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Core Concepts in Nutritional Anthropology

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Book cover Nutritional Health

Part of the book series: Nutrition and Health ((NH))

Abstract

As a discipline whose aim is to understand the human animal and its place in the natural order of things, a hallmark of anthropology is that its practitioners often engage in research that has the effect of making the familiar strange, and the strange familiar. For example, nutritional anthropologists examine practices in contemporary Euro-American societies that are taken for granted as simply “normal” or “natural” and reveal how culture-bound they actually are. The structure of meals, in which foods are served sequentially with soup first and dessert last, strikes people in other parts of the world as quite peculiar. They also seek to understand and “make sense” out of culinary practices that at first encounter appear to be irrational, such as the prohibition of beef consumption in food-scarce, poor Hindu villages. On more careful study, this prohibition turns out to be ecologically sound because of the complex energetic relationships of animals, humans, fuel, and agricultural production in South Asia [1].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Savage Hall, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Sera L. Young PhD & Gretel H. Pelto PhD

Authors
  1. Sera L. Young PhD
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  2. Gretel H. Pelto PhD
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Correspondence to Sera L. Young PhD .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Science, Athabasca University, Athabasca, T9S 3A3, Alberta, Canada

    Norman J. Temple

  2. Department of Biology, Winona State University, Winona, 54603, Minnesota, USA

    Ted Wilson

  3. School of Public Health, Division of Epidemiology and Community H, University of Minnesota, 1300 South Second St., Minneapolis, 55454, USA

    David R. Jacobs, Jr.

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Young, S.L., Pelto, G.H. (2012). Core Concepts in Nutritional Anthropology. In: Temple, N., Wilson, T., Jacobs, Jr., D. (eds) Nutritional Health. Nutrition and Health. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-61779-894-8_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-61779-894-8_25

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  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-61779-893-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-61779-894-8

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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