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Environmental Studies and Women’s Studies at Wheaton College in Norton, MA. She is currently an assistant professor of Women’s Studies at Hobart and Williams Smith Colleges. She has authored papers on alternative food, visceral geography, and political ecology. Her current research centers on critical perspectives of nutrition intervention.
’Doing Nutrition Differently is a much-needed intervention into the increasingly moralised and medicalised realms of eating. Across a wide spectrum of concerns - from food deserts, the eating practices of the Zapatistas, to older women’s garden - this collection engages with core issues of food justice through the perspectives of gender, ethnicity, and geo-politics. It should be required readings for academics and practitioners alike.’ Elspeth Probyn, University of Sydney, Australia and author of Oceanic Entanglements ’Food studies scholars have often asked "what is nutrition?". In Doing Nutrition Differently the Hayes-Conroys show us that the constitution of "nutrition" is in the complex relationships between eating, food, health and the body. In their questioning of the epistemological assumptions that underpin nutrition, this book provides original and important answers to the question.’ Jessica Mudry, Concordia University, Canada 'Doing Nutrition Differently cracks open an entirely new field of inquiry - and does so with creativity, nuance, and deep reflexivity. Anyone who has been at all skeptical of the content and delivery of nutritional advice will savor the insights authors in this book serve up - with no admonitions about how to "eat right".' Julie Guthman, University of California at Santa Cruz, USA
