Nutritional Anthropology

Abstract

Nutritional anthropology is the study of human subsistence, diet, and nutrition in comparative social and evolutionary perspective. In nutritional terms, humans are the sum total of their evolutionary history and more recent epigenetic and social past, as well as their present‐day social, cultural, and biological life histories. Many factors influence food preferences, dietary choice, and nutritional health of populations, including evolutionary, ecological, social, cultural, and historical ones. Therefore, the methods employed by nutritional anthropology are diverse and range from ethnographic, historical, and archaeological ones to nutritional, epidemiological, and anatomical ones. Current concerns in nutritional anthropology include the study of: contemporary problems of undernutrition and food insecurity; food in relation to the body and personhood; food systems from social, biological, and biocultural perspectives; and understandings of social and political drivers of dietary change and nutritional health.