New Books In Southeast Asian Studies

The twelve chapters of Moral Foods: The Construction of Nutrition and Health in Modern Asia (U Hawai’i Press, 2020) are divided into three sections: Good Foods, Bad Foods, and Moral Foods. Using case studies from nineteenth- and twentieth-century China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, and Malaysia, these chapters investigate the moralization of food in modern Asia. These studies on moral food regimes are highly specific, but their implications, especially about the malleability of food as an object of moralization, are far reaching. The first chapter in Good Foods, by Francesca Bray, examines the construction of rice as a symbol of self in Japan and Malaysia. Jia-Chen Fu’s contribution looks at the “goodness” of soymilk in China. Izumi Nakayama’s work is about the emergence of breastmilk as a “good food” in Meiji-period Japan. Finally, Michael Liu writes about Chinese experimentation with nutrition during WWII. David Arnold’s chapter on moral foods―especially rice―in India during the period of British colonia