Calorie counting is ubiquitous in today's societies. Promoted as an innocent and neutral scientific unit of measurement, calories have come to measure more than food energy: they also seem to assess food value, health, lifestyle, and personal conduct. This talk traces the emergence of calorie counting in the late nineteenth century and some of its multiple sites in early twentieth-century U.S. society. It sheds light on how calorie counting transformed modern America and its inclusions and exclusions. Calorie counting helped regulate wage levels, sharpen racial and gender boundaries, and create normative ideas about proper consumption and body size. In the process, calorie counting emerged as a blueprint for modern consumer citizenship.

Nina Mackert is a historian and currently an interim professor of North American history at the University of Erfurt. Her research focuses on the history of knowledge and bodies and their significance for the orders of modern societies, with a particular emphasis on food, health, and the environment. Her second book, a history of the calorie in the United States, is forthcoming from NYU Press.