The emergence of nutritional anthropology in the 1970s has tended to replicate the ‘two cultures’ of an anthropology divided methodologically and by theories into social and biological sciences.
In nutritional sciences, food is mainly viewed in terms of its nutrient composition and effects upon the body’s metabolic processes and health status. In 1976, Freedman has defined nutritional anthropology as ‘the study of the interrelationship between diet and culture and their mutual influence upon one another’.
It is methodologically both processual and scientific because it explores the processes by which humans use of food to meet requirements of biological and behavioral functioning and science that’s studies the chemical processing and biological use of food.
Primary interest include food and culture connections, variation for optimal diets, disease variations and the social patterns, culture and roles within food-getting and distribution behaviors that determine access to food.
Nutritional status is one of the major contributing variables affecting health and disease thus nutritional anthropology and medical anthropology overlap significantly.
Nutritional anthropology
