What’s The Cultural History Of The Calorie? with Dr. Athia N. Choudhury

Getting Better with Jonathan Van Ness

Sony Music

Society & Culture, Comedy, Education, Self-improvement

4.9 • 21.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2023

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What’s in a calorie? So much more than what you see on a box of cereal or a restaurant menu. The story of the nutritional calorie is the story of U.S. empire, dating back to the late 1800s when government agencies used it to determine just how little they could feed people in the military, prisons, asylums, and Native boarding schools. This week, Dr. Athia N. Choudhury joins Jonathan to discuss the history and politics of the calorie, and explains why counting on this metric—and wellness culture more generally—can be a “mundane kind of violence.” A note from Dr. Choudhury and Team JVN: This discussion periodically includes the term “ob*sity.” When it is referenced, it is only to describe a process of medicalization and pathologization, and not in alignment with its politics or political uses. Athia N. Choudhury is a writer and cultural historian/theorist interested in questions of race, food, militarism, eugenics, and body surveillance in the 20th-21st century. She earned a Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California and is currently the Postdoctoral Associate in Asian American and Diaspora Studies at Duke University. You can find Athia’s writing in The Journal of Transnational American Studies, The Routledge International Handbook on Fat Studies, Pipewrench magazine, and Food, Fat, Fitness: Critical Perspectives. You can learn more about Dr. Choudhury at athiachoudhury.com, and reach out to her here. Follow us on Instagram @CuriousWithJVN to join the conversation. Jonathan is on Instagram @JVN. Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com. Find books from Getting Curious guests at bookshop.org/shop/curiouswithjvn. Our executive producer is Erica Getto. Our producer is Chris McClure. Our associate producer is Allison Weiss. Our engineer is Nathanael McClure. Production support from Julie Carrillo, Anne Currie, and Chad Hall. Our theme music is “Freak” by QUIÑ; for more, head to TheQuinCat.com. Curious about bringing your brand to life on the show? Email podcastadsales@sonymusic.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Dr. Karen from the referral podcast here just dropping in to bust yet another myth,
0:04.8	but this time it's not medical.
0:06.8	Now it's a common misconception that a TV licence is just for watching stuff on a TV,
0:11.8	rather than a laptop or a phone, and you only need it if you're watching BBC content.
0:16.4	This is false information.
0:18.2	The licence gives you access to over 400 live TV channels too, for around 44p a day.
0:24.4	You can get your licence and find out more info at www.tvl.co.uk slash code.
0:31.3	The lighting today is like really in my phone.
0:39.6	It's really giving it to me, Tia, and you are just giving me like, are we going to get
0:43.4	like modeling contracts from a podcast?
0:45.0	Are we going to be the first people in history?
0:48.4	Sometimes my friend should be like, oh my god, are they going to kick us out for being
0:51.6	too hot?
0:53.0	For being too hot and too brilliant, it's going to be very hard.
0:56.7	It's almost not fair.
0:58.7	It's a little bit up here.
1:00.7	Yeah, well, I mean literally it's like, we're literally just like, welcome to getting
1:04.8	curious.
1:05.8	I'm Jonathan Viannez, and every week I sit down for a gorgeous conversation with a brilliant
1:09.5	expert to learn all about something that makes me curious.
1:12.2	We recently spoke with Dr. Evie Leidig about women on the far right, and one thing that struck
1:17.6	me about these women is that they have very specific ideas about dieting and wellness.
	...

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