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The “Malnutrition Syndrome”: African Diets, Nutrition Science, and Colonial Research in Southern Africa

The “Malnutrition Syndrome”: African Diets, Nutrition Science, and Colonial Research in Southern... Review Article The “Malnutrition Syndrome”: African Diets, Nutrition Science, and Colonial Research in Southern Africa Starving on a Full Stomach: The Triumph of Cultural Racism in Modern South Africa, by Diana Wylie University of Virginia Press. 2001. xiii + 320 pp. ISBN 0-8139-2047-7 Feeding Families: African Realities and British Ideas of Nutrition and Development in Early Colonial Africa, by Cynthia Brantley Heinemann. 2002. xix + 218 pp. ISBN 0-325-07081-4 Bryson Nkhoma https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7449-6959 University of Free State, South Africa bgnkhoma18@gmail.com Since the early 1860s, there has been growing academic interest in African diets and the nutrition of colonial southern Africa. Early travellers, missionaries, and explorers were the first to study these practices. To attract European settlement and investments in the region, these white pioneers commented favourably about African diets and nutrition. By contrast, the colonial historiography which emerged from the 1890s was dismissive of African nutrition, arguing that African diets were monotonous and less nutritious. This thinking became dominant in the early 1920s when European scholars, influenced 1 D. Livingstone and C. Livingstone, Narratives of an Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries and the Discovery of the Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858–1864 (London: John Murray, 1865); J. Buchannan, The http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png African Historical Review Taylor & Francis

The “Malnutrition Syndrome”: African Diets, Nutrition Science, and Colonial Research in Southern Africa

Nkhoma, Bryson
African Historical Review , Volume OnlineFirst: 12 – Mar 9, 2023
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The “Malnutrition Syndrome”: African Diets, Nutrition Science, and Colonial Research in Southern Africa

Abstract

Review Article The “Malnutrition Syndrome”: African Diets, Nutrition Science, and Colonial Research in Southern Africa Starving on a Full Stomach: The Triumph of Cultural Racism in Modern South Africa, by Diana Wylie University of Virginia Press. 2001. xiii + 320 pp. ISBN 0-8139-2047-7 Feeding Families: African Realities and British Ideas of Nutrition and Development in Early Colonial Africa, by Cynthia Brantley Heinemann. 2002. xix + 218 pp. ISBN 0-325-07081-4 Bryson Nkhoma...
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2023 Unisa Press
ISSN
1753-2531
eISSN
1753-2523
DOI
10.1080/17532523.2022.2153439
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Review Article The “Malnutrition Syndrome”: African Diets, Nutrition Science, and Colonial Research in Southern Africa Starving on a Full Stomach: The Triumph of Cultural Racism in Modern South Africa, by Diana Wylie University of Virginia Press. 2001. xiii + 320 pp. ISBN 0-8139-2047-7 Feeding Families: African Realities and British Ideas of Nutrition and Development in Early Colonial Africa, by Cynthia Brantley Heinemann. 2002. xix + 218 pp. ISBN 0-325-07081-4 Bryson Nkhoma https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7449-6959 University of Free State, South Africa bgnkhoma18@gmail.com Since the early 1860s, there has been growing academic interest in African diets and the nutrition of colonial southern Africa. Early travellers, missionaries, and explorers were the first to study these practices. To attract European settlement and investments in the region, these white pioneers commented favourably about African diets and nutrition. By contrast, the colonial historiography which emerged from the 1890s was dismissive of African nutrition, arguing that African diets were monotonous and less nutritious. This thinking became dominant in the early 1920s when European scholars, influenced 1 D. Livingstone and C. Livingstone, Narratives of an Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries and the Discovery of the Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858–1864 (London: John Murray, 1865); J. Buchannan, The

Journal

African Historical Review – Taylor & Francis

Published: Mar 9, 2023

References

  • Why there was no Famine Following the 1992 Southern Africa Drought?
  • ‘We are What We Eat’: Nutrition, African Diets and the Colonial State in Colonial Malawi, 1920s–1960
  • The British Nutrition Transition and its Histories
  • The “Sanitation Syndrome”: Bubonic Plague and Urban Native Policy in the Cape Colony, 1900–1909