Ellen Messer

• Tufts University

The use of food as a weapon is as old as written records. Siege, blockade, and starvation are well-documented military strategies, as are political strategies that use food as a tool to attract supporters and dissuade opposition. In the 20th and 21st centuries, societies attempted to limit the use of food deprivation as a tool of war. In this time...

(1) Background: The influence of food culture on eating behavior and obesity risk is poorly understood. (2) Methods: In this qualitative study, 25 adults in France with or without overweight/obesity participated in semi-structured interviews (n = 10) or focus groups (n = 15) to examine attitudes to food consumption and external pressures that influ...

Objectives Cultural factors influence obesity risk, but this relationship has not been systematically studied due to the lack of a validated survey instrument. The objective of this project was to develop a prototype questionnaire to assess the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and sociocultural factors. Methods Interviews and focus group...

Environmental factors such as food availability and variety can function as cues for overeating in individuals susceptible to overweight or obesity, but relatively little is known about other types of environmental factors that may also be important. This qualitative study compared and contrasted categories of internal and external cues through foc...

A resurgence of interest in more traditional, authentic and distinctive foods is reflected in the popularity of farmers’ markets, with the premise that locally grown produce is superior in flavor and other sensory and culturally valued characteristics to similar fare from the global marketplace. In this arena, heirloom tomatoes (heirlooms) are incr...

Antecedentes: la definición de la seguridad alimentaria y nutricional (SAN) incluye la importancia de la calidad nutricional de los alimentos además de la suficiencia. Sin embargo, aún existe un énfasis en el aspecto de la suficiencia, incluso en contextos con crecientes problemas relacionados con sobrealimentación. Objetivos: describir estrategias...

Background: the definition of food and nutrition security (FNS) includes the importance of the nutritional quality of foods other than sufficiency. However, there is still an emphasis on sufficiency, even in settings with increasing problems relating to overeating. Objectives: (1) describe local coping strategies in times of resource scarcity; (2)...

Background: the definition of food and nutrition security (FNS) includes the importance of the nutritional quality of foods other than sufficiency. However, there is still an emphasis on sufficiency, even in settings with increasing problems relating to overeating. Objectives: (1) describe local coping strategies in times of resource scarcity; (2)...

This study presents an assessment of local definitions and perceptions concerning healthy eating through a study in four resource-poor border communities in El Salvador. The study included focus groups, key-informant interviews, and observations of the food environment. Local definitions of healthy eating elicited through focus groups were compared...

This study aimed to examine the dietary intake of Salvadoran households according to perceived access to healthy meals (PAHD), and to identify household characteristics associated with diet quality and PAHD. Secondary data analysis with a sample of 139 Salvadoran households from resource-poor communities in El Salvador. Chi-square tests and ANOVA w...

Objective: To develop a household-level diet quality indicator (HDQI) using the Salvadorian dietary guidelines to assess the dietary quality of households in vulnerable communities in El Salvador. Design: The Salvadorian dietary guidelines were reviewed and eighteen HDQI components were identified (nine foods and nine nutrients). The components...

Global nutrition transitions are driving the rise in chronic, diet‐related diseases, mostly affecting the poor. While food availability and access are essential for healthy eating (HE), perceptions concerning HE can influence food choices leading to diet quality. This study presents an assessment of cultural definitions and barriers related to HE i...

Individual‐level dietary quality (DQ) indicators developed in affluent settings have been applied in resource‐poor populations undergoing nutritional transitions. However, those DQ indicators usually fail to reflect local food patterns and nutritional issues in these countries, where, in addition, dietary intake information is often collected at th...

Hunger continues to be one of humanity’s greatest challenges despite the existence of a more-than-adequate global food supply equal to 2,800 kilocalories for every person every day. In measuring progress, policymakers and concerned citizens across the globe rely on information supplied by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an agency of th...

Rising food prices in the late 2000s sparked protests, sometimes violent, around the globe. These public expressions of outrage were only the tip of the iceberg. Many countries have a legacy of food wars. In sub-Saharan Africa, at least 14 countries faced severe food insecurity as a result of conflict, civil strife, forced displacement, or damage f...

The United States government has been the world's largest donor of food aid for decades, and since 1990, with the end of the Cold War, its overall purposes and explicit policies are directed to alleviate world food insecurity and hunger. Yet many assert that a human rights approach would be the best way to reduce food insecurity and hunger. This st...

In 2008, the world confronted food-insecurity situations that provoked political demonstrations in more than 50 countries. The alleged sources were production failures and spiking food prices because of bad weather and flawed food and development policies. But additional contributors were the legacies of food wars, armed conflicts in which one or b...

Anyone who has ingested herbal teas to soothe a sore throat or alleviate digestive distress probably has wondered what active ingredients the remedies contain and whether principles of traditional medicine are widely shared across cultures. This volume, representing a lifetime of research by ethnobiologist-pharmacologist expert, Nina Etkin, provide...

Anthropological concerns with food and nutrition have increased greatly in the last four decades, and the development has been across the subdisciplines of anthropology and in conjunction with other academic disciplines. The current commission of the IUAES, the International Commission on the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (ICAF), initiated in...

Human rights issues in Latin America have been actively pursed in anthropology during the past seven years. A summary of recent changes in anthropology and human rights precedes a discussion structured by categories used by human rights scholars and advocates: civil-political; ecoromic-soclal-cultural; development; and Indigenous rights. Interpreta...

Cambridge Core - Global History - The Cambridge World History of Food - edited by Kenneth F. Kiple

Nutrition and anthropology have a long history of collaboration in studies of food and changing food habits. Adopting Christine Wilson's (1973) Handbook of References as a starting point, this analysis considers changing nutrition and anthropology institutional contexts for food and culture studies, the increase in available data bases, the ways po...

"For 30 years, U.S. food and nutrition scientists and policymakers concerned with food and nutrition have explored the possibility of making the human right to food (HRF) the moral and legal cornerstone of U.S. domestic and international initiatives in this area. The U.S. government has consistently opposed formal right-to-food legislation, labelin...

"We explore how globalization, broadly conceived to include international humanrights norms, humanitarianism, and alternative trade, might influence peaceful and foodsecure outlooks and outcomes. The paper draws on our previous work on conflict as a cause and effect of hunger and also looks at agricultural exports as war commodities. We review stud...

"Armed conflicts frequently lead to the destruction of food systems. Often, warring parties manipulate starvation as a deliberate tactic, using their control over access to food to attract and reward friends and humble and punish enemies. Such conflicts are “food wars,” not only because hunger is used as a weapon but also because food insecurity is...

Having summarized past work, as indicated by current reviews and bibliographic sources, the author reviews anthropological studies on the sociocultural and biological determinants and consequences of human diet, first historically and then by topic. Evidence is put forward showing how the various dimensions of the food system are interrelated and h...

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Hope's Edge. The Next Diet for. Small Planet. Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe. Penguin Putnam Inc., 2002.

From Hardtack to Home Fries. An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals. by Barbara Haber New York: The Free Press, 2002

Food insecurity is highly prevalent in the United States. Even in the best of times, some 10% of the U.S. population self-reports food insecurity in the U.S. annual census instrument, and some 23.3 million Americans use the community-based emergency food system. Unemployed or underemployed individuals, the elderly, single parents, substance abusers...

Abstract

This essay evaluates the promise and practice of agricultural biotechnology (ABT). It considers the first decade of ABT products (1987–1997) and their environmental, social, nutritional and ethical consequences. Since the first plant was transformed by genetic engineering in 1983, the ABT industry has prophesied “win-win” scenarios, with higher-val...

Creating a hunger-free world in the 21st century will require prevention and resolution of violent conflicts, as well as a concerted effort to rebuild war-torn societies. Between 1970 and 1990 violent conflicts led to hunger and reduced food production and economic growth in 43 developing countries. The reverse is also true, however: hunger and lac...

"In this paper, Ellen Messer, Marc J. Cohen, and Jashinta D'Costa show how hunger is often a direct result of violence ... [and] how hunger can reciprocally cause conflict. ... The authors call for including conflict prevention in food security and development efforts, as well as new linkages between food security and development on the one hand, a...

This work offers an anthropological analysis of intra-household processes underlying gender- and age-specific differences in individual nutritional and health care allocations and outcomes in particular cultures. Based on recent ethnographic studies in India, Nepal, Madagascar, Mexico, and Peru, correspondences are analyzed between local cultural (...

This study examines dietary intake responses to a food aid program in Western Samoa, which consisted primarily of rice and flour supplements. Using a semi‐quantitative food frequency questionnaire, intake estimates were made for 147 Samoans (72 men, 75 women), 5 months before and 8 months after a tropical cyclone. Study participants were from urban...

This paper reviews cognitive, symbolic, systematic botanical, and biochemical bases of plant classification, and analyzes their interrelationships in the medicinal folk botany of Mitla, Oaxaca, Mexico. It evaluates the "pharmacological wisdom" of the local population, along with their symbolic use of the environment, to show how they construct medi...

This paper summarizes information on the characteristic flaws in primary health care services, and their geographic patterns of occurrence, with reference to their local, medical, and bureaucratic contexts. The data are derived from published medical ethnographic reports, evaluations of programmes, surveys of physicians in developing countries, and...

Book reviewed in this article: The Ribbon . 1987. Directed by Harriet Avshon . With These Hands . 1987. Produced by Chris Sheppard and directed by Chris Sheppard and Claude Sauvageot . The Struggling People. 1987. From the Only One Earth series. Produced by Rachael Lyon and directed by Barbara Pyle .

New agricultural biotechnologies, in contrast to green revolution technolo gies, offer new tools and institutional frameworks to address agricultural and hunger problems in both well-endowed and marginal areas; in both the industrialized and the developing world. Developing nations, bilateral and international donors, and numerous nongovernmental a...

Seeks the origins of hunger in the depredations of war, the effects of industrialisation in increasing social status differentials, and the introduction of commercial crops, diminution of indigeneous food crops, and reduced self-sufficiency, leading to food shortage and food poverty for many colonies. The chapter considers hunger and the growth of...

This paper explores how Indian nutritional scientists and policy planners have influenced the formulation and interpretation of standards of nutritional status. It draws on diverse published evidence by Indian scientists on three controversial issues: (1) the validity and applicability of international nutritional standards to India; (2) the so-cal...

Reviews the significance of seasonal food insecurity as observed by anthropological studies, drawing from them ethnographic evidence of seasonal hunger and concepts and methods that can be used to identify and address seasonal food problems. The concluding section includes an agenda for future research. -from Author

While the influence of Hispanic humoral medicine on 16th century and subsequent Mesoamerican indigenous thought is undeniable, recent reexaminations of Aztec, Mayan and Zapotec medicinal and cosmological systems suggest indigenous roots in hot-cold concepts. This paper reviews and compares the growing evidence for independent hot-cold classificatio...

How accurate international nutritional standards are for recommending and assessing adequate nutrient intake and nutritional status of different national populations has been debated by nutritionists, economists, and others. This paper reviews the assumptions and possible motivations behind the design and interpretation of standards in particular c...

Cross-culturally, there is a growing interest in the effect of women’s participation in the wage economy on the quantity and quality of maternal interaction with children and children’s development. Essential to all of the questions concerning the effect of women’s work on their interaction with children is a methodology for studying how women in d...

Describes a procedure for measuring sweetness that can be used, to represent more accuately the sucrose intakes of individuals, which could be checked with incidence of dental caries, diabetes, heart disease, and the preparation of acceptable and nutritious foods. -from Author

This chapter will consider sociocultural factors that influence nutrient intake and behavioral responses to diet. With the possible exception of modern Western society, no cultural group evaluates the individual foods and combinations it ingests in terms of the scientific categories—energy, fat, protein, vitamins, and minerals. People must therefor...

Hot-cold food and medicinal categories from one Mexican community (Mitla, Oaxaca) are examined to describe general principles of classification, dimensions of use, and potentials for change. Intracultural variation in hot-cold knowledge and related dietary and medicinal practices are discussed to demonstrate how within one culture general structura...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-140). Photocopy of typescript. Ann Arbor :

Although the maize‐beans‐squash complex of the Mesoamerican native diet is usually stressed, the utilization of wild greens may supply an important addition to the nutritive intake of these people, especially during times of crop failure. Field work in Abasolo, Oaxaca, Mexico has shown the number of species used, and the quantities of the individua...

PhD Thesis, 538p.