Nutritional anthropology uses a biocultural paradigm to examine how social structures and actions interact with ecological and biological systems to determine food availability, use, and nutritional health. Central questions of interest include how diet affected the evolutionary development of Homo sapiens, cross-cultural food use, the relationship between environmental conditions and food procurement and nutriture, how human biological and cultural variation affects dietary practices and health, and how food use and nutrition interacts with parasitic, infectious and chronic disease. Doctorates in nutritional anthropology allow for primary research within academic and medical settings and applied work with health-related NGOs and governmental agencies.
Nutritional anthropology traditionally has been defined as a combination of biological and cultural paradigms, which jointly are considered to determine food choice, consumption, and resulting nutriture. Biological nutritional anthropology, with theoretical roots in nutritional science, epidemiology and medicine, focuses on the health parameters and consequences of food acquisition, processing and physical incorporation on the conceptual levels of the individual, population, and species. It is concerned with the biological outcomes of overall nutriture and basic physiological health as a result of evolutionary processes, environmental conditions, agricultural practices, food processing techniques, culturally determined interactions with resources and health constraints, and individual capacities to absorb and utilize particular nutrients. Biological nutritional anthropology is generally fueled by either an evolutionary or health and epidemiology framework.
The anthropology of food or cuisine is embedded within the overall sociocultural anthropological continuum. Food is most often treated as a material marker for other cultural processes, such as gender (Counihan, 1999, 2004, 2009; de Certeau and Giard, 2008; Devault, 1991; Innes, 2001; Meigs, 1983; Weismantel, 1989), exchange relationships (Bestor, 2004; Flynn, 1999; Gewertz and Errington, 2010; Williams, 1984), age-related ritual practices (Von Gennep, 1907; Thompson, 1988) and class or ethnic parameters (Appadurai, 1988; Bourdieu, 1984; De Garine, 1996; Deitler, 1996; Goode et al., 1984a; Goody, 1982; Ray, 2004; Roseberry, 1996). Food in this context becomes an item of significance within material culture serving to delineate wider cultural patterns and forces. Food is also treated as an element of meaning, either as a metaphor for cultural patterns (Douglas, 1974, 1984, 1987; Douglas and Nicod, 1974; Goode et al., 1984b; Mintz, 1996; Sharman, 1991; Toomey, 1986) or as a part of a system of generalized culture-based perceptions of physical properties or internalized symbols (Fiddes, 1992; Levi-Strauss 1958, 1970, 1978; Lupton, 1996; Kahn, 1998; Meigs, 1983; Wilk, 2007). Food, the processes that create it from the raw plant and animal forms, as well as the social forces that determine usage, are also subject to political and historical analysis (Belasco, 1989; Chang, 1977; Ferguson, 2004; Levenstein, 1988, 1993; Mintz, 1985, 1996; Shapiro, 1986; Wilk, 2006). Food is also examined as a holistic system within cultural and historic parameters (Richards, 1932; Anderson, 1988; Mennell, 1996). In the sociocultural approach food is treated as a system of communication and praxis that provides organizing rituals of meanings and reveals patterns and structures of social action. The sociocultural anthropology of food is ably covered in this volume (by Dirks and Hunter) and will not be further addressed in this chapter. However, the parameters of that branch of food anthropology are mentioned here specifically because social processes affect how food is produced, acquired, distributed, prepared, and consumed and thus play an important role in nutriture.
Pelto, Goodman, and Dufour have neatly summarized what makes the human diet so compelling and so very different from that of other species (Pelto, Goodman, and Dufour, 2000: 4):
Since every human society exhibits these food behaviors and since each is determined through learned cultural processes, anthropologists are provided with rich amounts of social material pertaining to food use and diet to study. This is equally true for the biological as well as the social aspects of commensality.
In the near-dawn of anthropological theory Audrey Richards wrote “nutrition as a biological process is more fundamental than sex. In the life of the individual organism it is the more primary and recurrent want, while in the wider sphere of human society it determines, more largely than other physiological functions, the nature of social groupings, and the form their activities take” (Richards, 1932: 1). This quote highlights both the centrality of nutrition to everyday life (one that is, alas, too often ignored, especially in social systems of conceptual abundance) as well as the foci of nutritional anthropology. Nutritional anthropologists study how social processes that determine food intake affect health on the individual, population, and species levels. While some focus on the social processes and others on the health outcomes, the vast majority of nutritional anthropologists study the connection between the two using methods derived from nutritional sciences, medicine, and anthropology. The sub-discipline is inherently biocultural because it links the social and the biological, and almost all methods are designed to promote better measurement and analysis of these connections. Nutritional anthropology is theoretically grounded in biological and medical anthropology, nutrition, and studies of evolution and uses a system approach to model research queries. Nutritional anthropology is a vibrant area of medical research and many trained in the field work in health-related NGOs, bilateral, and governmental organizations in the developing and developed world.
Most published research in nutritional anthropology is found in journals and peer-reviewed books relating to nutrition, medicine, epidemiology, and food anthropology. Audrey Richards’s pathbreaking work among the Bantu (Richards, 1932) was published at roughly the same time as several other foundational studies of the Maasai, Kikuyu, and Tallensi (Orr and Gilks, 1931; Fortes and Fortes, 1936). Early texts were usually driven by colonial needs to improve the health (and thus the labor potential) of “native” populations in colonial territories. After the Second World War a number of more anthropological studies were initiated and published, often with a broad interest in subsistence patterns in relation to health (see Ulijasek and Strickland, 1993: 1–3 for a review of these titles). Primary areas of interest were Oceania, Papua New Guinea, and Africa, with a good example of that research published in an edited volume in 1976 titled Shared Wealth and Symbol: Food, Culture, and Society in Oceania and Southeast Asia (Manderson, 1986). In 1974 the subfield came into its own with the establishment of the Council on Nutritional Anthropology, an interest group within the American Anthropology Association. That group has since become a full section within the AAA with – as of this writing – 290 members, and has been renamed the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN). Comprehensive texts include Nutrition and Anthropology in Action (Fitzgerald, 1976), Nutritional Anthropology: Contemporary Approaches to Diet and Culture (Jerome, Kandel and Pelto, 1980), Food and Evolution: Toward a Theory of Human Food Habits (Harris and Ross, 1987), Nutritional Anthropology (Johnston, 1987), Nutritional Anthropology: Prospects and Perspectives (Ulijasek and Strickland, 1993), Nutritional Anthropology: Biocultural Perspectives on Food and Nutrition (Goodman, Dufour and Pelto, 2000) and Nutritional Anthropology (Jensen, 2008). Excellent review articles include “Nutritional Anthropology and Biological Adaptation” (Haas and Harrison, 1977), “The Anthropology of Food and Eating” (Mintz and Dubois, 2002), “You are what you eat and you eat what you are: the role of nutritional anthropology in public health nutrition and nutrition education” (Himmelgreen, 2002) and “Social Research in an Integrated Science of Nutrition: Future Directions” (Pelto and Freake, 2003). For a good overview of the subfield as a whole read the Goodman, Dufour, and Pelto volume; many of the edited readings are from anthropologists (and other nutrition-related scientists) whose work forms the backbone of the current study of nutritional anthropology.
To provide a quick overview of present efforts, nutritional anthropology uses methods, theory, and data from anthropology, public health, medicine, nutritional science, demography, human biology, plant and animal biology, agronomy and epidemiology to examine food acquisition, processing, consumption, and nutriture. Nutrition, broadly painted, looks at the effects of food on individual biochemical and behavioral equilibrium and is interested in clinical health and medical outcomes while respecting population-level (epidemiological) measures of health status. Anthropology seeks to understand the relationship of individuals to each other and to the cultures to which they belong in part to explain the processes that have evolved to satisfy basic physiological and psychological needs. Nutritional anthropology is methodologically both processual and scientific because it explores the processes by which humans use food to meet requirements of biological and behavioral functioning and a science that studies the chemical processing and biological use of food. Primary interests include food and culture connections, variation for optimal diets, disease variations and the social patterns, culture, and roles within food-getting and distribution behaviors (including gender issues, economic structures, and hunger outcomes) that determine access to food. Primary concepts studied include evolution, adaptation, variability, history, behaviors, beliefs, and the cultural paradigms that channel beliefs and behaviors. Core areas of research interest include comparative dietary adaptation to subsistence patterns (hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, agriculturalists, cash-croppers and industrial farmers) and ecological/environmental patterns (climate, altitude, stress, hunger, and malnutrition), dietary evolution (hominid evolution and paleobiological dietary programming of body size and metabolism), human biology (fertility, growth and development, lactation and senescence), demographics and life history theory (child feeding, weaning, food provisioning, and fertility) and applied nutritional anthropology (public advocacy, health assessment, early warning systems, stress and resiliency, food policy, economics of food production in relation to nutriture and program development). These topics cover the full range of most current food research and activism and since some of them are covered in other areas of this volume the theory discussed here will be limited to adaptation, evolution, life history theory and malnutrition.
A number of anthropologists have examined nutrition as an adaptive agent contributing to the evolution of the species (Mann, 1972, 1981; Garn and Leonard, 1989; Gordon, 1987; Bogin, 1991; Johns, 1996; Wrangham et al., 1999; Unger et al., 2006; Unger, 2007; Wrangham, 2009). Evolution of diet refers both to the evolution of the human species as a result of particular types of food-getting behaviors as well as the evolution of the diet in response to adapted changes in Homo sapiens’ physiology and culture. Recent research on food sharing has suggested that we are human because we share and cook our food and that our species proliferated in part due to provisioning behaviors (Aiello and Key, 2002; Aiello and Wells, 2002; O’Connell et al., 1999; Lovejoy, 2009). The human brain is enormously expensive to produce and maintain, which suggests our ancestors evolved to eat a more enriched diet than other hominines (Abrams, 1987; Leonard and Robertson, 1994; Aiello and Wheeler, 1995; Leonard et al., 2007). Eating more meat and fat increases nutrient density and cooking food aids absorption. Sharing food is the final key to ensuring species survivability because provisioning children and pregnant females increases fertility and health and can lead to population growth.
Other research acknowledges the co-evolution of human, pathogen, and food species, as witnessed by favism and lactose tolerance (Katz, 1987a, 1987b; Katz, Hediger and Valleroy, 1974; Katz and Voight, 1986; Kretchmer, 1972, 1978). Katz and colleagues describe this co-evolution as a biocultural lock and key mechanism that allows humans to unlock the nutritive potential of plant foods. Cuisine (food preparation and cooking) allows humans to release the nutrient potential of food items either by making them more palatable or by making necessary nutrients more available for absorption. The co-evolution in this model is learned (cultural) behavior that widens the range of potential dietary items and increases the diversity of diet choice and nutrient intakes. In this model, learned behavior is part of a suite of adaptive behaviors that have evolutionary consequences. For example, the need for greater nutrient densities to feed the growing brain directly affected GI tract development (Milton, 1993), choice of foods, and food-sharing behaviors while the larger brain allowed for increased learning about acceptable foods, social connections of greater complexity, and further reliance on learning and culture. Culture is used in place of somatic evolution, which allows for greater diversity of behavior specifically because it is not encoded in physical needs. For example, while most animals have relatively narrow diets determined by evolutionary development (the panda bear is a good example), humans exhibit extreme omnivory because they are able to utilize cooking to remove toxins, increase nutrient bioavailability and render foods more easily digested. In summation, our relationship with food has directly affected our evolution by allowing for the development of the large brain and omnivory, and has indirectly abetted micro-evolutionary processes to encourage adaptation and variability in response to disease vectors mediated by food intakes. Additionally, learned cultural behavior (cuisine) has modified our biotic environment through selective plant and animal breeding and food preparation techniques that can enhance health and physical development.
The idea that the human body evolved in response to the environment has led to the hypothesis that there may be an optimal diet for Homo sapiens. Specifically, many have recognized that our biology is still attuned to a different and “less modern” world because culture has altered the environment faster than we can adapt to the changes. Human societies have progressed from hunter-gathering to industrial agriculture within 10,000 years, a shift that has left our bodies, metaphorically, in the evolutionary dust and with a “Paleolithic body” in a post-modern world. Because until recently we were far more physically active, our need for high-density foods is still encoded in biological and cultural preferences, but our environment now makes high-density foods far more available, leading to what has been described as a mismatch between diet and biology that leads to obesity and other modern diseases (Lee, 1968; Eaton and Konner, 1985; Eaton, Konner and Shostak, 1988; Brown and Konner, 1987; Hockett and Haws, 2003; Gluckman and Hanson, 2006; Lieberman, 2006; Ulijasek and Lofink, 2006; Trevathan, 2007; Popkin, 2009; Konner and Eaton, 2010; Wiedman, 2010; Brewis, 2011). The popular press has embraced – with terrible enthusiasm – the idea of an ideal “Paleodiet” that fits the human genome perfectly, which has led to a number of texts of more-or-less decent quality purporting to provide the perfect diet for optimum fitness (probably the best-known author of this genre is Loren Cordain). The first and foundational text of this kind, The Paleolithic Prescription (Eaton, Konner and Shostak, 1988) was written by anthropologists using data derived from studies of ancient diets and those of modern hunter-gatherers. In that book they traced increased intakes of sodium, fat, and calories to some of the modern diseases of dietary affluence such as hypertension and heart disease. Other anthropologists have explored the different nutrient profiles of wild, gathered, or early agricultural foods in relation to the modern dietary (Speth and Spellman, 1983; Leiberman, 1987; Strickland, 1990; O’Dea, 1998; Gladwell, 1998; Milton, 2002). Without a doubt, the human diet has changed profoundly within the last 10,000 years. Exactly how those changes affect the health of modern humans is a primary field of enquiry in nutritional anthropology.
Concepts such as adaptation, natural selection, and adaptability are central to theory in nutritional anthropology, which relies heavily on the idea of adaptation to explain the physiological differences found in diverse populations (Ulijaszek and Strickland, 1993; Johnston, 1987; Ulijaszek, 1996, 1997; Goodman, Dufour, and Pelto, 2000; Trevathan, 2007). In this context, adaptation refers to biological and cultural change through natural selection, developmental processes, and through fitness-enhancing cultural actions. Because the human species is defined (in part) by the presence of culture, discriminating between specific adaptational mechanisms caused by biological and/or genetic change and adaptational changes due to cultural practices is nearly impossible (Thomas et al., 1979). Given that all humans must consume nutrients to sustain and create life, it is reasonable to assume that human dietary practices have provided a template for the processes of adaptation on all levels including genetic, physiological, and cultural.
Genetic adaptation has been discussed above, but at the level of the species. Population-based differences are also important to understanding nutritional processes because some populations may have adapted to differences in the environment in ways that enhance nutrition and health. The ability to digest milk carbohydrates is one such population-level adaptation (Kretchmer, 1972; Simoons, 1979; Wiley, 2011). Another is the possibility that some human populations have a ‘thrifty genotype’ that allows for better utilization of calories – a benefit in an environment of scarcity but problematic when faced with widespread calorie availability (Neel, 1962; Hales and Barker, 2001; Benyshek and Watson, 2006). But genetic change is expensive and consequently it is more typical to find adaptation expressed in physiological changes such as growth stunting as a result of under-nutrition (Seckler, 1982; Martorell, 1989; Jenike, 2001; Dettwyler, 2008) or increased susceptibility to diet-related diseases (Barker, 2001). The easiest form of adaption is cultural, because it is almost instantaneous and requires no physical changes, most populations have relied upon adaptations that alter cuisine and food choice rather than human biology (Katz et al., 1974; Katz and Voigt, 1986; Katz, 1987a; Dufour, 1993). In this light, agriculture must also be considered to be a form of cultural evolution (Boserup, 1965; Cohen, 1977; Larsen, 1995).
To better understand how nutrition can be a vehicle for adaption, it is examined as a stressor as well as a resource (Bailey, 1993; Stahl, 1984; Stinson, 1992) and as a modifier of other biological processes affecting adaptation (Stini, 1975; Haas and Harrison, 1977; Haas and Pelletier, 1989; Ulijaszek, 1990; Ulijaszek and Strickland, 1993; Weiss, 1980). While the focus of most of these studies has been biological adaptation, especially in the form of specific nutrient needs and utilization, anthropologists have also explored the behavioral and cultural adaptations to food acquisition and avoidance of nutrient stress (Goodman et al., 2000; Leatherman, 1998; Dewalt, 1998; Thomas, 1998; Godoy et al., 2005). These biocultural approaches to nutritional adaptation provide a wider approach to the understanding of the development of adaptational systems in human biology and behavior, and provide one of the most robust modeling tools for understanding how food interacts with physical and cultural systems to contribute to health states.
Population variability is examined through analysis of variables that affect health, including protein and energy metabolism, micronutrient adequacy, fertility, pregnancy and lactation, child growth and development, seasonality and climatic determination of food-gathering and growing capacities. Increasingly anthropologists are examining the economic structures of agriculture and food access to understand how food use is affected by employment categories, social class, ethnicity, and life stage (Ulijaszek and Strickland, 1993). Poverty and food security are the primary foci of many nutritional anthropologists and form the bulk of current research, particularly in the study of changing economic patterns (Fitchen, 1997; Coen, 2005; Baro and Deubel, 2006; Crooks et al., 2008; Himmelgreen and Kedia, 2009; Krishna, 2010). Within the last 50 years many of the physical and ecological constraints that determined the potential for food scarcity and malnutrition have been supplanted by social and economic factors that determine access to food. The shift from a planet with a vast peasant class to one with an even larger proletarian population has permanently altered food use patterns for almost every human. Much of the current work in this field examines the variables that contribute to malnutrition in rapidly changing (globalizing) populations.
The most vulnerable periods for malnutrition are those times when the body is undergoing rapid growth and development, primarily early childhood and pregnancy. For these reasons women and children are usually more likely to demonstrate the clinical signs of malnutrition and are more at risk for development of the disease states that are exacerbated by malnutrition. Health during pregnancy and childhood is determined by resource availability, risk avoidance and cultural models of appropriate feeding and care, making diet during those periods a perfect example of biocultural anthropology. The timing of supplemental feeding of children, the beliefs that determine appropriate pregnancy foods, even whom is expected to care for women and children (and how) all affect nutriture during these critical periods of life (Bogin, 1991; Rizvi, 1991; McDade and Worthman, 1998; O’Connell et al., 1999; Van Esterik, 2002; Wilson et al., 2006; Sellen, 2007; Trevathan, 2010). It is therefore not surprising that much of nutritional anthropology research has been directed at understanding how cultural and environmental variability affect maternal and child health, a perspective that often leads to applied work in the AID and NGO world.
To understand the connections between food and environmental stressors scientists must be able to model the relationships. A first-level model is one that starts with the smallest unit of analysis (cellular contents? DNA?) and adds progressively until all possible fields of health action are included. From the cell, organ system, and organism arises the individual (the usual clinical focus) and from there, the family or household, the community, the state, nation, etc. Surrounding all, interpenetrating, are the natural and social worlds consisting of the physical environment and its resources as well as the political, economic and demographic social system that determine any given individual (or community) access to resources or exposure to risks. Each element or variable of these differing levels must be identified and tested to explore how it contributes to the outcome variable in question. While this model can be pictured as an onion, a more useful model breaks out the various elements to graphically map their relatedness and demonstrate relationships of correlation and causality. For instance, the classic 1990 model by UNICEF (available online at www.unicef.org/sowc98/sowc98.pdf, page 25, accessed March 25, 2012, and medanth.wikispaces.com/Food+Insecurity, accessed March 25, 2012) groups biotic and social variables into a homeostatic model that predicts child malnutrition and illness. Malnutrition is recognized as being a direct and indirect cause of illness and disease and a number of diseases (parasitism, infection, etc.) work synergistically with malnutrition to increase the effect of under-nutrition in the physical state (Scrimshaw, 2003). The UNICEF model is similar to the recent models developed by biocultural anthropologists to include the political and economic in modeling for disease and illness causation (Thomas, 1998). These models use homeostatic systems modeling to link outcomes to nutritional variables that play an important role in the etiology of malnutrition, but it must be emphasized they do not indicate that there is a positive relationship between malnutrition and functioning or that malnutrition can lead to adaptation that ensures health under conditions of scarcity. While the “small but healthy” (Seckler, 1982) hypothesis was popular in the 1980s, more recent research has demonstrated functional differences in those who are stunted due to food scarcity. These models are designed to map out relationships between risks and resources that contribute to malnutrition and ill health, and are very useful when doing applied work in food security, environment, and health.
Most nutritional anthropologists find themselves doing some form of applied work. Many are employed directly with NGOs, governmental and bilateral organizations that promote health and wellness, such as Save the Children, the WHO, and UNICEF. Many academic anthropologists are employed as consultants for specific projects in health and nutrition as well. There is a robust body of work in nutritional anthropology consisting of articles and books about doing applied work (Green, 1977, 1986; DeRose, Messer, and Millman, 1999; Pfeiffer and Nichter, 2008; Himmelgreen and Romero-Diaz, 2009). There is an even larger body of work realized from such endeavors published in academic journals as well as the ‘grey press’ or the papers issued by NGOs, government agencies, and think tanks (recent examples: Chaiken, 2010a, 2010b; Gerberg and Stansbury, 2010; Millard et al., 2011). Many of the methods used by nutritional anthropologists are of real use in assessing food security and famine, and are used to improve Famine Early Warning Systems (FEWS) (Torry, 1988; Brown, 2008; Hadley and Maes, 2009).
Methods in nutritional anthropology are biocultural and run the gamut from sociocultural participant observation to clinical tests for blood chemicals, bone density, and genetic markers. Most practitioners focus on specific methods but should be aware of and able to learn and use most methods and be able to understand lab reports. Designing research requires careful assessment of the best methods to test for specific outcomes given a known set of independent and dependant variables. Appropriate statistical methods must also be applied, and used initially to determine an optimal number of subjects for the study. Does this sound like medical research? It should, since many of the methods used are derived from the standard biological and medical anthropology toolbox. Just as medical anthropology spans sociocultural and biological methods and theory, so does nutritional anthropology. Nutritional anthropology studies tend to have smaller subject numbers than most studies in nutrition or medicine because it is still rooted in participant observation and getting to know the subjects and their cultures personally.
As might have been apparent in the section on variation and adaptation, much of the conceptual modeling for research arises from biological and ecological systems approaches. The UNICEF child health model and the biocultural synthesis models ably demonstrate how nutritional anthropologists ‘think through’ problems in their subfield. How they test the connections – measurement and analysis – is determined by the variables of interest. Another important consideration when designing research is the number of subjects, since a large number will mandate epidemiological methods while smaller groups are more amenable to qualitative and participant observation techniques. Most anthropologists use both qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative methods include participant observation, verbal and written questionnaires and interviews, focus groups and other metrics that can be sorted with the aid of text analysis methods such as NVivo (see Bernard, 2006 for a full analysis of anthropological methods). Quantitative and biological methods – ones that derive numbers or other similar metrics – include everything from various types of scaling of sociocultural data to clinical, nutritional, and epidemiological means to measure social and biological data. The SAFN, a section within the American Anthropology Association, will publish in 2013 a new and comprehensive methods manual. Until that manual is released the best books and articles to indicate how nutritional anthropology is “done” are the following:
The study of the relationships between humans, food, and health is a growing field. It is impossible to enter a bookstore, open an internet browser or pick up any magazine without being bombarded with information about what you should eat, how you should eat it, and what it will do to your body. Unfortunately, most of this information is generated by marketing firms or enthusiastic advocates of particular dietary ideologies. The ability to understand the science, translate it into language accessible to the layperson, and then explain clearly how food affects health is an ability that most nutritional anthropologists have, and it is currently in demand (and perhaps desperately needed).
Academic departments are often interested in employing degreed academics who can bridge multiple areas of a discipline, which nutritional anthropologists can because of their biocultural focus. Primary areas of academic research at this time include research in obesity etiology variables, diet variation and health, public health and preventative and palliative nutrition, and food/drug interactions. There is need for additional nutritional anthropologists to study how poverty affects diet and health, especially as the numbers of people receiving food stamps in the United States continues to climb. AID and other similar development agencies (health and economic) can use nutritional anthropologists, and there is much work to be done in food and agriculture interactions. For instance, agricultural practices have changed immensely within the last 50 years (post Green Revolution) and we are still learning about how those land-use and production changes are affecting dietary habits and health.
Another area of need is food, nutrition and health education on all levels including K–12, college, and public. Because nutritional anthropologists are able to speak about food, diet, nutrition and health they are uniquely qualified to design health and educational campaigns to encourage public knowledge and better food habits in all ages. Given the very large number of food endeavors of this sort (the White House’s “Let’s Move” campaign, for instance) there should be plenty of jobs available in the decade to come.
Finally, there is room for nutritional anthropologists in the food industry in food product development as well as research in sales and use. With the astonishingly high number of food products developed in the US alone each year (upwards of 20,000) food and nutrition anthropologists could create valuable – and well-paid – niches in the industry.
To be a competent nutritional anthropologist the student will need to have a background both in science and social science, and to function as a professional will need a PhD. Ideally, a student will take biology, chemistry, biochemistry and nutrition as an undergrad in order to feel completely comfortable with scientific reasoning and to be able to understand publications in the health sciences. It is not a good idea to think that a graduate student can ‘pick up’ this information by taking a few courses in grad school in addition to anthropology because the level of understanding will be superficial. A thorough grounding in the biological sciences is required in addition to courses in anthropology, although in the long run an undergraduate degree in a scientific field may prove more useful than in anthropology with science on the side. Fortunately, most colleges now provide interdisciplinary programs that teach science with social science, often packaged as pre-med public health degrees or something similar. For instance at the University of Pennsylvania (where the author teaches) the primary undergraduate college offers interdisciplinary degrees labeled “Biological Basis of Behavior” and “Health and Societies.” Many of the students in those majors take pre-med classes in addition to more specific courses in nutrition, psychology, medical sociology, or medical anthropology. All encourage good knowledge of scientific principles and the biological world. On the other hand, a pre-med focus with anthropology, sociology, or other social science major would also work, as would a science major such as nutrition, biology, or biochemistry. The important thing is to have enough training in human biology and nutritional science to understand how the body works and to be able to use that information to understand publications and design research.
For graduate school, a student should seek a program that offers biocultural frameworks and strong biological anthropology capacities rather than a department famous for food studies. Of course, to be able to combine food anthropology (or food studies) with biological anthropology would be ideal, and many departments include faculty with strengths in both those areas. Even better yet would be a school with a strong biological/biocultural anthropology program with faculty who do research on sociocultural aspects of food and that has a good nutrition science department and public health, medicine, or nursing programs. Nutritional anthropology research is usually conducted by teams of people from different health and social sciences. Schools with strong departments in those fields are more likely to have vibrant research programs that will provide opportunities for learning how to do nutritional anthropology, as well as a means to do a dissertation project without starting from scratch, which is not advised.
One way to find good programs is to become familiar with recent texts and journals and to find out what researchers and faculty are doing and where they are teaching. If you are looking to get a PhD it is important to go to a department where faculty members are doing active research. As much as aiming for the department with the famous ‘silverback’ professor who inspired you as an undergrad might seem like a good idea, the likelihood that the eminent one is either not doing active research or shortly to become emeritus is high, which could effectively make accomplishing the PhD much more difficult. A far better strategy is to see which young faculty (assistant or associate) is turning out regular articles of interest and aim for that department. You will walk into a situation with ongoing research, high enthusiasm, and faculty who wish to train graduates.
Most nutritional anthropology articles are published in the following journals:
Programs that currently (2011) have strong biocultural and/or nutritional anthropology offerings include (but are not limited to):
As with all graduate programs, it is essential to secure full funding for the PhD. Loans are simply out of the question given the cost of a doctoral program in relation to the possible salary a doctorate in anthropology will command. Fortunately most departments are aware of this and now attempt to fund students fully, thereby making acceptance increasingly selective. You should not plan to go to graduate school on student loans. Seriously. Secondary sources of funding include NSF education grants as well as anything – and I do mean anything – you are able to scare up. Many schools offer smaller research grants, which should be pursued, and there are often grants available for specific types of research or research conducted in specific countries or regions. Your university should be able to help you locate these sources of research money. Perhaps the best option is to sign on with a faculty member who has ongoing research in order to accomplish doctoral data collection while drawing a salary as a research assistant or associate. This will accomplish several tasks at once: provide a willing advisor for research design and analysis, smooth over access to the country or site in which you will collect data, scaffold your work and data collection, guide your analysis and write-up, and provide an income while doing your doctorate.
There are no specific grants at this time for nutritional anthropology graduate work, so you will most likely apply to the NSF or one of the private foundations that fund health research (Ford, Gates, etc.). The only paper prize in nutritional anthropology is the Christine Wilson Award, which is given annually by the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition. You can find out more about the prize here: foodanthro.wordpress.com (accessed on March 25, 2012).
Finally, a word about scholarly organizations that have nutritional anthropologists as members … and why you should plan to attend their meetings. The SAFN, the Society for Applied Anthropology and the Association for the Study of Food and Society all have annual meetings during which papers about current research are presented. As a graduate student it is very important to begin to socialize yourself into the culture of the profession, and the best way to do that is to attend these meetings to learn how established anthropologists frame their research, how they present it, and how they present themselves. Additionally, these meetings are superb places to meet other graduate students, learn what is happening in the field, become confident when you talk about your research, become known to other nutritional anthropologists, discuss research and research design, network, network, network, and drink a lot of beer. Before you know it, you will become familiar – and friendly – with most of the people in the field and you will start to think of yourself as a nutritional anthropologist.
Abrams, H. L. (1987) “The preference for animal protein and fat; a cross-cultural survey.” In Food and Evolution, M. Harris and E. B. Ross, eds. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Aiello, L. and C. Key (2002) “Energetic consequences of being a Homo Erectus Female.” American Journal of Human Biology 14: 516–65.
Aiello, L. and J. Wells. (2002) “Energetics and the Evolution of the genus Homo.” Annual Reviews in Anthropology 31: 323–38.
Aiello, L. and P. Wheeler (1995) “The Expensive-Tissue Hypothesis.” Current Anthropology 36 (2): 199–221.
Anderson, E. N. (1988) The Food of China. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Appadurai, A. (1990) “Introduction: commodities and the politics of value.” In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, A. Appadurai, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press.
——(1988) “How to make a national cuisine: cookbooks in contemporary India.” Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 30(1) (January): 3–24.
Axinn, W. G. and L. D. Pearce (2006) Mixed Method Data Collection Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bailey, R. C. (1993) “Seasonality of food production, nutritional status, ovarian function and fertility in Central Africa.” In Tropical Forests, People and Food, C. M. Hladik, A. Hladik, O. F. Linares, H. Pagezy, A. Semple, and M. Hadley, eds. Man and the Biosphere Series Volume 13. UNESCO, and the Parthenon Publishing Group, Paris.
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