Setting Nutritional Standards: Theory, Policies, Practices ed. by Elizabeth Neswald (review)

When is nutrition information a fact and when is it an "ism"? The authors of this volume build upon recent work that historicizes nutrition from the perspective of the history of medicine. In the process, they capitalize on the more conceptual work of authors such as Scrinis, who fashioned the term nutritionism for the type of nutrition science based in social notions of purity and danger.¹ Consumers today swing wildly on the pendulum of advice about what is good and not good to eat. As a result, healthy food as a concept has become a realm of both skepticism and anxiety. The chapters in this book show that this tension is not new; the question of "what to eat?" has been controversial since the inception of the field in the late nineteenth century. The early debates were between the nutritionists themselves, particularly as the realm of food knowledge evolved and expanded. Much like sustainability science today, the arguments changed as the facts revealed themselves, about germs, about vitamins, and about what keeps people alive and healthy.

The book claims to be an interdisciplinary study. Although the research in each chapter is both deeply archival and covers a wide intradisciplinary net, the studies themselves rarely cross the boundaries of medical history. This approach is hardly regrettable. Most historical studies of nutrition have come under the aegis of social—especially feminist—history, cultural surveys, sociology, philosophy, and critical theory. The extensive knowledge of the nutrition archives that a strong group of medical historians can bring to the table is certainly welcome. The work provides detailed information about the figures of nutrition history heavily discussed in these literatures—such as Wilbur Olin Atwater, Harvey W. Wiley, and Charles Lane—from standpoints that are not always matched elsewhere. For example, Atwater has been described as one of the reformers attempting to control workers' wages by advocating that they eat less meat.² Elizabeth Neswald's chapter on "Nutrition Knowledge," however, shows that Atwater eventually changed his position, arguing that meat eating was a proud part of America's high standard of living. The book is full of such moments of increased clarity, in part because the authors do not shy away from subtlety and contradiction when the evidence leads them there.

The volume's other accomplishment is its geographical span. Nutritionists tend to be intellectually cross-continental; they were especially so at the turn of the twentieth century, when U.S. nutritionists tended to get their training in Europe, particularly Germany. Yet histories of nutrition usually remain within national borders. This volume's view of nutrition as an actively transnational discipline probably stems from the current trend toward world history, which could bring valuable new insights to nutritional history.