Food Matters: Changing Dimensions of Science and Practice in the Nutrition Profession

Abstract

Objective

This qualitative research describes some of the social organization of the American nutrition profession set in place by an apparent competition between two kinds of knowledge—a science-based knowledge and another more experimental knowledge drawn from practice.

Design

The methodological approach is constructivist and uses the theoretical framework of sociologist Dorothy Smith.

Subjects and Settings

Multiple data sources include: interviews and bibliographic data from 23 purposefully selected subjects who taught or studied in a graduate-level Nutrition Program at Teacher College, Columbia University from 1937 to 1992; administrative reports of the Program; faculty writings; dissertations approved by the program; the author's twenty-five years of experience in the nutrition profession; and a series of diagrams drawn to interpret and describe the data. Subjects recounted their varied professional experience during the 55-year period as a part of a larger study.

Main Outcome Measures

The research traces changes in the relationship between nutrition science and practice as shaped by underlying sciences (food, agriculture, nutrition and health), related industries (food and health care), and culturally-bound gender ideals.

Data Analysis

Data analysis was based on recommended strategies for an inductive, interpretive, ethnographic case study.

Results

Subjects identified three forms of the construct of food—as nutrients, as marketable products, and as nurturance. This research suggests that the nurturing properties of food, the knowledge this generates, and the practitioners associated with nurturance are vulnerable and risk disappearance inside the profession, due to a history of resistance to this aspect of our discipline.

Implications

The author recommends collaborative research between nutritionists and historians, sociologists and others to bring forth a more critical history of this profession.