Key Concepts
This term means science decides what a “healthy body” is, often ignoring culture.
What is biomedical authority?
Many nutrition programs assume mothers can easily follow health advice, but they often overlook these basic life challenges that limit choices.
What is everyday living conditions/socioeconomic inequality?
Most of the book’s research takes place in this Central American country.
What is Guatemala?
Government programs often assume that this person is solely responsible for a child’s growth.
Who is the mother?
This type of science often claims objectivity but is shaped by politics and inequality.
What is nutrition science?
Yates-Doerr argues that treating nurtition as simple "calories in, calories out" is this type of harmful oversimplification.
What is reductionism?
Yates-Doerr shows that "malnutrition" often refers not just to thinness but to this type of spectrum of harm.
What is undernutrition/overnutrition?
Guatemala’s health programs often target this population group, assuming they are the cause of malnutrition.
Who are Indigenous mothers?
When a child is underweight, the system often blames mothers instead of addressing these bigger issues.
What are poverty, food access and social inequalities?
International health initiatives often prioritize weight change to meet these measurable outcomes.
What are global health metrics?
The book shows that labeling certain foods as "good" or "bad" often reflects this social factor, not biology.
What is culture (social norms)?
Health programs that focus only on weight miss than more complex measure of this type of well-being
What is health/social and emotional well-being?
This staple food is central in Guatemala but often gets labeled as “unhealthy” by outside nutritionists.
What is corn(maize or tortillas)?
Mothers in the book feel anxiety because their child’s weight is constantly measured using these tools.
What are growth charts/percentiles?
The book argues that health systems treat data like numbers that “speak for themselves,” ignoring this human factor.
What is lived experience?
When health systems blame mothers for their children's outcomes, this harmful pattern is reproduced.
What is maternal responsibility/mother-blame?
When medical personnel push strict dietary rules without understanding a family's reality, they produce this kind of violance.
What is structural violence?
Yates-Doerr describes how nutrition workers often give mothers advice that conflicts with this—local knowledge from families.
What is traditional/community knowledge?
Telling mothers to “choose healthier foods” ignores this structural reality.
What is money/access to foods?
Programs that push weight goals often produce this unintended consequence for mothers.
What is fear/shame/anxiety?
The idea that bodies are shaped by environment, stress, poverty and relationships-not just biology- refers to this wider concept
What is embodiment?
The book argues that nutrition science can unintentionally reinforce inequality by treating its advice as this-objective and universal.
What is "neutral" truth/universal science?
The gap between what health professionals intend and how families understand it is known as this cultural mismatch.
What is miscommunication/cultrual disconnect?
This term refers to blaming individual behavior instead of examining the systems that limit choice.
What is individualizing harm?
Yates-Doerr says that health interventions that do not account for local context risk doing this.
What os reproducing harm?