Dietetics and the multidimensionality of food

Dietetics is inextricably linked to its object: food in relation to health and disease. In people’s everyday lives, food is extremely multidimensional. The health dimension is strongly emphasized in current dietetic literature. However, fields like anthropology, psychology, ethics, and sociology have yielded rich insights into the importance of other dimensions of food that, explicitly or implicitly, play a role in people’s lives. Examples include the cultural identity of food, the morality of food choices, where we buy our food and who we eat with, habitual practices and our own experience-based beliefs regarding healthy and unhealthy food.

It is within this complex field of interrelated and sometimes clashing food dimensions that dietitians work. This PhD-project focusses on how dietitians address malnutrition among community-dwelling elderly. Malnutrition in this group continues to be a major and often overlooked problem in contemporary societies. The overall goal of the project is to add to the dietetic care of this group.

To reach this goal, a large ethnographic study will be conducted of everyday practices of dietitians regarding malnourished elderly and regarding involved other health professionals, as well as informal caregivers. Based on this ethnographic study, a tool that will help dietitians in their everyday management of malnutrition in the elderly will be developed, piloted and evaluated.

This research is funded by a NWO Doctoral Grant for Teachers.