Definition of Nutritional Anthropology

The early history of nutritional anthropology dates back to studies of food and social organization in industrial societies in the 1930s.

The emergence of nutritional anthropology in the 1970s has tended to replicate the ‘two cultures’ of an anthropology divided methodologically and by theories into social and biological sciences. The British anthropologist Audrey Richards in 1939 is often described as the first one who explicitly focused on food.

Nutritional anthropology has been defined as the study of food and nutrition from evolutionary, behavioral, social and cultural perspectives, and understanding the interrelationship of biological and social forces in the production of nutritional health at the individual, community and population levels.

Nutritional anthropology deals with nutrition as a process of the ways ‘in which humans utilize food to meet the requirements of biological and behavior functioning’.

Most published research in nutritional anthropology is found in journals and per-reviewed books relating to nutrition, medicine, epidemiology, and food anthropology.

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.
Definition of Nutritional Anthropology