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Me
Human Biology taken with ecological
NUTRITIONAL concepts in late 60s, early 70s
Energy flow studies: Rappaport, Thomas
ANTHROPOLOGY
1
A brief historical background Wilbur Olin Atwater
The switch from experimental studies on animals to First Director of the
human food consumption studies relying on Office of Experimental
ethnographic material to contextualize the nutritional Stations of the U.S.D.A.
data occurred in the 1890s Convinced Congress to
Von Rechenberg’s (1890) study of the diet of Saxon fund nutrition studies
handweavers..
handweavers $15,000 per state
Questionnaires, direct observation, and interviews provided budgeted for 1890!
the social background to his diet study. Initiated diet advice
Dramatic change from the animal based studies of based on nutritional
nutrition, or the strict study of consumed foods. composition of foods
2
Tuskegee study A brief historical background
There was a seasonal decline in nutrition which was Goss(1897) studied Hispanic dietaries
attributed to a sharp winter decrease in egg and dairy
production in New Mexico
Farmers in winter had less cash to purchase food
The underlying problem was a so-
so-called “mortgage system”
system”
Took a social perspective on their diet,
• The landowner or storekeepers would make loans for tenants to including looking at class and diet
buy seed and tools to last from planting to harvest
– The f armer signed a “waiv e note”
note ” giv ing the lender f irst right to His sample included one middle-
middle -class
whatev er portion of the crop was needed to pay off the debt household and two lower-
lower- class households
– Due to the high rates of interest, little was left to sell at the end of the
season Neither lower class household ingested a
• The system favored the cash crop, cotton, over food production
single gram of animal protein over the course of
• As farmers exhausted their stores of homegrown corn and
homemade molasse s, they needed to increase purchases from 14 days of observation
the local store • This prompted a restudy of one of the same
– The consumption of bacon, a store product usually purchased in small
small households a year later
quantities every week illustrates the seasonality
– Consumption averaged 194 g/d among tenants and plantation hands – Found consumption of 4 gm/d animal protein
during the spring months versus 103 g/d compared to 29 gm/d for the middle-
middle-class household
studied the year before
3
Audrey Richards Audrey Richards
Richards (1932, and others) is generally taken as the Richards carefully examined all social
beginning of the anthropological study of food habits
She studied the Bemba of Northern Rhodesia, using a relations as they related to food exchange
functionalist model to illustrate the interrelationship between She considered the emotional qualities assigned
diet and other cultural institutions to different foods
Richards concluded that the reasons natives did not work
harder (a primary concern for British mining and other Their desirability in terms of taste and digestibility, their
economic interests) was not a question of sloth but of importance in the native ceremonial life
undernutrition • E.g., the importance of grains used in beer brewing, and
Since men had been drawn away to labor in the mines, women the excitement that accompanied opportunities to eat meat
found it difficult to perform the heavy clearing tasks traditionally
traditionally
assumed by men, in addition to their own cultivation and People's perceptions of the nutritional qualities and
gathering roles physiological effects of different staple grains and
During the period of the year when women most needed food relishes eaten with them
energy to sustain clearing and planting of fields, food was in • The Bemba seemed to recognize the relationships
shortest supply between low energy intake and lack of energy to perform
• Thus, the women were enmeshed in an ongoing cycle of work, and consciously conserved energy during the lean,
underproduction and undernutrition.
cold season
4
A brief historical background A brief historical background
Regional food habits in the Southwest U.S. were Pre
Pre--masticationof supplementary infant food
studied in the 1940's, by the Bureau of Indian Affairs was discouraged, and as a result, infants
and the University of Chicago began turning up with anemia
Three Indian areas and two Hispanic areas were
surveyed by Pijo
Pijoá
án (1942) Breast milk alone is insufficient as a source of iron
in the second semester (six months) of life
The research was used to make changes in the diet
Without economic resources to buy infant
of the people with the goal of improving nutrition
supplements, the children were becoming
Two spectacular examples of failure based on malnourished
cultural misunderstanding were noted
In consultation with the Indians, a decision was
Discouraging pre-
pre-mastication of infant foods
made to go back to pre-
pre-mastication.
Advocating consumption of choke-
choke-cherries
5
A brief historical background A brief historical background
Lewin (1943) came up with the channel A study of the introduction of a high-
high - yield variety of
theory maize was in New Mexico was reported by Apodaca
Conceptualizes the movement of food through a (1952)
group as flow through channels A State Agricultural Extension Agent analyzed all the
Marketing, processing, producing channels environmental aspects and concluded that the new variety
was needed
controlled by gate-
gate- keepers
The agent worked through the local leadership, and didn't
Chiefs, priests, nurses, etc. start until everyone understood what needed to be done, and
He claimed it was essential to understand and why
gain the confidence of the gate-
gate- keepers in order to Within four years, all the local farmers had abandoned the
effect dietary change new variety in spite of threefold increases in yield
This perspective reemphasizes the importance of
ethnographic work
6
A brief historical background More History
Inthe 1970's, work progressed along both In 1974, the Committee (then Council) on Nutritional
cultural and biological dimensions: Anthropology (CNA) was formed at the AAA
Thomas produced the definitive energy flow study meetings in Mexico City
with his work on energy flow at high altitude For several years, CNA was affiliated with the AAA
among the Quechua as a special interest group within the Society for
One of his students at Cornell started applying the Medical Anthropology
optimal foraging model to human populations
In 1987, the council became a separate unit of the
Mary Douglas and others approached diet from
the perspective of symbolic anthropology AAA
Harris was explaining dietary choices from an The CNA became the Society for the Anthropology of
adaptive perspective to validate his cultural Food and Nutrition SAFN in 2004
materialism
7
Journal sources from Messer
Culture and Agriculture
The Digest (Publication of the University of
Pennsylvania Food Group of the Department of
Folklore and Folklife)
Food and Foodways
Appetite
Human Ecology
Ethnobiology
and a gastronomic section in Social Science
Information