When discussing the contemporary environmental crisis, it is difficult to overstate the impact our food system has on the planet. We are eating in ways that might cause our own extinction, with monocultures, genetically modified seeds, and food that travels too far, causing an incomparable carbon footprint. Historians have long discussed how empires transformed food into a global commodity through innovations such as steamships, breeding techniques, and trade networks that spanned the globe. My presentation will discuss one other form of innovation that allowed food to travel – scientific standards in nutrition. The ability to measure all foods on earth through one set of numbers – calories, proteins, vitamins, and so on – created what Marx wrote about as commensurability. Food standards were similar to the gold standard in that they enabled trade and created new ways to imagine the world as one. Nutritionists created political programs that connected different environments and markets based on a set of food standards. This presentation will discuss several case studies of food standardization in the British Empire in the twentieth century, connecting them to the formation of international governance. Examining this era in which global order and health concepts shifted dramatically, I ask how measurement and numbers offer new ways to imagine imperial space with many different – arguably non-commensurable – ecosystems.

The presentation will be followed by discussion and drinks. All are welcome.