Hunger and history: the impact of changing food production and consumption patterns on society.

Abstract

First given at a conference of historians, demographers, economists, food scientists and nutritionists at Bellagio, Italy, in 1982, the papers included in this volume were published in an issue of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 16, 1983. Taken together, the papers challenge assumptions about the mechanisms of population growth and decline, as well as theories of how populations react or adapt to constraints on their resources. If the distinctions that are obvious to clinicians and nutritionists are assimilated by the historians, there may be much to learn about basic nutritional staples, the role of migration, and the resort to remarkable ingenuities in the past, that may be of relevance to tackling the problems arising from hunger and malnutrition at the present day. The papers are abstracted separately.-J.Sheail