Q3(a). How anthropologists assess the nutritional status of a community? Discuss the significance of intersectionality of ecology, culture, and social inequality in the study of nutritional anthropology. (20 M)

Introduction

Nutritional anthropology is a subfield of biological and biocultural anthropology that examines the interaction between diet, human biology, ecology, and culture. It views nutrition not merely as a biological requirement but as a biocultural phenomenon shaped by environment, social organization, cultural beliefs, and political economy.

According to John Bennett (1943, Nutritional Anthropology: Problems and Methods), the study of food and nutrition must integrate anthropometric, clinical, dietary, and cultural dimensions. Later, John Weiner and J.A. Lourie (1969, Human Biology: A Guide to Field Methods) systematized anthropometric assessments in field research, while Scrimshaw and Young (1989, Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Nutrition) emphasized that nutrition must be analyzed as a biocultural process, shaped by ecology, economy, and inequality.

Body

Methods of Nutritional Assessment in Anthropology

a) Anthropometric Methods

• Measurement of height, weight, Body Mass Index (BMI), mid-upper arm circumference, skinfold thickness to evaluate undernutrition, obesity, and growth.
• Weiner and Lourie (1969, Human Biology: A Guide to Field Methods) provided standardized anthropometric techniques for anthropologists.
• Keys et al. (1950, The Biology of Human Starvation) demonstrated how anthropometric indicators directly reflect nutritional stress during famine conditions.
• Example: ICMR (2009) studies of Indian tribal communities show widespread Chronic Energy Deficiency (CED) using BMI and mid-arm circumference as indicators.

b) Clinical Assessment

• Observation of physical signs of malnutrition, such as:
• Goiter (iodine deficiency),
• Bitot’s spots (vitamin A deficiency),
• Pellagra (niacin deficiency).
• Derrick B. Jelliffe (1966) emphasized clinical assessment as part of community nutrition surveys.
• Example: Clinical surveys in tribal Odisha and Madhya Pradesh reveal visible goiter prevalence due to low dietary iodine.

c) Biochemical Assessment

• Laboratory evaluation of blood, urine, or tissue to detect micronutrient status.
• Hemoglobin tests for iron-deficiency anemia,
• Serum retinol for Vitamin A,
• Urinary iodine excretion for iodine deficiency.
• Example: NFHS-5 (2019–21) reports show more than 57% of Indian women (15–49 years) are anemic, based on hemoglobin tests, underlining biochemical evidence of poor nutrition.

d) Dietary Surveys

• Methods include 24-hour recall, food frequency questionnaires, and household food weighing.
• M.K. Bennett (1954, The World’s Food) linked dietary surveys with global food security analysis.
• FAO/WHO surveys (1971 onwards) used these methods in comparative nutritional studies across developing countries.
• Example: Among Maasai pastoralists, seasonal dependence on milk and meat has been documented using dietary recall methods (Galvin, 1992, Nutritional Ecology of Pastoralists).

e) Socio-Cultural and Ethnographic Approaches

• Study of food taboos, rituals, gendered food distribution, and cultural meanings of food.
• Audrey Richards (1932, Hunger and Work in a Savage Tribe): Studied the Bemba of Zambia, showing how labor cycles and cultural values shape diet.
• Claude Lévi-Strauss (1966, The Culinary Triangle): Argued that food preparation (raw, cooked, rotting) reflects cultural systems that affect nutrition.
• Jack Goody (1982, Cooking, Cuisine and Class): Linked cuisine patterns to class structures and inequality in access to diverse foods.

Inequality and Political Economy in Nutritional Anthropology

Structural Roots of Malnutrition:

• Eric Wolf (1982) and Goodman & Leatherman (1998) show that land relations, wage structures, and state policy determine who eats what.
• Landless labourers and tribals in India are compelled to depend on poor quality cereals from the Public Distribution System (PDS), while dominant caste households diversify diets through milk, pulses, and vegetables.

Amartya Sen’s Entitlement Approach:

• Sen’s Poverty and Famines (1981) proved that hunger results from entitlement failure, not scarcity. The 1943 Bengal famine occurred despite food availability because agricultural labourers lost wages and purchasing power.
• In today’s India, Scheduled Tribes experience “silent famines” when forest rights are curtaile showing that weak entitlements, not ecological collapse, drive chronic malnutrition.

Structural Violence (Paul Farmer):

• Farmer’s concept of structural violence (1999) describes how poverty, marginalisation, and weak health systems become embodied as disease.
• In tribal Odisha, women trek long distances for water, reducing time for childcare and food preparation, directly shaping nutritional outcomes. These are not “individual choices” but harms produced by systemic neglect.

Nancy Krieger’s Ecosocial Theory

• Krieger (2001) explains how inequality literally becomes biology:
• 1. Exposure: who faces unsafe water, poor food, sanitation.
• 2. Susceptibility: shaped by caste, gender, occupation.
• 3. Outcome: embodied as stunting, anaemia, obesity, or NCDs.

Syndemics Perspective (Merrill Singer)

• Nutritional inequality rarely occurs alone. Undernutrition clusters with diarrhoea, respiratory infections, and anaemia in slum children.
• These conditions interact synergistically, worsening each other is what Singer terms a syndemic. Interventions must address multiple overlapping vulnerabilities.

Case Study: Malnutrition among the Pahari Korwas of Chhattisgarh

• The Pahari Korwa, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), live in upland forests of Chhattisgarh. Their livelihoods depend on shifting cultivation, forest produce (tubers, mahua, tendu leaves), and seasonal wage labour.
• Findings (ICMR–NIN surveys, 2018; NFHS-5, 2021):
• Child stunting: >50%, much higher than state average. Anaemia in women: >70%, linked to cereal-heavy diets (mainly coarse rice) with little pulses or animal protein. Seasonal food insecurity: Wild fruits/tubers available only in monsoon; summer diet almost entirely rice and salt. Cultural practices: Pregnant women avoid eggs/meat, fearing difficult delivery. Structural issues: Loss of forest rights, poor PDS quality, and long distance to ICDS centres reduce entitlements.
• This illustrates Amartya Sen’s entitlement failure (loss of forest access), Paul Farmer’s structural violence (systemic neglect of tribal health), and Goodman & Leatherman’s biocultural synthesis (malnutrition as ecological, political, and cultural embodiment). The Korwa case proves nutrition is inseparable from political economy and cultural practices.

Conclusion

Etkin framed nutrition as biocultural, Goodman and Leatherman emphasized embodiment, while Sen and Farmer exposed entitlements and structural violence together showing nutrition reflects intersecting ecology, culture, and inequality, not calories alone.