Nutrition Regulations in Times of Economic Crisis: The Case of Rational Scientific Nutrition Program in the 1980s Romania

• In Event: Global Dialogues in Music and Food: Nation-Building and the International in Romania and Moldova

Abstract

In June 1984, after more than five years of intense debate within the Romanian medical profession, the government adopted the so-called Rational Scientific Nutrition Program. It envisaged limiting daily consumption to an average of 2,800 calories, establishing clear rules for the recommended structure of the population's food intake, and implicitly revising the food production and distribution policy at the territorial level based on the demographic structure of the population and nutritional norms. The program drew on numerous medical statistics. The document mentioned, for example, that in the decades following the Second World War, the incidence of diet-related diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, gout, and cancer had risen to worrying levels, with the population in industrialized urban areas exposed to an increased risk of disease, the medium and long-term consequences of which are difficult to assess.
While numerous academic contributions made a case for reading the 1984 regulations from the angle of the 1980s economic crisis, little research has been done on the medical dimension of the program. My presentation will argue that the medical arguments of the program should be seen in the context of international debates about diet-related diseases in (post)industrial societies in the 1970s and 1980s. In this sense, I will show that the doctors' arguments were embedded in a broader discussion about the risks of the collapse of the socialist health system under the increase and diversification of diet-related diseases in the context of the deepening financial crisis, insufficient medical personnel and inadequate sanitary infrastructure.

Author

• Mara Marginean, Romanian Academy (Romania)