Nutrition Bibliography

Contributors: Xaq Frohlich, Kelly Moore, David Schleifer, Hyomin Kim

Last Updated: December 7, 2009

Nutrition History:
Apple, Rima D., Vitamania: Vitamins in American Culture (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996).

Aronson, Naomi. 1989. Why Weren't Vitamins Discovered Earlier. Knowledge and Society 8:87-105.

Carpenter, Kenneth, Beriberi, White Rice, and Vitamin B: A Disease, a Cause, and a Cure, (University of California Press, 2000).

Cullather, Nick, "The Foreign Policy of the Calorie," The American Historical Review Vol. 112, No. 2 (April 2007).

Garrety, Karin. 1998. “Science, Policy, and Controversy in the Cholesterol Arena.” Symbolic Interaction 21: 401-424.

Garrety, Karin. 1997. “Social Worlds, Actor Networks, and Controversy: The Case of Cholesterol, Dietary Fat, and Heart Disease.” Social Studies of Science 27: 727-73.

Gratzer, Walter, Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition (Oxford University Press, 2007).

Haughton, Betsy, Joan D. Gussow and Janice M. Dodds. 1987. “An Historical Study of the Underlying Assumptions for United States Food Guides from 1917 through the Basic Four Food Group Guide.” Journal of Nutrition Education 19: 169–176.

Hilgartner, Stephen, Science on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama (Stanford University Press, 2000).

Hilgartner, Stephen & Dorothy Nelkin, "Communication Controversies over Dietary Risks," Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 12, No. 3/4 (Summer – Autumn, 1987), pp..

Kamminga, Harmke, The Science and Culture of Nutrition, 1840-1940 (Rodopi Bv Editions, 1995)

Kraut, Alan, Goldberger's War: The Life and Work of a Public Health Crusader (New York: Hill & Wang, 2003).

Kritchevsky, David, "History of Recommendations to the Public about Dietary Fat," Journal of Nutrition (1998): 449S-452S.

Levenstein, Harvey, Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003 [1988]).

Levenstein, Harvey, Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America (University of California Press, 2003).

Levy, Daniel, and Susan Brink, A Change of Heart: How the People of Framingham, Massachusetts, Helped Unravel the Mysteries of Cardiovascular Disease, 1st ed. (Knopf, 2005).

Marks, Harry M., “"Epidemiologists Explain Pellagra: Gender, Race and Political Economy in the Work of Edgar Sydenstricker," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 58 (January 2003), 34-55.

Mayhew, M., “The 1930s nutrition controversy,” Journal of Contemporary History 23, no. 3 (1988): 445–464.

Nestle, Marion, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, 2002

Richards, Evelleen. Vitamin C and Cancer: Medicine Or Politics?. Macmillan, 1991.

Schwartz, Hillel, Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies, and Fat (New York: Anchor Doubleday, 1986).

Scrinis, Gyorgy. 2002. "Sorry Marge." Meanjin 61 (4):108-116.

Sims Laura S., The Politics of Fat: Food and Nutrition Policy in America (Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 1998).

Smith, David, Nutrition in Britain: Science, Scientists and Politics in Twentieth Century (Routledge, 1996).

Stearns, Peter N., Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West (New York University Press, 2002).

Thoms, Ulrike, Learning from America? The travels of German nutritional scientists to the USA in the context of the Technical Assistance Program of the Mutual Security Agency and its consequences for West German Nutritional Policy, in: Food & History 2(2005), 117- 151.

Valentine, Gill. "In-Corporations: Food, Bodies and Organizations." Body and Society 8.2 (2002): 1-20.

Dissertations on Nutrition History:
Ackerman, Michael. 2005. “Interpreting ‘The Newer Knowledge of Nutrition’: Science, Interests, and Values in the Making of Dietary Advice in the United States, 1915-1965.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Virginia.

Carlson, Barbara B. 1991. “History and Analysis of Food Guides in the United States.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Old Dominion University.

Deborah I Levine. 2008. "Managing American bodies: Diet, nutrition, and obesity in America, 1840–1920." Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University.

Anthropology and Sociology of Nutrition:
Aronson, Naomi. 1980. “Social Factors in the Development of Nutrition Studies, 1880-1920. Journal of NAL Associates 5:32-37.

Aronson, Naomi. 1982. “Social Definitions of Entitlement: Food Needs 1885-1920.” Media, Culture, and Society 4: 51-61

Aronson, Naomi. 1982. “Nutrition as a Social Problem: A Case Study of Entrepreneurial Strategy in Science. Social Problems 29 (5): 374-87.

DeVault, Marjorie. 1999. “Whose Science of Food and Health? Narratives of Profession and Activism from Public Health Nutrition.” Pp. 86-139 in Liberating Method: Feminism and Social Research. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Douglas, Mary. 1985. Risk acceptability according to the social sciences. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Douglas, Mary, “Deciphering a Meal,” Counihan and Van Esterik, Food and Culture: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 36-54.

Germov, John, and Lauren Williams, A Sociology of Food and Nutrition: The Social Appetite Oxford University Press, 2004.

Kulick, Don, and Anne Meneley, Fat: The Anthropology of an Obsession (Tarcher, 2005).

Journalism on Nutrition:
Laudan, Rachel, "Birth of the Modern Diet," Scientific American (August 2000), pp. 62-67

Oliver, J. Eric, Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America’s Obesity Epidemic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Pollan, Michael. 2008. In defense of food: an eater's manifesto. New York: Penguin Press.

Pollan, Michael, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin, 2007).

Pollan, Michael, "Unhappy Meals," New York Times Magazine (January 28, 2007).

Pollan, Michael, In Defence of Food (New York: Penguin Press, 2008).

Taubes, Gary, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight control, and Disease (2007).

Taubes, Gary (2002). What if it’s all been a big fat lie. The New York Times Magazine, 7.

Food and Health Related Historical Literature:
Albala, Ken, Eating Right in the Renaissance, University Press of California 2002

Belasco, Warren, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry (Ithaca: Cornell, 1989).

Belasco, Warren, and Roger Horowitz, Food Chains: From Farmyard to Shopping Cart (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

Bentley, Amy, Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity (1998).

Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Harvard University Press, 1984). [See especially, pp. 177-208]

Brumberg, Joan, Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervousa (Vintage, Subsequent edition, 2000).

Burnett, John, Plenty and Want: A Social History of Food in England from 1815 to the Present Day, 3rd ed. (Routledge, 1989).

Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1966).

DuPuis, E. Melanie. 2002. Nature’s Perfect Food: How Milk Became America’s Favorite Drink. New York: New York University Press.

Flandrin, Jean-Louis and Massimo Montanari, A Culinary History of Food, Penguin Books 2000

Foucault, Michel, “Dietetics,” in Foucault, The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, Volume 2. trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1990), pp. 95-139.

Friedberg, Susanne, French Beans and Food Scares: Culture and Commerce in an Anxious Age (NY: Oxford, 2004).

Goodwin, Lorine Swainston. 1999. The pure food, drink, and drug crusaders, 1879-1914. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland.

Guerrini, Anita, Obesity and Depression in the Enlightenment: The Life and Times of George Cheyne (University of Oklahoma Press, 1999).

Guthman, Julie. "The Trouble with 'Organic Lite' in California: A Rejoinder to the 'Conventionalisation' Debate." Sociologia Ruralis 44.3 (2004): 301-16.

Guthman, Julie, Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

Harris, Marvin, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1985).

Kaplan, Steven L., Provisioning Paris: merchants and millers in the grain and flour trade during the eighteenth century (Cornell Univ Pr, 1984).

Kaplan, Steven L., The bakers of Paris and the bread question, 1700-1775 (Duke Univ Pr, 1996).

Mennell, Stephen, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), pp. 20-39.

Mintz, Sidney, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (NY: Penguin, 1985).

Nissenbaum,Stephen, Sex, Diet, and Debility in Jacksonian America: Sylvester Graham and Health Reform (Dorsey Press, 1988).

Pilcher, Jeffrey, ¡Qué Vivan los Tamales!: Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (1998). [See especially, chapter 4: "The Tortilla Discourse: Nutrition and Nation Building"]

Rabinbach, Anson, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (University of California Press, 1992). [some discussion of measurement and food as energy]

Shapin, Steven, “Descartes the Doctor: Rationalism and Its Therapies,” The British Journal for the History of Science 33 (2000), 131-154.

Shapin, Steven, “Trusting George Cheyne: Scientific Expertise, Common Sense, and Moral Authority in Early Eighteenth-Century Dietetic Medicine,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77 (2003), 263-297.

Shapin, Steven, “How to Eat Like a Gentleman: Dietetics and Ethics in Early Modern England,” in Right Living: An Anglo-American Tradition of Self-Help Medicine and Hygiene, ed. Charles E. Rosenberg (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 21-58.

Shapin, Steven, “The Philosopher and the Chicken: On the Dietetics of Disembodied Knowledge,” in Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge, eds Christopher Lawrence and Steven Shapin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 21-50.

Smith, David F., Food, Science, Policy and Regulation in the Twentieth Century: International and Comparative Perspectives, 1st ed. (Routledge, 2001).

Stoll, Steven, The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California (Berkeley: University of California, 1998).

Stuart, Tristram, The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism: From 1600 to Modern Times (W.W. Norton & Co., 2008).

Tannahill, Reay, Food in History (New York: Crown, 1989).

Whorton, James C. 1982. Crusaders for Fitness: The History of American Health Reformers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Young, James Harvey, The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969).

Young, James H., American health quackery: collected essays (Princeton University Press, 1992). [Esp. Chapter 10: "Nutritional Eccentricities"]

Young, James Harvey, Pure Food: Securing the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906 (1989).

Histories of Hunger Literature:
(more to come on this new section)

Belasco, Warren, Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food, 1st ed. (University of California Press, 2006).

Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (University of California Press, 1988).

Diner, Hasia R., Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish foodways in the age of migration (Harvard University Press 2001).

Escobar, Arturo, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1994). [See especially, chapter 4 on food and hunger]

McMichael, Philip. "The Power of Food." Agriculture and Human Values 17.1 (2000): 21-33.

Sen, Amartya, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1981)

Witt, Doris. 1999. Black Hunger. Soul Food and America. Oxford University Press.

Wyley, Diana, Starving on a Full Stomach: Hunger and the Triumph of Racism in Modern South Africa (2001)