Eating Right In America:
The Cultural Politics of Food and Health

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Read an excerpt on Utne
Eating Right in America is powerful critique of dietary reform in the United States from the late-nineteenth-century emergence of nutritional science through the contemporary alternative food movement and campaign against obesity. Biltekoff analyzes the discourses of dietary reform, including the writings of reformers, as well as the materials they created to bring their messages to the public. She shows that while the primary aim may be to improve health, the process of teaching people to "eat right" in the U.S. inevitably involves shaping certain kinds of subjects and citizens, and shoring up the identity and social boundaries of the ever-threatened American middle class. Without discounting the pleasures of food or the value of wellness, Biltekoff advocates a critical reappraisal of our obsession with diet as a proxy for health. Based on her understanding of the history of dietary reform, she argues that talk about "eating right" in America too often obscures structural and environmental stresses and constraints, while naturalizing the dubious redefinition of health as an individual responsibility and a social imperative.
BLURBS
"Eating Right in America is a must-read for anyone interested in modern dietary reform. I say that as a scholar who has studied the subject for more than twenty-five years. This concise, well-researched, and provocative book is an instructor's dream, and it is certainly a book that every student and practitioner of nutrition, dietetics, and food science should read and ponder."     -- Warren Belasco, author of Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food

​"A brilliant intersectional analysis and a thoroughly enjoyable read, Eating Right in America brings long-overdue skepticism to the insalubrious history of food- and weight- related finger wagging in America."     -- Marilyn Wann, author FAT!SO?
REVIEW EXCERPTS
"In this rigorous but intentionally inconclusive book, Biltekoff raises important questions about the national dialogue on eating right. Her meticulously researched examination of attempts to make Americans more nutrition-conscious doesn’t quantify the value of nutrition, nor does it advocate any one approach. Instead, Biltekoff narrates a 150-year-long battle to cajole Americans into thinking about eating as an extension of good citizenship. ... The author shows, carefully and explicitly, that even the most virtuous approaches to healthful eating are based, sometimes unconsciously, in shaming and class and racial biases."     -- Publishers Weekly

"As a rich canon of books dedicated to American food culture has been developed over the past thirty years, others have written on the four dietary reform movements that constitute the narrative arc of Biltekoff’s text. ... What makes Biltekoff’s text important, however, is how she places these four dietary reform movements in conversation with one another, identifying moments of overlap, continuity, convergence, and symbiotic growth. She reveals how even though the dietary advice imparted and the social, cultural, and political context that fuels it may change, the underlying message remains constant. For Biltekoff, dietary reform is always about fashioning good citizens, a focus garnered from reformers’ published and unpublished writings and the materials through which they communicated their nutrition advice to both acquiescent and resistant audiences."     -- Emily J.H. Contois, Digest

"Eating Right in America is a welcome addition to the field of food studies. It directs a critical—but not wholly unkind—eye to the various ways that dietary reformers in America have encouraged eating 'right,' and it very clearly makes its argument that discourses on food and nutrition reflect understandings of good citizenship and class membership, not simply the most up-to-date science of diet and health."     -- Dory Kornfeld, Agriculture and Human Values

"Biltekoff has presented us with a much needed text that encourages and inspires readers to think critically about the evolution of what it means to eat right in America, the implications of dietary reform efforts and the underlying intentions of the policy-makers who promote them. This well-written, well-organized and well-researched book will be of interest not only to academics working in the area of critical food studies, but to any reader interested in the social, political and historical dimensions of food and eating practices."     --  James Cronin, Consumption, Markets & Culture
REVIEWS
  • Food, Culture and Society 18.2 (June 2015). Reviewed by Clara Hanson. Read pdf.
  • Allegra Lab: Anthropology, Law, Art & World (April 21, 2015). Reviewed by Lauren Renèe Moore. Read online.
  • Allegra Lab: Anthropology, Law, Art & World (April 17, 2015). Reviewed by Isabel Fletcher. Read online.
  • Allegra Lab: Anthropology, Law, Art & World (April 15, 2015). Reviewed by Jessica Hardin. Read online.
  • Gastronomica 14.4 (Winter 2014). Reviewed by Helen Zoe Veit. Read pdf.
  • Bulletin of the History of Medicine 88.3 (Fall 2014). Reviewed by Sander Gilman. Read pdf.
  • Journal of American Culture 37:3 (September 2014) 347. Reviewed by Dustin Freeley. Read online.
  • Journal of American History 101.2 (September 2014) 666-667. Reviewed by Adam Schprintzen. Read pdf.
  • Agriculture and Human Values 31.3 (September 2014):  527-528. Reviewed by Dory Kornfeld. Read pdf.
  • "Food, Diet Reform, and Obesity Politics in the American Imagination" American Studies 53.3 (2014): 53-64. Reviewed by Rachel Vaughn. Read pdf
  • Global Public Health: An International Journal for Research, Policy and Practice 9.4 (2014): 472-73. Reviewed by Melissa Fuster. Read pdf.
  • Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture 3.1 (Summer 2014). Reviewed by Emily Contois. Read online.
  • Graduate Journal of Food Studies 1.1 (Winter 2014): 59-60. Reviewed by Maria Carabello. Read online.
  • Consumption, Markets & Culture (2014). Reviewed by James Cronin. Read pdf.
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