Embodied Transformations: Standardizing Movement in Australian Metabolism Research of “Subsistence” and Wage-earning populations in Papua New Guinea

• In Event: Metabolic Relations, Subjects, Differences

Abstract

What does it mean for a body to metabolize a sweet potato diet? How can bodies be healthy if consuming scant amounts of protein in traditional diets? To answer such questions in the 1960s, Australian nutrition researchers standardized the movements of their research participants living in different economies (subsistence and wage) in Papua New Guinea in order to ascertain embodied differences--diet, sex, race--through metabolic processes. In their emphasis on this life process, through chemical analysis of expired air, urine and feces, the nutritionists studied the material and energy of particular bodies and these bodies’ relationship to consumption, transformation and destruction. As well, as the researchers compared town dwelling, wage earning protein consumers, with subsistence farming carbohydrate consumers, the researchers attempted to demonstrate differing embodiments of economic systems. They speculated that low protein diets could be healthy because of specially adapted gut flora. This paper provides a colonial policy context for the consideration of science’s role in validating modern or traditional foods.

Author

• Sandra Widmer, York University, Canada