Nutritional Epidemiology of Chronic Disease and Defining “Healthy Diet”

This investigation follows the shift in US “healthy diet” guidance from prevention of nutritional deficiencies to prevention of chronic diseases. In particular, it shows how the Dietary Goals for Americans, first published in 1977, came to be based on the relatively new science of nutritional epidemiology of chronic disease, a methodology of statistical analysis whose most influential datasets relied primarily on white health professionals deeply invested in cultural norms surrounding dietary health. With this scientific authority, health differences among subpopulations came to be blamed on a lack of agency at best, if not poor judgment and personal failure.