Feeding the Colonial Subject: Nutrition and Public Health in Puerto Rico, 1926-1952

This article examines nutrition sciences, policies, and politics in Puerto Rico from the late 1920s to the early 1950s. Tracing the activities of various experts within this multidisciplinary field, it considers how changing historical circumstances shaped the interaction between nutrition knowledge, public health projects, and politico-economic agendas. Representations of malnutrition as a problem of deficient diets resulting from insufficient local food production contributed to cement the land question as a central element of the early Popular Democratic Party (PPD) discourse. However, technological changes after World War II facilitated the subordination of agricultural diversification as part of public health interventions to fight malnutrition.