Nutritional Anthropology: Biocultural Perspectives on Food and Nutrition

Very helpful and informative. A good read of multiple short articles on different nutritional anthropology findings and research. Condition was fair

It's been a good book so far, it's really an introduction to the field so don't expect any really in depth articles but the articles presented give a great idea of the state of research and where current trends stand.

A lot of really boring articles about a fascinating subject.

Interesting collection of articles providing much food for thought.

This book is a bit strange. I was expecting it to be a 'standard' introductory textbook, thoroughly covering the basics of this field. Instead, it is a hodgepodge collection of published scientific papers and chapters from other books/sources. Some of these 'reprints' from other sources are quite interesting and worth reading. Overall, the book is just a collection of other people's work. I would buy the book again, but I would like to find a book that truly covers this fairly new topic/field from "beginning to end".

I'll use it for my class. The book was updated in this edition. It' great. I fully recomended. You will enjoy.

amazing information, very informative.I think maybe it need sto emphasize more that people are not supposed to consume meat and other animal products.

The field of nutritional anthropology and food studies has grown in scope and significance in recent years, and the interest in these topics bridges many constituencies - from academics to activists, from policy makers to "foodies." The new edition of this seminal volume will have something for everyone of these interest groups, as it represents the most comprehensive collection of articles, and reflects a truly biocultural perspective - as well as an anthropologically four field approach to the field. A few classic articles are included in this volume, including Richard Lee's account of Christmas in the Kalahari and Marvin Harris' Sacred Cow examination - but many of the articles are new to this edition and indeed reflect the burgeoning of the discipline. In the interests of transparency I confess that I have an article included in the volume, but my mere five pages is a small segment of this exhaustive volume that includes more than 500 pages, so I feel I can reflect on the remainder of the volume objectively.The editors set the stage for the volume in their introduction in which they articulate the importance of the biocultural perspective and of seeing food production, distribution, use, metabolism, and food perception and symbolism all as part of complex food systems that warrant analysis from a variety of perspectives. Throughout the volume the editors balance differing perspectives and competing paradigms.The book is divided into sections that focus on specific aspects of nutritional anthropology. One large section includes nearly a dozen articles that examine the evolution of human food patterns, the diversity of subsistence strategies, and the biological legacy we carry forward from our long distant ancestors of earlier millenia. These works present a solid examination of prehistoric foodways and the impact of milestones in food production, such as the adoption of agriculture over foraging. The solid science of these collected works provide a welcome contrast to images of "cavemen diets" that proliferate in popular media.The next long section explores the age old question of why we eat, what we eat. The articles in this section reflect ecological, adaptive, and materialist explanations of food patterns, as well as symbolic and interpretive analyses of foodways. From examination of seemingly perplexing food consumption such as insect eating (Dufour) and geophagy or eating earth (Young et al.), to unpacking the symbolism of lavishly prepared Japanese children's lunch boxes (Allison), to understanding the link between gender and nutritional deficiencies (Brenton), or the use of foods as sources of seasoning, (Etkin), pleasure (Grivetti), or markers of religious purity (Dubisch), this section provides a comprehensive model of the interdisciplinary approaches to food studies.The last, and longest section of the book examines the contemporary challenges of food access and distribution, as roughly a billion people on the planet live with inadequate access to sufficient foods, and an equal number live with a surfeit. Several articles portray a picture of what life is like when one doesn't have enough to eat, including the classic work of Adolfo Chávez and his colleagues in their longitudinal study of undernutrition in Mexico. Others examine the ways in which humans have developed strategies to ensure the nutritional adequacy of their children (Sellen, Pelto et al) to protect the most vulnerable members of every society. The impact of food abundance and the mismatch between the Paleolithic bodies we have inherited and the culture of food excess are the topic of several articles that illustrate the problems that we are confronting in dealing with this dilemma of abundance (Crooks, Brewis, Gladwell, Sapolsky, and Lieberman). Finally the book concludes with several articles that identify strategies to remedy these problems of global food inequality, and reflect the applied perspectives of contemporary anthropology.The breadth and scope of this collection is unparalleled in other volumes or edited books. The truly biocultural perspectives inherent in these works, the balance between evolutionary and applied perspectives, and the inclusion of both highly materialist analyses and inherently interpretive or symbolic analyses reflects both the diversity within the discipline of nutritional anthropology, and the editors' success at capturing this complexity within the field. As one who used the first edition of this book for many years and mourned when it went out of print, as no single alternative volume was equal to this book, I can only express my joy at this new edition that will more than adequately fulfill my needs when I teach Nutritional Anthropology again in the coming semester. The second edition is both bigger and better than its predecessor, and the editors are to be commended for so effectively capturing the complexities of our discipline and using an even hand in representing diverse perspectives.