Picky eating. Obesity. Malnutrition. Cutting through current anxiety and hype, Small Bites challenges preconceptions about the biological basis of children’s eating habits, gendered and parent-focused responsibility, and the notion of naturally determined children’s foods.

Tina Moffat draws on extensive anthropological research to explore the biological and sociocultural determinants of child nutrition and feeding. Are children naturally picky eaters? How can school meal programs help to address food insecurity and malnutrition? How has the industrial food system commodified children’s food and shaped children’s bodies?

Small Bites investigates how children are fed in school and at home in Nepal, France, Japan, Canada, and the United States to reveal the ways child nutrition reflects broader cultural approaches to childhood and food. This important work also sets a course for food policy, schools, communities, and caregivers to improve children’s food and nutrition equitably and sustainably.

Tina Moffat's profile page

Tina Moffat is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University. She has published in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, among other academic journals, and is co-editor, with Tracy Prowse, of Human Diet and Nutrition in Biocultural Perspective: Past Meets Present. She is a past president of the Canadian Association for Physical Anthropology.