Document Type
Article
Abstract
This article investigates evolving expectations for Chinese individuals to clean, cook, eat, and nourish in their private kitchens, and how certain diseases became urgent touchstones for the change in public health priorities. Reformists promoted personal responsibility and popular interest in kitchen and dietary hygiene, which increased as Chinese audiences became exposed to globally- circulating ideas of sanitation and nutrition in individual homes. Furthermore, this occurred in tandem with increased institutionalized government developments for improved infrastructure. This article also highlights Chinese participation in the transnational dietary science movement of the early twentieth century, as reformists developed methods for beriberi and tuberculosis prevention that drew on both “traditional wisdom” and “modern science.” By the 1940s, nutrition had become the corporeal counterpart of kitchen hygiene, and the pursuit of kitchen hygiene had become a way in which every individual could easily and patriotically participate in progress.
Citation Information
Yu, Sarah Xia. "From Sanitation to Soybeans: Kitchen Hygiene and Nutritional Nationalism in Republican China, 1911–1945." Asia Pacific Perspectives 17, No. 1 (2021) : 6-37