Beyond the ‘raw’ and the ‘cooked’: a history of fortified blended foods

Abstract

This paper offers a history of fortified blended foods, a humanitarian product that first emerged in the middle of the twentieth century. Tracing its emergence and development, the paper argues that this food was the product of four key historical trends: (i) the search for a compact and efficient diet in the wake of the Second World War; (ii) the high modernist movement that saw science and technology as a way to improve on traditional foods; (iii) the state-led industrialisation of the development decades oriented around the notion of a worldwide 'protein gap'; and (iv) the legacy of 'productivist' agriculture in the United States, generating massive surpluses in certain crops that had to be adapted creatively for a multitude of uses. The paper positions fortified blended foods in these broader historical processes, and asserts that humanitarian techniques are very much rooted in cultural, political, and social conditions.

The characteristic features of emergency food in national level natural disaster response programs: A qualitative study

“…It is also related to the concept of food as a symbol of cultural, religious, and psychological norms for the people affected by the crisis. [ 13 ]…”

“…[ 12 ] However, Scott-Smith in an analysis mentioned the serious challenge of formulas against their overall acceptance is their unfavorable taste. [ 13 ]…”

Rethinking access: how humanitarian technology governance blurs control and care

“…Given the inability of such conceptualisations to account for important aspects of contemporary humanitarian governance, we propose instead to begin our analysis from a conception of technology as capable of ‘agentic capacity’ (Coole, ) and of generating constitutive effects that we need to factor in when thinking about the role of technology in humanitarian governance. Accordingly, in an effort to develop an analytical framework more attuned to the politics of humanitarian technology governance, we combine Grégoire Chamayou's insights about ‘vile bodies’ and experimentation with insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS) (notably Sheila Jasanoff) and the more recent humanitarian materiality literature (Redfield, ; Scott‐Smith, , ). We aim, by combining these insights, to provide an analytical framework through which to unpack processes and productive effects at the stages where technology and data enable an expansion of governance (control) and concurrent questions about how best to guard this accessibility against the risk that arises when or if these data would be used for other purposes than humanitarian protection.…”

“…Scholars have documented how, in the colonial periphery, various new medical technologies (including vaccination techniques) have been tested in experiments that exposed colonial subjects to insecurities and harmful side effects (Petryna, , ). Looking at experimental uses of new technology in contemporary humanitarian settings, we see trials of unapproved medical innovations as well as testing of a range of technological innovations, from piloting of mobile health platforms (Tomlinson et al, ) to trials of ‘fortified blended foods’ (Scott‐Smith, , ), genetically modified foods, and other biometric technologies (Jacobsen, , ). These interventions are often justified on the basis of improvements in ‘care', even as their effectiveness is often mixed.…”

“How Little Progress”? A Political Economy of Postcolonial Nutrition

“…PL480 initially aimed to dispose of surplus commodities either in the form of humanitarian assistance or as subsidized food for friendly countries. However, as NGOs began running autonomous food distribution programmes during the 1960s, PL480 also found a ready market for fortified and blended foods made from soy or skim milk and built on modernist and technical approaches to malnutrition (Scott‐Smith ).…”