Nutrition as a Project

Abstract

This conversation is part of a special issue on “Critical Nutrition” in which multiple authors weigh in on various themes related to the origins, character, and consequences of contemporary American nutrition discourses and practices, as well as how nutrition might be known and done differently. In this section authors discuss the aims and effects of nutrition interventions. In terms of aims, various authors emphasize how such interventions act as pedagogies of citizenship, governmentalize people as metric consumers, or reflect colonial practices. In terms of effects, authors discuss how the project of nutrition works in class/race differentiation, the disempowerment of mothers, or the interest of transnational corporations. All of the authors essentially challenge not only nutrition’s fundamental claims to neutrality and objectivity, but also its claims to benevolence.