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March is National Nutrition Month!

nutrition month

March is National Nutrition Month, an educational campaign focusing on the significance of physical fitness as well as making informed food choices. Initiated in March 1973 as a week-long event, “National Nutrition Week” became a month-long observance in 1980 in response to growing public interest in nutrition. For more information on changing your eating habits please visit Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Learn more about food, health, and nutrition with these select titles from Berghahn Books:

 


RESEARCH METHODS FOR ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES OF FOOD AND NUTRITION
Volumes I-III
Edited by Janet Chrzan and John Brett

Buy All Three Volumes for 20% Discount

Published in Association with the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN) and in Collaboration with Rachel Black and Leslie Carlin

“I feel that this set will be exceptionally useful not only for anthropologists, but also for ethnographers, demographers, and others conducting research within food systems and food studies. With the burgeoning interest in food research at all levels, and with new graduate programs in the field, this book has the potential to be a crucial resource for scholars in the field… I look forward to requiring this as reading for my graduate students and advanced undergraduates.” · Teresa Mares, University of Vermont

The dramatic increase in all things food in popular and academic fields during the last two decades has generated a diverse and dynamic set of approaches for understanding the complex relationships and interactions that determine how people eat and how diet affects culture. These volumes offer a comprehensive reference for students and established scholars interested in food and nutrition research in Nutritional and Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Socio-Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology, Food Studies and Applied Public Health.

Volume I:
FOOD RESEARCH
Nutritional Anthropology and Archaeological Methods

 

Biocultural and archaeological research on food, past and present, often relies on very specific, precise, methods for data collection and analysis. These are presented here in a broad-based review. Individual chapters provide opportunities to think through the adoption of methods by reviewing the history of their use along with a discussion of research conducted using those methods. A case study from the author’s own work is included in each chapter to illustrate why the methods were adopted in that particular case along with abundant additional resources to further develop and explore those methods.

Read Introduction and Research Design

 

Volume II:
FOOD CULTURE
Anthropology, Linguistics, and Food Studies

 

This volume offers a comprehensive guide to methods used in the sociocultural, linguistic and historical research of food use. This volume is unique in offering food-related research methods from multiple academic disciplines, and includes methods that bridge disciplines to provide a thorough review of best practices. In each chapter, a case study from the author’s own work is to illustrate why the methods were adopted in that particular case along with abundant additional resources to further develop and explore the methods.

 

 

Volume III:
FOOD HEALTH
Nutrition, Technology, and Public Health

 

Nutritional Anthropology and public health research and programming have employed similar methodologies for decades; many anthropologists are public health practitioners while many public health practitioners have been trained as medical or biological anthropologists. Recognizing such professional connections, this volume provides in-depth analysis and comprehensive review of methods necessary to design, plan, implement and analyze public health programming using anthropological best practices. To illustrates the rationale for use of particular methods, each chapter elaborates a case study from the author’s own work, showing why particular methods were adopted in each case.

 


Food, Nutrition, and Culture Series

Series Editors: Rachel Black and Leslie Carlin

Published by Berghahn Books in Association with the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN).

While eating is a biological necessity, the production, distribution, preparation, and consumption of food are all deeply culturally inscribed activities. Taking an anthropological perspective, this book series provides a forum for thought-provoking work on the bio-cultural, cultural, and social aspects of human nutrition and food habits. The books in this series present timely food-related scholarship intended for researchers, academics, students, and those involved in food policy.

 

Volume 5

THE HERITAGE ARENA
Reinventing Cheese in the Italian Alps
Cristina Grasseni

 

In Europe a number of production and communication strategies have long tried to establish local products as resources for local development. At the foot of the Alps, this scenario appears in all its contradictions, especially in relation to cheese production. The Heritage Arena focuses on the saga of Strachitunt, a cheese that has been designated an EU Protected Designation of Origin after years of negotiation and competition involving cheese-makers, merchants, and Slow Food activists. The book explores how the reinvention of cheese as a form of heritage is an ongoing and dynamic process rife with conflict and drama.

Read Introduction

 

Volume 4

FROM VIRTUE TO VICE
Negotiating Anorexia
Richard A. O’ Connor and Penny van Esterik

 

The recovered possess the key to overcoming anorexia. Although individual sufferers do not know how the affliction takes hold, piecing their stories together reveals two accidental afflictions. One is that activity disorders—dieting, exercising, healthy eating—start as virtuous practices, but become addictive obsessions. The other affliction is a developmental disorder, which also starts with the virtuous—those eager for challenge and change. But these overachievers who seek self-improvement get a distorted life instead. Knowing anorexia from inside, the recovered offer two watchwords on helping those who suffer. One is “negotiate,” to encourage compromise, which can aid recovery where coercion fails. The other is “balance,” for the ill to pursue mind-with-body activities to defuse mind-over-body battles.

Read Introduction: Negotiating Anorexia

 

Volume 3

RE-ORIENTING CUISINE
East Asian Foodways in the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Kwang Ok Kim

 

“The chapters provide thought-provoking ethnographic material and theoretically rich insights into cuisine, place, identity, authenticity, borders, and taxonomy in Asian foodways in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries…[They] are ethnographically rich, analytically sharp, and cover a wide range of topics to ensure that this book will be read, taught, and cited by scholars interested in food, identity, globalization, and regionalism.” · Journal of Anthropological Research

Read Introduction

 

Volume 2 New in Paperback

RECONSTRUCTING OBESITY
The Meaning of Measures and the Measure of Meanings
Edited by Megan McCullough and Jessica Hardin
Afterword by Stephen T. McGarvey

 

“This is not a book that seeks to discredit health research and leave others to do the work of finding a better way to conduct it; rather, it aims to improve health research by providing useful avenues for critique and suggestions for ways forward. In this sense, it works as a very practical guide for those working in the health professions, whether as researchers or healthcare providers, to better understand “obesity” and “overweight” and, importantly, fat people in social and environmental context… it makes a welcome and necessary intervention into the business of health research, provision, and discourse, as well as its public reception.” · Fat Studies Journal

Visit series webpage for a full list of titles. 


WINNER OF THE 2014 GOURMAND WORLD COOKBOOK UK AWARD

FOOD IN ZONES OF CONFLICT
Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Paul Collinson and Helen Macbeth
Foreword by Hugo Slim

Volume 8, Anthropology of Food & Nutrition

 

“One of the most prevalent themes of this innovative collection is the exploration of how food becomes highly politicized and used as a political and military weapon, with multiple chapters examining—and convincingly demonstrating—how governments and other powerful groups exploit the availability of and access to food… a valuable contribution to an often overlooked and underexplored topic, which also offers innovative and novel case studies and empirical data to the more well-trodden tropes of food security and poverty, nutrition and intervention. It is sure to find its way onto many reading lists and will provide a useful resource for undergraduate and graduate teaching and research.” · Food, Culture & Society

The availability of food is an especially significant issue in zones of conflict because conflict nearly always impinges on the production and the distribution of food, and causes increased competition for food, land and resources Controlling the production of and access to food can also be used as a weapon by protagonists in conflict. The logistics of supply of food to military personnel operating in conflict zones is another important issue. These themes unite this collection, the chapters of which span different geographic areas. This volume will appeal to scholars in a number of different disciplines, including anthropology, nutrition, political science, development studies and international relations, as well as practitioners working in the private and public sectors, who are currently concerned with food-related issues in the field.

 

New in Paperback

FOODWAYS AND EMPATHY
Relatedness in a Ramu River Society, Papua New Guinea
Anita von Poser

Volume 4, Person, Space and Memory in the Contemporary Pacific

 

“von Poser’s book offers up a fascinating, keenly observed account of the ways in which Bosmun people view and assess one another’s hunger.” · Pacific Affairs

Through the sharing of food, people feel entitled to inquire into one another’s lives and ponder one another’s states in relation to their foodways. This in-depth study focuses on the Bosmun of Daiden, a Ramu River people in an under-represented area in the ethnography of Papua New Guinea, uncovering the conceptual convergence of local notions of relatedness, foodways, and empathy. In weaving together discussions about paramount values as passed on through myth, the expression of feelings in daily life, and the bodily experience of social and physical environs, a life-world unfolds in which moral, emotional, and embodied foodways contribute notably to the creation of relationships. Concerned with unique processes of “making kin,” the book adds a distinct case to recent debates about relatedness and empathy and sheds new light onto the conventional anthropological themes of food production, sharing, and exchange.

Read Introduction


More From Berghahn Journals:

 

Anthropology in Action
Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice

Anthropology in Action is a peer-reviewed journal publishing articles, commentaries, research reports, and book reviews in applied anthropology. Contributions reflect the use of anthropological training in policy- or practice-oriented work and foster the broader application of these approaches to practical problems.

Featured Article:
‘Love Goes through the Stomach’: A Japanese-Korean Recipe for Post-conflict Reconciliation by Stephanie Hobbis Ketterer

 

 

Anthropological Journal of European Cultures

Anthropological Journal of European Cultures engages with current debates and innovative research agendas addressing the social and cultural transformations of contemporary European societies. The journal serves as an important forum for ethnographic research in and on Europe, which in this context is not defined narrowly as a geopolitical entity but rather as a meaningful cultural construction in people’s lives, which both legitimates political power and calls forth practices of resistance and subversion.

Featured Article:
Food Activism in Italy as an Anthropology of Direct Democracy by Cristina Grasseni

 

 

The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology

The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology is an international, peer-reviewed journal committed to publishing leading scholarship in contemporary anthropology. Geographically diverse articles provide a range of theoretical or ethical perspectives, from the traditional to the mischievous or subversive, and aim to offer new insights into the worlds in which we live.

Featured Article:
Feeding (and Eating): Reflections on Strathern’s ‘Eating (and Feeding)’ by Carlos Fausto and Luiz Costa

 

 

Environment and Society
Advances in Research

Environment and Society publishes critical reviews of the latest research literature on environmental studies, including subjects of theoretical, methodological, substantive, and applied significance. Articles also survey the literature regionally and thematically and reflect the work of anthropologists, geographers, environmental scientists, and human ecologists from all parts of the world in order to internationalize the conversations within environmental anthropology, environmental geography, and other environmentally oriented social sciences.

Special Issue:
Environment, Society, and Food

 

Focaal
Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology

Focaal is a peer-reviewed journal advocating an approach that rests in the simultaneity of ethnography, processual analysis, local insights, and global vision. It is at the heart of debates on the ongoing conjunction of anthropology and history as well as the incorporation of local research settings in the wider spatial networks of coercion, imagination, and exchange that are often glossed as “globalization” or “empire.”

Special Issue:
Seeds-Grown, governed, and contested, or the ontic in political anthropology