The collective gut: rational nutrition and the expert visions for the socialist nutritional modernity

This article explores the notion of rational nutrition that constituted the core of nutritional expertise in socialist Czechoslovakia and the modes of nutritional modernity it encompassed. The study draws on an analysis of issues published between 1946 and 1986 of the journal People and Nutrition, which was founded by the Czechoslovak Society for Rational Nutrition to disseminate expert knowledge among both the expert community and the public. Drawing on Hannah Landecker’s notion of industrial metabolism and Annemarie Mol’s concept of ontonorms, the study focuses on the complex relations and tensions present in socialist expertise between the individual and the collective and between reason and pleasure. First, the article zooms in on the epistemological shift from the body as a “human engine”, which functions according to the “calories in – calories out” principle, towards a more complex understanding of metabolism as a regulatory system shaped by social factors and environmental exposure. Second, the article explores how dietary recommendations took pleasure into account and what relationship was construed between rationality and pleasure. Finally, the article examines the articulation of individual responsibility for one’s metabolic health and the collective, state-led efforts to implement “rational nutrition”. Exploring expertise in the state-socialist era, the study aims to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of nutritional modernity across different socio-political contexts.