How the Calorie Leapt from Chemistry Lab Obscurity to Diet-Culture Eminence

Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation

Information: 215-873-8289 or bbl@chemheritage.org

Free and open to the public.

Chin Jou discusses the history of the calorie starting with chemist Wilbur Olin Atwater’s (1844–1907) experiments using bomb and respiration calorimeters in the 1890s. She then examines how the calorie became central to a new diet culture, as legions of young middle-class women took up calorie counting in the 1910s and 1920s. The talk also underscores the ways in which the concept of the calorie transformed our vision of food, causing us to focus on the number of calories in a particular food item rather than on the food itself, and speculates on why calorie counting became such a popular and enduring means of weight management.

Chin Jou received her Ph.D. in history from Princeton University in 2009, after defending her dissertation, “Controlling Consumption: The Origins of Modern American Ideas about Food, Eating, and Fat, 1890–1930.” She is currently a DeWitt Stetten Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Biomedical Sciences and the Technology of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.