Food Research: Nutritional Anthropology and Archaeological Methods

By Janet Chrzan and John Brett

Biocultural and archaeological research on food, past and present, often relies on very specific, precise, methods for data collection and analysis. These are presented here in a broad-based review. Individual chapters provide opportunities to think through the adoption of methods by reviewing the history of their use along with a discussion of research conducted using those methods. A case study from the author's own work is included in each chapter to illustrate why the methods were adopted in that particular case along with abundant additional resources to further develop and explore those methods.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Jan 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781785332883

Book preview

SECTION

    I

Introduction and Research Ethics

Introduction to the Three-Volume Set Research Methods for Anthropological Studies of Food and Nutrition

Janet Chrzan

These three volumes provide a comprehensive examination of research design and methods for studies in food and nutritional anthropology. Our goal is to provide a resource that bridges the biocultural or biological focus that traditionally characterized nutritional anthropology and the broad range of studies widely labeled as the anthropology of food, and food studies. The dramatic increase in all things food in popular and academic fields over the last two decades, accompanied by vast changes in technology, has generated a diverse and dynamic set of new methods and approaches to understanding the relationships and interactions people have with food. Earlier methods books tended toward the biocultural perspective of nutritional anthropology (e.g., Pelto, Pelto, and Messer 1989; Quandt and Ritenbaugh 1986) while more recent volumes have focused on food studies (e.g., MacBeth and MacClancy 2004; Belasco, 2008; Miller and Deutsch 2009) and applied work (e.g., den Hartog, Van Staveren and Brouwer 2006). The rapidly evolving field of food studies has generated a host of new perspectives and methods from a wide variety of academic backgrounds, many of which include anthropological theories and research designs. Because of the expansion of the field and the recent rise of food studies, we saw a need for a comprehensive reference volume to guide design and research across the full spectrum of food, diet, and nutrition studies.

The set has eight sections, each of which can almost stand alone as a food methods volume for a particular subdiscipline of anthropology. Just as nutritional anthropology and studies in the anthropology of food benefit from a four-field, contextualized approach, this volume assumes that research in food systems and nutrition relies upon four subdisciplines in order to effectively study the importance of food within human societies. Therefore, in addition to sections covering biological/nutritional, sociocultural, linguistic, and archeological anthropology methods, we have included sections on public health/applied nutrition, food studies, technology, and statistics. Each section is anchored by an introductory chapter that chronicles the history of the study of food within that area of research or practice and provides a comprehensive discussion of previous studies that have helped to define current work. By examining where we have been in relation to what we are doing and where we are going, each section seeks to define how current and future research can choose, adopt, and adapt the best methods to ensure high-quality outcomes. Each section is designed to provide readers with the background sources necessary for a fully comprehensive understanding of the use of methods for that area of study—a pointing to of studies and practitioners that have defined the field so that the reader has a good understanding of what is necessary to conduct respectable food research using methods germane to that area of anthropology. The individual chapters provide case studies and examples of how these methods have been used by other social scientists.

The chapters within each section form a complementary packet covering most of the major methods generally used by practitioners within each subdiscipline. We have included what might be called standard methods in the various subdisciplines (e.g., participant observation, ethnographic interviewing, excavation techniques, site surveying, etc.) but have expanded this focus with specialized techniques and approaches that have emerged or become popular more recently, such as digital storytelling, GIS, bone chemistry, and the use of biomarkers. The authors write about the methods and research design for their topics from their own research experience, outlining how they thought through their research questions, designs, data collection, and in some cases analysis. These volumes are meant to be a primary resource for research about food for not only the beginning student but also graduate students as well as research and teaching professionals who desire a better understanding of how their peers have tackled specific questions and problems. Each author follows a similar outline, with a short introduction to the method and its antecedents (covering key background/historical literature and essential readings where applicable) followed by current discussions and uses of the method, including the gray literature where applicable (e.g., material from the FANTA projects, FAO, Gates Foundation, etc.) and then discussion of analysis and research design considerations, concluding with the references cited and further readings. The sections on further reading include key historical volumes, reviews, monographs, software links, and so on for background or more in-depth exploration.

The eight sections were divided into three volumes by clustering areas of anthropological research that are linked conceptually and methodologically. The first volume contains ethics, nutritional anthropology and archeological methods, studies that are often biological in focus. The second volume is mostly sociocultural, covering classic social anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and food studies. We felt that research in food studies was more frequently rooted in social processes and disciplines such as history, journalism, and sociology and thus belonged amongst the allied anthropological fields. The final volume folds the more applied research paradigms together with public health anthropology and finishes with a section on technology and statistical analysis. Clearly, this last volume could be paired with one or the other volumes to provide a comprehensive overview of allied methods, as applied anthropology and technology are utilized in biological/archeological fields as well as socio-cultural, linguistic, and food studies research and practice. By breaking these three volumes into sections we hope to provide a comprehensive overview of methods related to food research, one that allows faculty, students, and researchers to purchase the volume(s) best suited to their subdiscipline and research interests.

A final word concerns research design. These volumes have no chapter dedicated to research design for two reasons: one, the topic is far too large to be adequately covered in one or even two chapters, and two, each chapter includes some aspect of research design. Clearly, research design will differ between biological and sociocultural studies, even if the philosophy of each is derived from classic anthropology theory. However, each author was asked to provide foundational examples of research design in their field in order to create a comprehensive core bibliography for research design and methods in food and nutritional anthropology and food studies. That bibliography is given here, along with a second bibliography for Rapid Assessment Procedures and Focused Ethnographic Studies.

Food/Nutritional Anthropology and Food Studies: Research Design and Methods

Albala, Ken, ed. 2013. Routledge Handbook to Food Studies. New York: Routledge.

Axinn, William, and Lisa Pearce. 2006. Mixed Method Data Collection Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Belasco, Warren. 2008. Food: The Key Concepts. New York and Oxford: Berg.

Bernard, H. Russell. 2011. Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, 5th ed. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.

den Hartog, Adel P., Wija A. van Staveren, and Inge D. Brouwer. 2006. Food Habits and Consumption in Developing Countries. Wageningen, The Netherlands: Wageningen Academic Publishers.

Dufour, Darna L., and Nicolette I. Teufel. 1995. Minimum Data Sets for the Description of Diet and Measurement of Food Intake and Nutritional Status. In The Comparative Analysis of Human Societies: Toward Common Standards for Data Collection and Reporting, ed. Emilio F. Moran, 97–128. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Edge, John T. 2013. The Larder: Food Studies Methods from the American South. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.

Gibson, Rosalind. 2005. Principles of Nutritional Assessment, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Johnston, Francis, ed. 1987. Nutritional Anthropology. New York: Alan R. Liss.

Kedia, Satish, and John van Willigen. 2005. Applied Anthropology: Domains of Application. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Kiefer, Christie W. 2006. Doing Health Anthropology: Research Methods for Community Assessment and Change. New York: Springer.

Macbeth, Helen, and Jeremy MacClancy. 2004. Researching Food Habits: Methods and Problems. New York: Berghahn Books.

Margetts, Barrie, and Michael Nelson. 1997. Design Concepts in Nutritional Epidemiology, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mead, Margaret. 1945. Manual for the Study of Food Habits. Washington, DC: National Research Council.

Miller, Jeff, and Jonathan Deutsch. 2009. Food Studies: an Introduction to Research Methods. Oxford and New York: Berg.

Murcott, Anne, Warren Belasco, and Peter Jackson, eds. 2013. The Handbook of Food Research. London and New York: Bloomsbury.

Pellett, P. L. 1987. Problems and Pitfalls in the Assessment of Human Nutritional Status. In Food and Evolution: Toward a Theory of Human Food Habits, ed. Marvin Harris and Eric Ross, 163-180. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Pelto, Gretel, Pertti Pelto, and Ellen Messer. 1989. Research Methods in Nutritional Anthropology. Tokyo: United Nations University.

Pelto, Pertti. 2013. Applied Ethnography: Guidelines for Field Research. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

Pelto, Pertti, and Gretel Pelto. 1978. Anthropological Research: The Structure of Inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Quandt, Sara, and Cheryl Ritenbaugh, eds. 1986. Training Manual in Nutritional Anthropology. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association.

Scrimshaw, Susan C. M., and Elena Hurtado. 1987. Rapid Assessment Procedures for Nutrition and Primary Health Care: Anthropological Approaches to Improving Programme Effectiveness. Tokyo: United Nations University and New York: UNICEF.

Shamoo, A., and D. Resnik. 2009. Responsible Conduct of Research, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sobo, Elisa J. 2009. Culture and Meaning in Health Services Research. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

Sutton, Mark Q., Kristin D. Sobolik, and Jill K. Gardner. 2010. Paleonutrition. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Thursby, Jacqueline S. 2008. Foodways and Folklore. Westport, CT: Greenwood Folklore Handbooks.

Ulijaszek, Stanley. 2005. Human Energetics in Biological Anthropology. Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology 16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ulijaszek, Stanley, and S. S. Strickland. 1993. Nutritional Anthropology: Biological Perspectives. Littlehampton: Smith-Gordon.

VanderWerker, Amber M., and Tanya M. Peres. 2010. Integrating Zooarchaeology and Paleoethnobotany: A Consideration of Issues, Methods and Cases. New York: Springer.

Weiss, William, and Paul Bolton. 2000. Training in Qualitative Research Methods for NGOs and PVOs: A Trainer’s Guide to Strengthening Program Planning and Evaluation. Baltimore, MD: Center for Refugee and Disaster Studies, Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/center-for-refugee-and-disaster-response/publications_tools/publications/_pdf/TQR/tg_introduction.pdf.

Rapid Assessment Procedures and Focused Ethnographic Studies

Beebe, James. 2001. Rapid Assessment Process: An Introduction. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.

———. 2014. Rapid Qualitative Inquiry: A Field Guide to Team-Based Assessment. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Blum L., P. J. Pelto, G. H. Pelto, & H. V. Kuhnlein. 1997. Community Assessment of Natural Food Sources of Vitamin A. Boston: International Nutrition Foundation.

Catholic Relief Services. n.d. Rapid Rural Appraisal/Participatory Rural Appraisal Manual. http://www.crsprogramquality.org/storage/pubs/me/rrapra.pdf.

Catley, Andrew, John Burns, Davit Abebe, and Omeno Suji. 2008. Participatory Impact Assessment: A Guide for Practitioners. Feinstein International Center, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University (in English, Spanish, or French). http://fic.tufts.edu/assets/Part_Impact_10_21_08V2.pdf.

Chaiken, Miriam S. 2011. Using Qualitative Methods in Save the Children Programs and Research: A Training Manual. Washington, DC: Save the Children.

Chaiken, Miriam S., J. Richard Dixon, Colette Powers, and Erica Wetzler, 2009. Asking the Right Questions: Community-Based Strategies to Combat Hunger. NAPA Bulletin 32(1): 42–54.

GERANDO: Community Based Disaster Risk Management; Facilitator’s Manual. 2011. http://www.wvi.org/disaster-risk-reduction-and-community-resilience/publication/gerando-community-based-risk-reduction.

Gittelsohn, J., P. J. Pelto, M. E. Bentley, K. Bhattacharyya, and J. Russ. 1998. Ethnographic Methods to Investigate Women’s Health. Boston: International Nutrition Foundation.

Gove, S., and G. H. Pelto. 1994. Focused Ethnographic Studies in the WHO Programme for the Control of Acute Respiratory Infections. Medical Anthropology 15: 409–24.

Pelto, Gretel H., and Margaret Armar-Klemesu. 2014. Focused Ethnographic Study of Infant and Young Child Feeding 6–23 Months: Behaviors, Beliefs, Contexts and Environments. Manual for Conducting the Study, Analyzing the Results, and Writing a Report. Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). http://www.hftag.org/resources/all-resources/ (select Demand Generation for Home Fortification, then Focused Ethnographic Study).

Pelto, G. H., M. Armar-Klemesu, J. Siekmann, and D. Schofield. 2013. The Focused Ethnographic Study: Assessing the Behavioral and Local Market Environment for Improving the Diets of Infants and Young Children 6 to 23 Months Old and Its Use in Three Countries. Maternal & Child Nutrition 9: 35–46.

Pelto, G. H., and S. Gove. 1994. Developing a Focused Ethnographic Study for the WHO Acute Respiratory Infection Control Programme. In Rapid Assessment Procedures: Qualitative Methodologies for Planning and Evaluation of Health Related Programmes, ed. N. S. Scrimshaw and G. R. Gleason, 215–26. Boston: International Nutrition Foundation.

Scrimshaw, Nevin S., and Gary R. Gleason, eds. 1992. Rapid Assessment Procedures: Qualitative Methodologies for Planning and Evaluation of Health Related Programmes. Boston: International Nutrition Foundation for Developing Countries (INFDC). http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/food2/UIN08E/UIN08E00.HTM.

Scrimshaw, S., and E. Hurtado. 1987. Rapid Assessment Procedures for Nutrition and Primary Health Care. Tokyo: UNU.

Smith, Madeleine, Geoff Heinrich, Linda Lovick, and David Vosburg. 2010. Livelihoods in Malawi: A Rapid Livelihoods Assessment Using the Integral Human Development Conceptual Framework. http://www.crsprogramquality.org/storage/pubs/general/Malawi-Assessment-low.pdf.

Introduction to Food Research: Nutritional Anthropology and Archaeological Methods

Janet Chrzan

Volume and Section Overviews: Introduction and Sections I and II

Section I: Introduction and Ethics

This volume, the first in the three-volume set Research Methods for Anthropological Studies of Food and Nutrition, begins with a discussion of the volume followed by a chapter on research ethics by Sharon Devine and John Brett. Their chapter will be reproduced in all three volumes because all researchers must understand ethics, and consideration of the ethics of methods used to collect, analyze, store, and publish must be an essential and initial element of the planning of any project. In their chapter they expand the idea of research ethics beyond publication and permissions to include the ethics of study design, recruitment, enrollment, and obtaining informed consent. They present a brief history of the research problems that led to current ethics regulation requirements as well as a primer on the principles that guide ethical research: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. They conclude with two short case studies highlighting application of these ethical principles in hypothetical food studies.

Section II: Nutritional Anthropology

Section II covers nutritional anthropology using a biocultural approach that can be considered the historical mother framework of nutritional anthropology and underlies almost all basic and applied research. Though new frameworks and perspectives have emerged over the last two decades, the biocultural perspective continues to influence much of the research in food and nutritional anthropology. The chapters in this section cover classic topics within the field, including anthropometry, biological measurements, physical activity and energy expenditure, and dietary analyses on the individual and group levels. Darna Dufour and Barbara Piperata provide an overview of this section along with an introduction to nutritional anthropology methods and study design. They explicitly situate such research as biocultural: it seeks to understand how biological and cultural forces work together to channel human food use and nutritional status. They review the design of three studies, considering the kinds of questions asked, the type of data needed to answer the questions, and the methods used, and then evaluate the strengths and weakness of each design. Study design—as the conceptual starting point and first potential stumbling block—is probably one of the most difficult aspects of research, so this chapter will be a valuable addition to the canon on biocultural research.

In the next chapter, Leslie Sue Lieberman addresses that other mainstay of nutritional anthropology: body composition and anthropometry. She discusses the background theory and design protocols for composition studies and provides a comprehensive overview of how to assess nutritional status, growth and developmental patterns in body mass, composition, size, and shape. Lieberman also discusses the use of composition studies in nutritional anthropology for surveillance and monitoring of populations, assessing the impact of nutritional and other types of health, sanitation, economic, and educational interventions, and describes their use in predicting risk for acute and chronic illnesses and death. Finally, she reviews the many websites and materials that provide instruction on these methods as well as the use of reference data sets and standards in interpreting measurements for both individuals and populations. Mark Jenike then focuses on measuring energy expenditure. While this has long been a favorite and even foundational focus in nutritional anthropology, technological advances have introduced a wealth of possible devices and analytical options that make measuring physical activity and energy use both easier and more perplexing. Jenike presents an overview of key concepts and established methods for measuring total daily energy expenditure in humans, and reviews currently available devices for recording physical activity and energy expenditure among free-living populations.

As a rational companion piece to those two assessment methods, the following chapter by Andrea Wiley examines dietary analysis methods. Dietary data are a core part of almost all research in nutritional anthropology, whether biological or biocultural, yet inaccuracies in data collection and analysis are common and caused by both random error and collection bias. Wiley describes likely sources of error with self-report methods for measuring food intake as well as effective observational methods for field and/or community-based research, and compares the benefits of each method and the kinds of research questions to which each is suited. She tackles food frequency questionnaires and compositional tables, and reviews methods for assessing nutritional status, including biomarkers, anthropometric indices, and reference standards. This chapter, when paired with Leslie Sue Leiberman’s, provides researchers at all levels with up-to-the minute reviews of the latest incarnations of core methods for dietary health assessment.

The final three chapters in this section cover applied nutritional assessment, primate studies, and measurement of commensality. Sera Young and Emily Tuthill contribute a chapter on using ethnography for evaluation in public health nutrition. While it may be natural for an anthropologist to use ethnographic techniques, it is not natural for many people who practice public health, public health nutrition or community nutrition. In this chapter they describe why and how to bring ethnographic methods into program planning and assessment. They describe how ethnography can be incorporated into public health projects, and discuss doing so with a case study on infant feeding. They then analyze how core concepts of ethnographic work, such as ecology, biocultural modeling and an emic/etic framework, can bring new insights to programs for infant and young child feeding practices. Their conclusion provides examples of application and evaluation using ethnographic and mixed methods in programming for public health nutrition as well as a set of questions that researchers and program designers will want to ask prior to beginning a new protocol. Their methodological look at public health ethnography is destined to be core reading for anyone planning to implement a program for nutrition improvement, especially in infants and children.

In a departure from human studies but still within biological/biocultural nutritional anthropology, the next chapter, contributed by Jessica Rothman and Caley Johnson, is about methods for collecting data on primate diet. They discuss the assessment of primate diets, focusing on how to collect and process primate foods and measure the content of macro- and micronutrients as well as secondary compounds. To conclude, they reappraise the methodologies that inform the various frameworks for understanding primate diets and foraging patterns. The section’s final chapter explores how anthropologists and others have measured commensality in relation to health, well-being, and social function variables. Here Janet Chrzan outlines the theory, methods, and history of research about social eating, discussing how different disciplines conceive of the variables that contextualize commensality, and what outcomes each deems important. She divides the studies into three broad categories—social facilitation, correlation, and direct connections between commensality and dependent outcome—and discusses the strengths, weaknesses and methods of each. She concludes with a case study from her own research of maternal and child health and provides tables that itemize the methods used in current research in this area. Together, these seven chapters cover almost the entire range of methods used to collect and analyze the human and nonhuman primate diets that are the basis of most biocultural research. They thus serve as an excellent and up-to-date primer on conducting food and nutritional research in the field.

Section III: Archaeological Study of Food and Food Habits

The study of past food use and habits has changed greatly in the last two decades as new discoveries and technologies have enhanced our understanding of the archaeology of food and increased the means by which to collect, analyze, and understand past diet. The essays in this section cover all aspects of past diet retrieval and analysis, from identification of food remains (through taphonomy, zooarchaeology, archaeobotany, lithic analysis, and palynology) to analysis of the indirect evidence of diet, such as bone chemistry, structural analysis, dental microwear, and population health.

At the outset of Section III, Patti Jo Wright provides an introduction to methods in archeological research, highlighting that compared to past studies, current research benefits from greater sophistication in research methods and from a holistic, integrated approach that allows for analysis of many lines of evidence. She describes the kinds of evidence that can now be collected, from old standards (bones, seeds, etc.) to trace residuals of lipids, DNA, and isotopes, and discusses the methods and techniques used to sample, collect, process, identify, and quantify these remains. She also includes a discussion of research design and several case studies to encourage readers to think about how they think through their research. In the next chapter Wright focuses her attention on the retrieval of plant remains and the various approaches (macroscopic, microscopic, chemical, and molecular) to analysis of these data. She then examines research design, consideration of research questions, and biases in preservation, and concludes with a discussion of current perspectives on research fundamentals for the study of plant remains.

Bethany Turner and Sarah Livengood contribute a chapter on diet reconstruction via bioarchaeology and human osteology, providing a philosophical approach to the subject and a thorough overview of current methods and research design. They point out that these methods are direct—they indicate exactly what past humans ate and how their health was affected by diet—rather than indirect, that is, reliant on inferred relationships between human eating patterns and environmental evidence such as pollen, soil, or artifact assemblages. Situating their focus in microscopic and chemical studies, they cover the theoretical issues involved in these analyses as well as practical concerns and basic methodologies for dental microscopy, stable isotope analysis, and trace element analysis. They assert that when bioarcheological studies of this sort are analyzed in relation to other (direct and indirect) data, a wide range of questions about social organization and resource use can be inferred. Alan Goodman next tackles a difficult task: the assessment of nutritional status in past populations. He reviews current issues in the study of nutritional stress in archeological studies and examines how stress indicators in bone and teeth (linear bone growth, linear enamel hypoplasias, and porotic hyperostosis) indicate the functional consequences of nutritional deprivation. He reminds us that stress indicators linked to bone and teeth can be difficult to interpret because they are amorphous in timing, duration, and cause and may obscure the reasons for morbidity and mortality. Regardless, paleo-nutritional studies have provided many insights into human social changes including the transition from gathering-hunting to horticulture.

In the following chapter, Katherine Moore also examines bones, but in this case those of animals found in the assemblages associated with past human diet. She highlights that transitions in human social organization have been identified via analysis of animal and food remains, including the domestication of animals, changes in foraging patterns, and the origins of stratified societies. In her chapter she describes how bones and other animal remains are used to understand past cuisine and the nutritional consequences of past diets, and examines how taphonomy, the changes that occur to bones and other assemblages after death, can affect interpretation. She also discusses how zooarchaeologists infer dietary intake from animal remains using models from social anthropology, ecology, and veterinary anatomy. She concludes with an analysis of how archeologists can use the full archeological assemblage—what is present, what is missing, how the bones were butchered and cooked—to derive a picture of past human diet, especially in reference to the social habits of our species.

In the next chapter of this section, Janet Monge discusses how evolution and foodways are connected and how they can be studied together to better understand how food use may have influenced evolutionary change. She identifies a central question: Can an understanding of the diet of our ancestors give us insights into modern human diets and the adequacy of these diets for the maintenance of long-term health? To answer this question, she provides background on five stages of human evolution: generalized omnivory, shifts in food types due to hominid ancestors’ movement into novel environments, the development of social eating and cooking in conjunction with the integration of higher quality protein from animal sources, the expansion of agriculture and the domestication of animals, and the now globalized food trade that introduces human populations to a larger range of potential comestibles. She details the evidence for each stage and points the reader to studies that define good practices for research in these areas.

The final chapter in this section, by Karen Bescherer Metheny, pulls together how we know what we think we know, how we found the evidence, how it has been analyzed, and appropriate inferences that can be drawn about diet and evolution. It is a fitting conclusion, allowing us to think through the various processes that are used to create, analyze, and report our biocultural data. Metheny points out that research in past foodways is informed by experimental archeology as well as ethnoarcheology; the former shifts research paradigms from inductive to deductive methods of reasoning. Past archeological methods more typically relied on the description of observations to lead to inferences about behavior, the classic inductive model. Newer archeological methods propose specific hypotheses which are tested using the evidence uncovered. Similarly, ethnoarcheology allows researchers to propose specific questions about behavior and to test if living human groups (with cultures presumed similar to those of the past) create similar assemblages of artifacts. Metheny then provides examples of research using experimental archeology and ethnoarcheology, and analyzes how such studies lead to increased understanding of past foodways.

Volume One of Research Methods for Anthropological Studies of Food And Nutrition is designed to provide readers with a grounding in the research, theory and methods that allow for data collection and analysis in the biocultural anthropology of food. This approach allows for students and advanced researchers to think through the full range of anthropological query relating to biological and archaeological studies; Volumes Two and Three cover sociological, linguistic, and applied research.

Research Ethics in Food Studies

Sharon Devine and John Brett

Why Ethics Are Important

Imagine that someone approaches you at a shopping center and asks if you would mind answering a few questions about what you eat. You answer the questions—what time you usually eat; how many meals you typically eat in a day; the types of foods you eat; and whether you consider yourself of average weight. Later you find out a research study has published your answers together with your photograph. The analysis suggests that you are overweight and that your nutritional intake could explain your deviation from ideal weight. Most people in this situation would be surprised and perhaps angry that by answering a few generic questions they wound up enrolled in a research study, and that personally identifiable information was in the public domain as a result.

Our research results are only as good as the information provided by those we study, and a trusting and respectful relationship is the basis for obtaining in-depth and nuanced information. Therefore compliance with ethical principles and the regulatory structures that support them should be a professional virtue of researchers (DuBois 2004). The question is, how do we ensure that research is conducted ethically? First, we must be aware of the historical background of ethical lapses that led to the development of principles embodied in research regulations. Second, we must incorporate ethical principles into our research designs from the very beginning.

History of Ethical Lapses in Research

A lengthy history of research studies raising ethical concerns led up to the adoption of federal regulations for protection of human subjects in the United States. A favorite argument of social scientists is that federal regulations governing research were designed to curb biomedical researchers (Heimer and Petty 2010; Hammersley 2009; Hamilton 2005). However, the impetus for ethical principles and regulations is not solely a result of ill-advised medical studies. A brief description of key episodes in the history of ethical lapses makes clear that ethical concerns apply as much to social science as to medical studies. Each of the examples described in this chapter has been explored in depth, and at the end of the chapter references are provided for those who wish to learn more. In hindsight concerns with these studies might appear obvious, but the facts, context, and nuances of each are often complex, sometimes contradictory, and documentation may be sketchy or lost to history. The purpose of this list is not to condemn so much as to present a number of studies, done over a long period of time, from which lessons for contemporary ethics have been extracted.

• Reed Commission/Yellow Fever (1900–1901). This research occurred as part of the U.S. occupation of Cuba after the Spanish-American War. Yellow fever was devastating occupation forces at the time, and it was unclear how it was transmitted. Suspected modes included contact with an infected person, contact with infected objects such as clothing or blankets, and transmission via mosquitoes. Army personnel and other volunteers were offered $100 in gold to participate in the study and be exposed to blankets used by infected persons, transfused with blood from an infected person, or bitten by