Nutrition for national defense : American food science in World War II and the Cold War
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- "Nutrition for National Defense: American Food Science in World War II and the Cold War" tells the story of how home economists, doctors, food technologists, military strategists, and corporate researchers linked the emerging science of nutrition to the needs of a country at war. In the late 1930's, nutrition experts offered tools to identify and solve new nutrition problems. The still-young discipline of nutrition was catapulted onto the national stage during World War II, when both German and American experts declared that the fate of their nations hinged on the vitamin content of their bread. In the fraught context of the Cold War, the American government sponsored nutrition research both to fashion soldiers' bodies to the needs of war and to direct international politics. Throughout both conflicts, American nutritionists promised that better eating would form the foundation of a strong military, a strong nation, and a strong, democratic world. Nutrition also gave the government a new tool with which to see, assess, and hierarchize citizens. Because hunger anywhere was considered a threat to the nation, the link between nutrition and national defense changed assumptions about the government's responsibility to keep people nourished. The potential malnourishment of different groups—soldiers, war workers, white middle-class consumers, and poor people in the Third World and at home—elicited different responses from the government, from gentle to coercive. Nutrition became a site of conflict and contestation around the rights and privileges of citizens and the duties of the state.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | LeBlanc, Hannah Findlen | |
|---|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Schiebinger, Londa L | |
| Thesis advisor | Schiebinger, Londa L | |
| Thesis advisor | Burns, Jennifer | |
| Thesis advisor | Proctor, Robert, 1954- | |
| Degree committee member | Burns, Jennifer | |
| Degree committee member | Proctor, Robert, 1954- | |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of History. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Hannah Findlen LeBlanc. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of History. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Hannah Findlen LeBlanc
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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