The science and spirituality of nutrition

Debates about the development of the science of nutrition have been limited to either ascetic views of the body in eighteenth-century Europe or to scientific ideas about physiological economy of food. These debates do not allow a full appreciation of the heritage of the ideas that are part of nutrition discourse. Using Foucault's work on governmentality it is shown here that ideas embedded in nutrition emerged from both scientific knowledges which sought to understand and manage the eating habits of populations, and from moral issues which problematize individual food choices. The result is a knowledge of food that can be understood as a ‘discipline' in two senses: first as field of scientific endeavour and second as a form of moral correction.