title: Eating to your hearts delight.
abstract: Food and knowledge of food is an essential part of life. Knowledge about how to get enough and how to get it right is an essential part of all cultures. Since food is vital, nutrition policy is critical. Nutrition policy is about who should eat what, why, when and how in order to promote better health. This article deals with the politics of nutrition, which is about who eats what, why, when, how, and with what impact on their lives. For food, whether it is scarce or abundant, affects people unequally, hence food has always been a social concern. Regulating its supply has been a source of civilization. The state of nutrition is one of the most potent indicators of the state of society. Hence, food is also one of the oldest objects of politics--indeed, one cannot think of politics without it. This is the first issue I will address: by offering a capsule history of humanity from the perspective of the politics of nutrition. Next, I will address, in a similarly compressed history, the development of the science of nutrition, as nutrition policy has become based on research--particularly on medical science. Finally, I will address nutrition policy as a subpart of the politics of nutrition--how it has been defined and how it has developed, its changing agendas and current concerns.
authors.affiliation: International Institute for Education Planning, Paris, France.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hernes
mesh_terms: D005502:Food / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history*; D005523:Food Supply / Q000266:history; D014943:Global Health; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D009748:Nutrition Disorders / Q000266:history; D018673:Nutrition Policy / Q000266:history / Q000639:trends; D009747:Nutritional Physiological Phenomena