Milk in Spain and the History of Diet Change: The Political Economy of Dairy Consumption since 1950 [Hardcover]

In barely three generations the Spanish diet has changed beyond recognition. The traditional concerns around nutritional health and scarcity have been mostly left behind, but they have given way to new problems linked to excess.In this book Fernando Collantes shows how the dairy industry has been central to this societal shift. From widespread calcium deficiency in the 1950s to the more recent, and controversial, turn to highly processed foods, it provides a recent history of diet change in Spain. Probing the reasons behind why this shift has occurred, and how, it shows that when it comes to food society, politics, economics and the law are intrinsically linked.

Taking the reader beyond the world of food,Milk in Spain and the History of Diet Changecombines qualitative and quantitative methods to position diet change within the broader debate on consumer society and 'the good life'. Contrasting two models of food consumption, it shows that unless public policy takes the challenge of affluence seriously, the food system can become an obstacle to a better society.

A quantitative and qualitative study of dairy consumption in Spain since 1950 to explore the history of diet change and its consequences on society.Fernando Collantesis Associate Professor of Socio-Economic History at University of Oviedo, Spain. He is the author ofPeaceful surrender: the depopulation of rural Spain in the twentieth century(with Vicente Pinilla 2011) andThe political economy of the Common Agricultural Policy: coordinated capitalism or bureaucratic monster?(2020).

Based on an innovative bridge between Schumpeter and Braudel, applied to a thorough empirical and theoretical work, Fernando Collantes delivers in this book not only a detailed account of the Spanish diet since the 1950s, but also a challenging account of the long term evolution of a major factor for all societies: the access and quality of food. This is nothing less than a new visiolÃæ