A Geography of Digestion: Biotechnology and the Kellogg Cereal Enterprise

A Geography of Digestion is a highly original exploration of the legacy of the Kellogg Company, one of America’s most enduring and storied food enterprises. In the late-nineteenth century, John H. Kellogg relentlessly experimented with state-of-the-art advances in nutritional and medical science at his Battle Creek Sanitarium. At the same time, he was directly involved in overhauling the form and function of the broader landscapes in which his health practice was situated.  Innovations in food-manufacturing machinery, urban sewer infrastructure, and agricultural technology came together to forge an extensible geography of his patients bodies, changing the way Americans consumed and digested food. 

In his novel approach to the study of the Kellogg enterprise, Bauch asks his readers to think geographically about the process of digesting food. Beginning with the stomach, the chapters move outward from the Sanitarium through the landscapes and technologies that materialized Kellogg’s particular version of digestion. Far from a set of organs confined to the epidermal bounds of the body, the digestive system existed in other places. From food processing machines, to urban sewerage, to agricultural fields, A Geography of Digestion paints a grounded portrait for one of the most basic human processes of survival – the incorporation of food into our bodies – leading us to question where exactly our bodies are located.