Responsible Selves: The Popularization of the Calorie, Scientific Expertise, and Citizenship in Early 20th Century US

The paper discusses the history of the food calorie as a case study for the popularization of scientific expertise as an ambivalent process of responsibilization. When chemists introduced the calorie to Americans in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, food and bodies became quantifiable unlike ever before. In the early 20th century, calorie counting became popular as a weight-loss method among the white middle class, suggesting that individuals could and should determine their calorie needs and manage their food intake and body weight accordingly. Drawing on popular expertise and personal accounts of dieters, the talk highlights a core ambivalence of self-tracking. On the one hand, modern possibilities of quantification created the self-responsible, enlightened subject who could be his/her own expert. In contrast to earlier forms of weight-loss dieting, calorie counting promised to grant individuals the liberty to choose their foods themselves and to diet on their own authority. On the other hand, the “avalanche of numbers” (Hacking) emerging from modern sciences since the nineteenth century was a crucial part of a biopolitical governmentality subjecting bodies to a new, scientifically authorized, regime of truth. By suggesting that body shape was precisely manageable through calorie counting, the calorie located the responsibility for health and weight within the individual and contributed to creating powerful norms of proper eating and body shape. In times when taking care of one’s body became a litmus test for citizenship, the calorie shaped who was acknowledged as a responsible member of society.