Moral Foods: The Construction of Nutrition and Health in Modern Asia

Open Access Published by University of Hawaii Press 2019

Moral Foods

The Construction of Nutrition and Health in Modern Asia

Edited by: Angela Ki Che Leung , Melissa L. Caldwell , Robert Ji-Song Ku and Christine R. Yano
With contributions by: David Arnold , Francesca Bray , Melissa L. Caldwell , Jia-Chen Fu , Tae-Ho Kim , Angela Ki Che Leung , Michael Shiyung Liu , Tatsuya Mitsuda , Izumi Nakayama , Robert Peckham , Volker Scheid , Hilary A. Smith and Lawrence Lok Cheung Zhang

In the series Food in Asia and the Pacific

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824879570

Overview
Contents

About this book

Moral Foods: The Construction of Nutrition and Health in Modern Asia investigates how foods came to be established as moral entities, how moral food regimes reveal emerging systems of knowledge and enforcement, and how these developments have contributed to new Asian nutritional knowledge regimes. The collection’s focus on cross-cultural and transhistorical comparisons across Asia brings into view a broad spectrum of modern Asia that extends from East Asia, Southeast Asia, to South Asia, as well as into global communities of Western knowledge, practice, and power outside Asia.

The first section, “Good Foods,” focuses on how food norms and rules have been established in modern Asia. Ideas about good foods and good bodies shift at different moments, in some cases privileging local foods and knowledge systems, and in other cases privileging foreign foods and knowledge systems. The second section, “Bad Foods,” focuses on what makes foods bad and even dangerous. Bad foods are not simply unpleasant or undesirable for aesthetic or sensory reasons, but they can hinder the stability and development of persons and societies. Bad foods are symbolically polluting, as in the case of foreign foods that threaten not only traditional foods, but also the stability and strength of the nation and its people. The third section, “Moral Foods,” focuses on how themes of good versus bad are embedded in projects to make modern persons, subjects, and states, with specific attention to the ambiguities and malleability of foods and health. The malleability of moral foods provides unique opportunities for understanding Asian societies’ dynamic position within larger global flows, connections, and disconnections.

Collectively, the chapters raise intriguing questions about how foods and the bodies that consume them have been valued politically, economically, culturally, and morally, and about how those values originated and evolved. Consumers in modern Asia are not simply eating to satisfy personal desires or physiological needs, but they are also conscripted into national and global statemaking projects through acts of ingestion. Eating, then, has become about fortifying both the person and the nation.

Author / Editor information

Leung Angela Ki Che :

Angela Ki Che Leung is Director of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Chair Professor of History, and Joseph Needham-Philip Mao Professor at the University of Hong Kong.Caldwell Melissa L. :

Melissa L. Caldwell is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies.Ku Robert Ji-Song :

Robert Ji-Song Ku is associate professor of Asian and Asian American studies at Binghamton University of the State University of New York.Yano Christine R. :

Christine R. Yano is professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.Angela Ki Che Leung (Editor)
Angela Ki Che Leung is Director of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Chair Professor of History, and Joseph Needham-Philip Mao Professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Melissa L. Caldwell (Editor)
Melissa L. Caldwell is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Food and Health: Fortification and Modern Asian State Making Melissa L. Caldwell and Angela Ki Che Leung Open Access Download PDF	1
Part I. GOOD FOODS
1. Health, Wealth, and Solidarity: Rice as Self in Japan and Malaysia Francesca Bray Open Access Download PDF	23
2. Confronting the Cow: Soybean Milk and the Fashioning of a Chinese Dairy Alternative Jia-Chen Fu Open Access Download PDF	47
3. Moral Responsibility for Nutritional Milk: Motherhood and Breastfeeding in Modern Japan Izumi Nakayama Open Access Download PDF	66
4. Eating Well for Survival: Chinese Nutrition Experiments during World War II Michael Shiyung Liu Open Access Download PDF	89
Part II. BAD FOODS
5. The Good, the Bad, and the Toxic: Moral Foods in British India David David Arnold Open Access Download PDF	111
6. The Good, the Bad, and the Foreign: Trajectories of Three Grains in Modern South Korea Tae-Ho Kim Open Access Download PDF	130
7. Snacking, Health, Modernity: Moralizing Confections in Japan, 1890–1930 Tatsuya Mitsuda Open Access Download PDF	150
8. Bad Meat: Food and the Medicine of Modern Hygiene in Colonial Hong Kong Robert Peckham Open Access Download PDF	173
Part III. MORAL FOODS
9. Becoming Healthy: Changing Perception of Tea’s Effects on the Body Lawrence Zhang Open Access Download PDF	201
10. To Build or to Transform Vegetarian China: Two Republican Projects Angela Ki Che Leung Open Access Download PDF	221
11. From Civilizing Foods for Nourishing Life to a Global Traditional Chinese Medicine Dietetics: Changing Perceptions of Foods in Chinese Medicine Volker Scheid Open Access Download PDF	241
12. Good Food, Bad Bodies: Lactose Intolerance and the Rise of Milk Culture in China Hilary A. Smith Open Access Download PDF	262
Glossary Open Access Download PDF	285
Bibliography Open Access Download PDF	293
Contributors Open Access Download PDF	331
Index Open Access Download PDF	335

Language: English
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 356
Illustrations
- Other: 6 b&w illustrations, 1 map

eBook

Published: April 6, 2020
ISBN: 9780824879570