Paper short abstract:

The US Department of Agriculture negotiates nutritional policy and advocacy in the face of proliferating nutritional measures and theories, which stand as enemies to a clear public message about nutritional health, behavior, and risk.

Paper long abstract:

The goal of targeted biomanagement encounters a particular quandary in the realm of nutrition. On the one hand, proliferating markers, measures, and goals are useful to scientific knowledge, the nutritional market, and the creation of the nutritional self - individuals who constantly monitor bodily health in terms of nutritional inputs. On the other hand, health educators and nutritional regulators seek to deliver a clear, consistent, science-based message to the general public about both consumption and monitoring: what we should eat; how much and when; how we know when failure is upon us; and what nutritional health failures mean. Proliferation and unruly complexity remain enemies to a clear public message, and thus lead to a messy nutritional self that cobbles together unhealthy habits into a narrative of goodness or a self-defeating self that can never hope to measure up.

This talk explores how the US Department of Agriculture, America's chief nutrition agency, negotiates nutritional policy and advocacy in the face of proliferating nutritional measures and theories, particularly as it attempts to police nutritional risk.