Eating Right in America
The Cultural Politics of Food and Health
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- £18.99
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- £18.99
Publisher Description
Eating Right in America 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. Charlotte Biltekoff 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, Biltekoff 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this rigorous but intentionally inconclusive book, Biltekoff, a former chef and currently U.C. Davis assistant professor of American studies and food science, raises important questions about the national dialogue on eating right. Her meticulously researched examination of attempts to make Americans more nutrition-conscious doesn't quantify the value of nutrition, nor does it advocate any one approach. Instead, Biltekoff narrates a 150-year-long battle to cajole Americans into thinking about eating as an extension of good citizenship. Diet has long been seen in the U.S. as a sign of proper behavior in general; during WWII, attitudes toward food were linked directly to "helping Uncle Sam." Biltekoff effectively forges connections between this extreme and the current craze for organic food and the obesity epidemic. The author shows, carefully and explicitly, that even the most virtuous approaches to healthful eating are based, sometimes unconsciously, in shaming and class and racial biases. 25 b&w illus.