Nutritional Anthropology: From Ancient Philosophies to Pop Culture & Media
- Jennifer Sare - Wellness
- 6 hours ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 5 hours ago
This one is an adventure – but trust me, I’m THE tour guide for this. Stick with me…
I am both a nutritionist and anthropologist with a background in philosophy and education. All of these fields play a role in my sessions with clients because our existence is our well-being, and our well-being is our existence. And existentially, food environments (in every sense of the word) are more often than not, the systemically cyclical source of (un)wellness. Each person has their own internal and external experience with food and what it means to them. Discussing food with clients is something many expect to be accompanied by judgments, guilt, and diet plans. However, that is the antithesis of being a quality practitioner, and I’m not here to waste your time with questionable, privileged, or uninformed ethics. My scope of understanding is multidimensional, and that is not always the case. You are not a one-dimensional being, and your care shouldn’t be either.
My approach is a decolonial biopsychosocial one that explores how humans eat, the relationship between nutrition, mind-body-soul health, sociocultural significance and impact, ecology, philosophy, the media, identity, and history.
That was a lot of words… relax your shoulders and unclench your jaw. Inhale. Exhale.
Here we go…
Colonial Foundations in Nutrition
Modern allopathic nutrition science and public health interventions are inherently influenced by colonial capitalistic thought, given the origins of the fields and the unfortunate erasure of cultural healing systems. Much of what was misappropriated and reduced became the foundation for modern medicine through a disconnected lens.
The 'Civilized' vs. 'Savage' Dichotomy: Early anthropological studies often categorized non-Western diets and food production methods as "primitive" or "less developed" than industrial, Western agriculture. This framework disregarded the sophisticated ecological knowledge and nutritional completeness of traditional food systems while further destroying the environments that sourced the food.
The Erasing of Indigenous Knowledge: Colonial and imperial policies actively disrupted indigenous foodways—the cultural, ecological, and economic practices related to food. Indigenous staple crops, foraging practices, and food-as-medicine traditions were suppressed or replaced with monocultures and imported, processed foods (like white flour, sugar, and canned meats) to fuel colonial economies and subdue populations. This drove the emergence of and perpetuates the modern existence of obesogenic environments and food deserts. This applies to Indigeneity throughout the history of colonization, imperialism, and their predecessors across the globe, which all culminated in a multicultural soup sandwich of food confusion and disconnection in the United States.
The Rise of Chronic Disease: The forced shift from traditional, locally adapted diets to capitalistic, mass-produced, ultra-processed diets is a key factor in the high rates of chronic illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, and eating disorders. This is exponentially compounded when the epigenetic psychosomatic impacts are considered in perpetually deleteriously marginalized communities.
What Decolonizing Nutrition & Anthropology Means
Decolonization isn't about reversing history; it's about radically changing how we study, understand, and act upon food and nutrition today. It's a call for epistemic justice, recognizing that knowledge outside the hegemonic Eurocentric Scientism model is not only foundational and valid, but essential as well. There is a stark disparity in statistical representation, or lack thereof, of who is impacted vs who is studied with an obnoxious neon arrow flashing: ETHICS OVERHAUL!
Many people believe that decolonization is only beneficial for Indigenous peoples, but that is a very capitalistic colonizer perspective that is also incredibly untrue. Traditional wisdom teaches harmony, and science teaches homeostasis. Scientific curiosity and inquiry are ancient practices, as is being part of nature, not apart from it. Restoring the environment, sovereignty, and a sense of authentic community creates environmental harmonious homeostasis rather than environmental etiologies. This is for everyone. Decolonizing is interdisciplinary and intersectional. It includes all identities, neurotypes, abilities, shapes, sizes, and colors. When we consider how far we are from this reality within our capitalistic environment, it becomes clear just how many of us have been impacted.
Centering Food Sovereignty and the Land
Food is inseparable from land, self-determination, and identity. The conversation shifts from just calories and nutrients as standardized checklists to food sovereignty: the right of communities to define their own food and agriculture systems.
Reconnecting to Place: It emphasizes the connection between body and landscape, acknowledging that traditional foodways, diets, and approaches are intrinsically healthy because they are perfectly adapted to the local environment and climate.
Healing the Land, Healing the Body: Decolonizing the diet means eliminating foods that were introduced as a result of colonization (like cheap sugar, mass-produced animal (bi)products, and toxic chemicals) and reclaiming native, ancestral foods that support local biodiversity and ecological health.
Valuing Traditional Food Knowledge
The decolonial approach seeks knowledge from the elders, seed-keepers, and traditional healers within communities, not just from university researchers.
Challenging Food Gentrification: It critiques how traditional, nutrient-dense foods (like bone broth, healing herbs, and “superfoods”) are often "discovered" by the wellness industry, rebranded with a high price tag, and therefore made inaccessible to the very communities that innovated them. This is an example of food apartheid and economic oppression.
Relational Ethics in Research: Researchers must move beyond the exploitative "investigator-informant" model and engage with communities as co-creators and partners in respectful collaborative knowledge production. This involves transparent acknowledgment of historical harms and ensuring the research benefits the community, not the academic institution. Human sciences that do not center humans are unethical.
Redefining "Health" and "Malnutrition"
Beyond the Calorie Count: Reject the notion that food is just "fuel," and embrace the fact that food is also memory, community, ritual, and connection. The richness of a cultural dish, its history, and its preparation are valued over a low-calorie count. Food nourishes us mind, body, and soul. Calories in calories out is reductive, shame-based wellness culture nonsense. There is SO much more happening here. Practitioners who rely on this simply do not have an adequate level of comprehension or curiosity.
Exposing Systemic Causes: Re-framing issues like food insecurity and malnutrition not as failures of individual cultures, but as direct, systemic consequences of historical violence, land dispossession, and capitalist economic structures that prioritize profit over people and planetary health is a lot to unpack, but so necessary. Remember food deserts and obesogenic environments? The most nefarious thing the wellness industrial complex has done is convince us that our well-being is a luxury that not everyone deserves to earn.
How Does This Apply to Your Relationship with Food?
First and foremost, you know that pesky profit over people capitalistic model? It relies on you hating yourself and being uninformed about food and health by intentional systemic design. The media follows money, and influencers make bank on insecurities. This messaging can be subliminal or in your face, and most people don’t have a leg to stand on and are just hovering on temporary pick-me clout. Unpacking the modern chokehold is a good place to start. Many might see this as intense – but they don’t work with eating disorders and body dysmorphia (or their privilege prevents them from accepting anything outside their own experience). Even the most minute belief about self that is rooted in impressing your oppressor takes a toll on your nervous system. Colonizer capitalism does this to everyone to varying degrees in far too many ways. Social Justice is Public Health.
Start by asking yourself these questions from a place of curiosity rather than judgement:
What's the history of the food on my plate? Which ingredients are native to this region? Which were introduced by colonization or globalized trade? How does this align with my needs? What is my connection to this food? How does this food nourish me? What is my own food history? What is my ancestral food history?
Whose knowledge are you prioritizing? When seeking nutrition advice, are you listening only to mainstream sources, or are you exploring the wisdom of cultural cuisines and traditional food systems? If your provider is centering appearance as health, gaslighting you about your experiences, or victim blaming, they are prioritizing Scientism and a paycheck. Red Flag. An important caveat here ~ an unfortunate byproduct of misguided efforts to consider other ways of knowing is the new age movement that is mostly cultural misappropriation and modern snake oil sales. Try to find reputable cultural practitioners and educators that heal through balance.
Are you fighting food gentrification? Do your food choices support local growers, indigenous communities, and equitable access, or are they inadvertently contributing to the hyper-commodification of ancestral foods? This is also largely impacted by socioeconomic status so carry this with good intentions and without shame. Do what you can when and how you can.
Nutritional anthropology invites us to eat not just with our bodies, but with our history and our conscience, recognizing that our daily food choices are powerful acts of resistance and reclamation. Enjoying food without shame is healing. Understanding hunger cues, the value of shared meals, and abandoning rigid and restrictive patterns is empowering. Finding that embodied empowerment through food helps to regulate the nervous system. Healing isn’t easy, and it definitely isn’t one size fits all.
Eat more and move less is a terrible excuse for medical advice. Food is an existential requirement and a beautiful way to experience your own well-being.
Come see me.
(additional blogs linked above coming soon)
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