Food is everywhere because everybody has to eat. At the same time, food is politics.

Looking at food tells us a how societies work, in history as well as in the present. What we produce, what we buy, and what we eat provide evidence about ourselves: our values, social status, culture, history, and health. We are constantly called upon to choose our diet carefully to become (or stay) healthy and fit. If nothing else, recent proclamations of health crises such as that of “obesity” speak to the political character of food, eating, and the body. Food at once reflects and helps determine whose lives count as valuable or not.

This blog addresses the power, politics, and practices of food and eating. What dynamics are at play in making our foodways? How are our understandings and practices of food and diet, fatness and fitness shaped by discourse and power, ideas and institutions, language and matter? Who and what has agency in these foodscapes, and what kind do they have?

The blog is a multidisciplinary forum for reflections about food and diet and their link to health, society, body, and the self. We aim to connect the historical with the present, the global with the local, and life sciences with cultural studies. We seek to exchange observations and opinions with scholars from history, sociology, food studies, and life sciences.

For contributions, please send an email with an abstract of no more than 200 words to: proposals@nullfoodfatnessfitness.com

This blog is related to the research projects „The Eating Self. A History of the Political in the United States from the 19th to the 21st Century“ and „Nutrition, Health, and Modern Society: Germany and the US“