ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents contributions from a wide variety of perspectives; nutrition professionals and lay people, academics and activists, adults and youth, indigenous, Chicana/o, Latina/o, Environmentalist, Feminist and more. It indicates many nutrition scholars and practitioners already recognize limitations of nutritional science, and this recognition has led to more varied and variable practice. It specific facts and guides may come and go, hegemonic nutrition rests on the assumption that food, and thus the food-body relationship can be standardized. The book builds from the first point; hegemonic nutrition tends toward reductionist understandings of nourishment. Hegemonic nutrition follows closely from the above: hegemonic nutrition is fundamentally decontextualized. It follows closely once again due in part to its bracketing off of wider cultural, ecological, and social contexts, the knowledge systems upon which hegemonic nutrition is based is deeply hierarchical.
