Historians of science have noted that modern nation-states and capitalism necessitated the systematic creation and implementation of a wide array of knowledge and technologies to produce a more productive and robust population. Commonly labeled as biopolitical practices in Foucauldian sense, such endeavors have often been discussed in the realms of public hygiene, housing, birth control, and child mortality, among others. This article is an attempt to extend the scope of the discussion by exploring a relatively understudied domain of nutrition science as a critical case of social engineering and intervention, specifically during and after World War I in the case of Japan. Research and dissemination of knowledge on food and health in Japan, like other industrializing nation-states, centered on new public hygiene initiatives since the late nineteenth-century. However, in the aftermath of WWI, or more precisely, after the Rice Riots of 1918, a new trend began to dominate the discourse of nutrition and health. In the face of wartime inflation and the resultant nation-wide riots, physicians and social scientists alike began to view the food choice and budget issue as a solution to the middle class crisis. This new perception drew on the conceptual framework to understand food, metabolism, and cost in the language of quantifiable nutrition vis-à-vis monetary values. By analyzing how specific nutritional knowledge was translated into the tenets for public campaigns to reform everyday life, this paper ultimately sheds light on the institutionalization of a new area of research, nutrition (eiyō) in Japan.
Budgets ; Capitalism ; Child ; Child Mortality ; Contraception ; Eating* ; Housing ; Hygiene ; Inflation, Economic ; Institutionalization ; Japan* ; Metabolism ; Nutritional Sciences* ; Rationalization ; Riots ; World War I

Child ; Child Nutrition Sciences ; Child Nutritional Physiological Phenomena ; China ; Food Supply ; Growth Disorders ; epidemiology ; etiology ; prevention & control ; Humans ; Hygiene ; Malnutrition ; epidemiology ; Poverty ; Sanitation

Child ; Child Nutritional Physiological Phenomena ; Congresses as Topic ; Health Policy ; Humans ; Infant ; Malnutrition ; prevention & control ; Nutritional Sciences ; Obesity ; etiology ; prevention & control

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of nutrition and food safety education among middle school students in a poverty-stricken county in west China, and to explore the better education model for further education. METHODS: Students of grade 7 to 9 were selected from 4 middle schools in the country through multi-stage cluster sampling for the questionnaire, and the schools were assigned into an intervention group or a control group. After students in the intervention schools completed one year nutrition and food safety education with the textbooks, students were chosen from the same 4 schools to finish the same questionnaire again. RESULTS: A total of 410 students from grade 7 to 9 were selected at the baseline study, and 474 students in the final study. The essential characteristics of the 2 groups were not statistically significant (P>0.05). In the baseline investigation, the differences in the scores on nutrition and food safety knowledge, attitude and practice between the 2 groups were not significant (P>0.05). In the final study, the scores on the knowledge, attitude of nutrition knowledge learning, and dietary habits among students in the intervention group were significantly higher than those in the control group (P<0.05). School-students mixed model demonstrated that the intervention was protective factor on scores of knowledge, in particular with nutrition related diseases and reasonable diet (P<0.05). But the intervention didn't affect the scores on attitude in both ways (P>0.05). CONCLUSION Nutrition and food safety education can improve the nutrition and food safety knowledge effectively. The curriculum should be further standardized and different emphases should be set up to different grades to cultivate healthy diet behaviors.
China ; Diet ; Food Safety ; Health Education ; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice ; Humans ; Nutritional Sciences ; education ; Poverty ; Schools ; Students ; Surveys and Questionnaires

Adrenal Cortex Hormones ; therapeutic use ; Child ; Chronic Disease ; Enteral Nutrition ; Humans ; Inflammation ; Inflammatory Bowel Diseases ; diet therapy ; drug therapy ; therapy ; Intestines ; drug effects ; Nutritional Sciences ; Probiotics ; therapeutic use

Animals ; Biochemistry ; history ; China ; History, 19th Century ; History, 20th Century ; Humans ; Nutritional Sciences ; history ; Rats

Congresses as Topic ; Nutritional Sciences

Child ; Emergencies ; Female ; Humans ; Nutritional Sciences

Child ; Child Nutrition Disorders ; Child Nutrition Sciences ; Humans ; Malnutrition ; Nutritional Status

A cross-sectional study involving 400 mothers was conducted in the Manya Krobo district of Ghana with the objective of studying household dietary practices, quality of diets and family nutritional status of rural Ghana. A combination of methods, including structured interviews using questionnaire, dietary assessments and anthropometry was used to collect data for the study. The data obtained was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 10 in Windows. Means and standard deviations were generated for continuous variables and frequency distribution for categorical variables. Most women consumed meals three times a day but only a few (12.5%) cooked all three meals at home. Breakfast and lunch were the two main meals purchased from food vendors. The most frequently consumed food items on daily basis were the starchy staples, maize, fish, pepper, onion, tomato and palm fruits. The nutritional qualities of diets were poor in terms of calcium and the B-vitamins. A significant proportion of the women were nutritionally at risk of being either underweight (12%), overweight (17%) or obese (5%). For adequate nutrition in this population, nutrition education intervention programs aimed at improving nutrient intake through improved diet diversity and increased use of local foods rich in calcium and the B-vitamins needs to be undertaken. There is also the need to intensify education on excessive weight gain and its attendant health problems in the area.
Anthropometry ; Breakfast ; Calcium ; Commerce ; Cross-Sectional Studies ; Diet ; Family Characteristics ; Female ; Fruit ; Ghana ; Humans ; Lunch ; Lycopersicon esculentum ; Meals ; Mothers ; Nutritional Status ; Onions ; Overweight ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Social Sciences ; Thinness ; Weight Gain ; Zea mays