This dissertation project analyzes the formation of dietary norms in the context of scientific-political interaction in France (1750-1850), focusing on a number of institutional sites, including hospitals, soup kitchens, the military, and prisons. Three central issues anchor the study of these institutions: the emergence of nutrition as a field of formalized and authoritative knowledge, responding to social problems but rooted in chemical and physiological experimentation; growing state intervention in dietary matters, as government officials and scientists used each other to increase their own legitimacy; and the participation and resistance of the general population and institutional populations in matters of changing dietary practices and nutritional knowledge.
