The scientization of food.

AuthorGonzales, Elisa
PositionHidden Hunger: Gender and the Politics of Smarter Foods - Book review

Hidden Hunger: Gender and the Politics of Smarter Foods

Aya Hirata Kimura

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 240 pages.

On October 12, 2013, activists from many countries rallied against the biotechnology corporation Monsanto and its production of agrochemicals and genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). (1) While advocates of GMOs claim that these technologies have the capacity to alleviate nutritional deficiencies, critics contend that they have adverse effects on human health, the food supply, and the environment. Aya Hirata Kimura demonstrates, however, that Monsanto's influence is only one of the latest manifestations of a more pervasive phenomenon: the scientization of food insecurity. In Hidden Hunger, Hirata explores the historical trajectory of this "scientized view of food insecurity in developing countries" from the post-Second World War decades to the early twenty-first century by focusing on its repercussions in Indonesia. (2)

Hirata's main argument is simple yet multilayered: the growing focus on micronutrient deficiencies, or hidden hunger, since the 1990s is one manifestation of this scientized approach to food insecurity, which the political economy and gendered implications of feeding obscures. Applying multiple methodologies, e.g., archival research, interviews, and discursive analysis, and theoretical frameworks, e.g., science and technology studies, agrofood studies, and feminist food studies, the author traces the precedents, emergence, and implications of "nutritionism," or the view that food is primarily a vehicle for delivering nutrients, and the various "nutritional fixes" it has fostered.

In Hidden Hunger, Hirata chronicles the global articulation of nutritionism by tracing the linkages between international trends and local politico-economic conditions. The book aims to answer the following questions: How was food insecurity framed as an issue of micronutrient deficiencies? Why did fortification, the process of adding micronutrients to food products during manufacturing and biofortification, the biological alteration of crops so that these contain more micronutrients, emerge as the preferred solution to food insecurity in developing countries? What were the implications of this approach to food insecurity in Indonesia, and how did it affect women and mothers who procure and prepare foods? To answer these questions, in chapters two and three, Hirata considers science's history with food, its...

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