Creamy, sometimes salty, and optimistically yellow, butter is one of my favorite foods. It’s also a scientific and cultural barometer. For the first half of the twentieth century, nutritionists enthusiastically endorsed butter as a good source of energy and part of a healthy, moderate diet. Early government-issued food guides endorsed eating enough food, as public health efforts focused on such problems a nutritional deficiencies and inadequate diets, particularly for children. Since then, increased food availability, changing disease patterns, and additional research have reshaped food and nutrition guidelines, changing perceptions of butter along the way. Butter’s shifting nutritional status provides a window into major developments in dietary advice and public health. The following food guides sought to communicate each historical moment’s…

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Humans love to measure things, for example temperature, time, distance and calorie intake. Increasingly, we have discovered new ways to apply these measurements to our own bodies. New technologies have allowed us to collect this data more precisely than before and also, perhaps more importantly, to have these measurements available at all times. “Worrying” about our body has become second nature to us so much that we may not even realize how much of our time revolves around tracking ourselves. Every January, magazines, websites, and social media outdo each other in giving weight-loss advice and fueling a guilty conscience. So we are forced to consider working on our “beach body” for the summer. Starting a diet, working out, getting in…

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The decision, whether taking stairs or the escalator is the better choice, has been charged with a new socio-political dimension lately. Both speed and convenience do hardly matter, yet it has turned into a question of fitness and health. As the Fitbit advertisement points out, “fitness is the sum of your life.” It can be found between beginnings and endings or between high and low ends of the exercise spectrum. Gone are the times when physical activity was confined to particular spaces reserved for heavy exercise—like gyms. Today we live in an almost endless sea of fitness opportunities, called your daily life. Of major importance in this change is the popular trend of logging one’s activities with digital tracking devices,…

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In May this year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) introduced new labels that will have to be printed on most packaged food products by July 2018. In a presentation at the White House, Michelle Obama praised the label as making “a real difference in providing families across the country the information they need to make healthy choices.” Recent posts on this blog have discussed notions of transparency and choice. Today, I want to add some remarks on the history and politics of the gauge on which a lot of today’s food talk is based: on calories. The new food label includes a line on added sugars as well as changes in serving sizes. Its most visible change, however,…

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“I track myself, therefore I am” is perhaps the most fitting way to describe the basic idea behind the Quantified Self movement which has gained popularity all over the world in recent years. Increasingly, people have started to record and measure their own body-related data, tracking changes over time in metrics such as body weight, blood pressure, caloric expenditure, and the ever-present Body-Mass-Index (BMI). Simultaneously, the sale corresponding apps, sensors, smartwatches, and weighing scales that provide the technical means to collect this data has experienced a continuing surge. The sensors on Nike+ devices, for example, track movement, distance, and speed during physical activities such as running. Apparently, people love collecting these data, fueled by the promise of becoming slimmer and…

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