Thuy Linh Nguyen, Childbirth, Maternity, and Medical Pluralism in French Colonial Vietnam, 1880-1945 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2016), pp. 254, £80, hardback/ebook, ISBN: 978-1-580-46568-7/978-1-782-04849-7.

arguments between scientists advocating for vitamins versus those who emphasised minerals went ‘beyond alleviating the effects of malnutrition’ and entered into discussions about national mortality, disability and state responsibility in setting standards for national and international food and nutrition policies. A key goal of professionalising nutrition science was the effort to establish national and international standards. In this, medical and scientific professionals often allied with voluntary associations and civic reformers. Suzanne Junod, argues that non-governmental actors, notably women’s and consumer organisations were crucial players in setting standard weight and nutrition labels in the early twentieth-century United States. While opposed by the growing food production industry, these efforts ultimately succeeded establishing regulations that ‘could be enforced to a degree unknown with most dietary and nutritional standards’ (p. 18). A final essay by Nick Cullather, ‘When is a Famine not a Famine?’ centres debates about nutrition standards in an international context. Exploring responses to the 1967 Bahar India famine, Cullather argues that international standards for nutrition – and malnutrition – formed key elements in Cold War geopolitics. International nutrition models based on statistics and ‘abstract comparisons of the calories’ took precedence over local assessments thus allowing national and international players to use famine relief to further their own aims. The editors intend this volume to contribute to current debates about food, culture and diet. Indeed, the essays presented here suggest that nutrition standards are, and have been historically, the result of a complex interplay of culture, science and politics.