The Cambridge History and Culture of Food and Nutrition Project represents the first effort to provide in one reference work a global survey of nutrition (and malnutrition) from hunter-gatherers, through the beginnings of agriculture and animal husbandry, to the policy issues of the present. It is, therefore, a major interdisciplinary (and international) undertaking. It will involve archaeologists, anthropologists, agronomists economists, geographers, and medical nutritional scientists as well as historians, from many countries. Researchers concerned with the political, economic, social, and demographic histories of the various parts of the globe are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of adding a biological dimension to their research. Vital to that dimension is a history of what the peoples of those parts ate and did not eat. Nutritional status is one of the most important variables in the general outlook of a people, their health their decisions about marriage and childbearing, indeed in almost every aspect of their demographic experience. Yet many of the complexities of nutrition, nutritional chemistry and nutritional disease are difficult for the non-specialist to grasp. The proposed project is aimed at a broad, interdisciplinary group of social scientists and humanists who do not have technical expertise in nutrition or medicine; it is intended to assist them in elaborating such a dimension within their own research. In addition the project will contain much of interest and importance for policy makers concerned with human health in both the developed and developing world.
