Paper long abstract:

The prospect of ageing societies in the Western world has brought issues to do with the health and welfare of older adults to the fore of political governance. With ageing often comes a certain amount of frailty and natural loss of muscle tissue, which for some lead to a need for public health care, perhaps on an everyday basis, as everyday activities become harder to manage alone. Concerns about the quality of life of older adults is therefore often articulated in pair with matters to do with food and diet, as one major aspect of age-related loss of muscle mass, as defined by nutrition science, has to do with not giving the body the nutrients it requires. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in a health intervention-program in Denmark, where older adults are eating (potential) muscle mass by way of a daily protein supplement, the paper discusses how public issues are tied together with personal bodies through food and eating. What are the political trajectories of nutrients that are aimed at specific bodies? And what becomes of the personal space of an eating body, when what is being eaten is also a public matter of concern?