Let them eat horsemeat: Science, philanthropy, state, and the search for complete nutrition in nineteenth-century France

This dissertation examines the importance of science to nutritional knowledge and dietary practices in nineteenth-century France. It is argued that a modern sensibility of diet—the conviction that with science one can design diets providing adequate or complete nutrition—arose in the context of state-supported, but primarily private-philanthropic efforts to feed the poor, the sick, and the laboring classes. Scientists, reformers, and government officials joined together to define nitrogen, protein, and meat as the key indicators of complete nutrition in nineteenth-century France.; Whereas for many centuries charitable enterprises to nourish the poor and sick in France had focused on securing an adequate quantity of food to stave off hunger and starvation, nineteenth-century reformers sought to provide food of sufficient nutritive value as well. No longer did reformers hope merely to fill the stomachs of the hungry; now they aimed to provide complete nutrition. In order to accomplish this goal, these reformers, many of them practicing scientists or physicians, applied the latest chemical and physiological knowledge to diet. The scientific understanding of diet became focused away from whole foods and onto their invisible, chemical constituents instead. Scientists defined good nutrition based on chemical elements, which were identical from food to food. The nitrogen or carbon in horsemeat could not be distinguished from that in beef or even vegetable foods. The peculiarly French brand of liberalism, under both monarchies and republics, allowed for an important but limited state role in these projects as in other areas, and the resulting public-private partnership proved crucial to dietary reform. In addition, great transformations in animal-raising and the emergence of national markets contributed to making possible the implementation of this scientific orientation to diet. Only the combination of these various factors—philanthropic, governmental, scientific, and economic—made conceivable and possible the notion of complete nutrition. This dissertation examines these influences in a number of contexts: the development of nutritious and economical soups for poor relief, the use of gelatin as a substitute for meat in bouillon, the legalization of horsemeat, and the reform of hospital diets, and the initial popularization of this nutrition science.