................................................................................................................................................................. 3 Thesis declaration................................................................................................................................................. 4 Acknowledgements............................................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter 1. Low-carbohydrate diets and nutritional primitivism: an introduction............................................ 8 Primitivism, food studies and low-carbohydrate dieting: a literature review ......................................................................... 12 Low-carbohydrate diets and health............................................................................................................................ 20 Thesis outline....................................................................................................................................................... 25 Chapter 2. Low-carbohydrate diets in social and scientific context................................................................ 27 Tracing the recent low-carbohydrate trend ................................................................................................................... 28 Contested definitions .............................................................................................................................................. 32 Health and safety debates ....................................................................................................................................... 37 Chapter 3. Studying low-carbohydrate discourse: diet books and their readers ............................................ 42 Reading low-carbohydrate diet books ......................................................................................................................... 42 Interviewing low-carbohydrate dieters ......................................................................................................................... 48 Chapter 4. The natural / unnatural binary in low-carbohydrate dieting ........................................................ 55 Whole food / refined carbohydrate: a defining dichotomy................................................................................................ 59 Unrefined food and moral virtue............................................................................................................................... 67 Low-carbohydrate dieters and the natural / unnatural binary ........................................................................................ 74 Chapter 5. Nostalgia, authenticity and tradition in low-carbohydrate discourse........................................... 82 Nutritional nostalgia ............................................................................................................................................. 83 The authentic ethnic .............................................................................................................................................. 89 Dieters’ accounts: family traditions and ethnic food....................................................................................................... 94 Chapter 6. Neo-Darwinism and genetic determinism in low-carbohydrate theory ..................................... 102 Evolutionary nutrition ......................................................................................................................................... 104 The thrifty gene hypothesis..................................................................................................................................... 113 Chapter 7. Indigenous nutritional research in Protein Power ....................................................................... 124 The North American Inuit................................................................................................................................... 124 Aboriginal Australians ....................................................................................................................................... 127 Chapter 8. Low-carbohydrate dieters and nutritional primitivism ................................................................ 143 ‘I sat down and read it and it all made sense’............................................................................................................ 143 ‘I can see that all of this is an hypothesis’ ................................................................................................................. 147 ‘We can’t go back a hundred million years’ .............................................................................................................. 150 Chapter 9. Summary and conclusions ............................................................................................................. 158 Appendix. Ethics submission .......................................................................................................................... 163 Bibliography...................................................................................................................................................... 180