Eating Society: Science and Politics of Food from Individual to Planetary Health

(Same as Food Studies M136 and Society and Genetics M136.) Questions of food and health are both individual and social. Students gain tools for understanding relationships between individual eaters, medicine, and social organization of food production and processing through set of research frameworks newly emergent in range of social and health sciences. Topics include individual and social ramifications of microbiome science; understanding how human gut microbes and health are shaped by pasteurization, processing, and food safety practices; One Health approaches that encompass human and animal health, discussing examples such as antibiotic resistance and emerging infectious disease as effects of large-scale agriculture; planetary health frameworks that link individual human metabolic health to issues of sustainable agriculture, for example how pesticides and fertilizers tie diets to environments; and resilience of cultural food systems in face of environmental pollution as issue of reproductive health.

Letter grading.