No one may starve in the British Empire”

Kwashiorkor, Protein and the Politics of Nutrition Between Britain and Africa

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9308893
AutoresJosiah Nott (0000-0001-6795-5942, Maastricht University, autor de correspondencia), John Nott (Maastricht University)
Año2019
Volumen34
Número2
Páginas553-576
Fecha de publicación2019-10-16
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSocial History of Medicine (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0951-631X • E-ISSN: 1477-4666
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/shm/hkz107
PMID34084092
OpenAlexW2982992674
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas12

Throughout the twentieth century it was widely assumed that African diets were grossly deficient in protein, that childhood protein deficiency was a natural result of this generalised diet and that a relative lack of meat and milk went some way to explaining African economic underdevelopment. This article explores why these conclusions took hold; the European deification of animal protein in previous centuries; structural changes to African diets and food economies under colonial government; and the political value of such a consensus. Unlike elsewhere in the world, where deficiency was removed from the exceptionalism of tropical medicine, protein malnutrition was constructed as a particularly African concern. Focusing this discussion on the history of the severe childhood deficiency, kwashiorkor, this article explores how the politically informed othering of African nutrition came to direct, or misdirect, the medicine of malnutrition in twentieth-century Africa

Colonialism · Development economics · Economics · Empire · Government (linguistics · Kwashiorkor · Malnutrition · Political science · Politics · Underdevelopment · African history and culture studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Internal Medicine · Law · Medicine